Building a Gaming rig for a friend, I Has socket 1155 CPU

Kato1144

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
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Before I start I was going to post this on the intel side but decided not to because last time i started a thread there about upgrading it was never replayed to...

Anyway I'm building a gaming computer for a friend who help me out bunch in the past, I already have most of the parts, a 7870 HD, 8GB's of DDR 3, 120GB intel 2gen SSD, 650 Watt Antech earth watt PSU (it's from 2009, it should still be good, it has spent most of it's life since 2011 in my closet, if you guys think it's to old let me know I can alwasy get a new PSU) and last but not least a ASUS P8Z68-V pro socket 1155 MOBD, all I need now is a CPU.

I have looked on line and there is very little I can find as far as used CPU's for this socket, maybe I'm not looking in the right places. so I ask two things, first of all is there a online store that has used/new socket 1155 CPU's that is reasonably priced and can ship to Canada and mostly if the first solution is not viable is there any one who has upgraded and no longer needs there socket 1155CPU, I will pay shipping and a fair price for the CPU, it does not need to be anything crazy, I'm probably not going to overclock it because he wont know what to do if the overclock failed, a decent non k CPU would be nice but I don't want to get him a turd CPU either, something with at least 3.2GHz base quad core HT is optional, once I have that I will get him to buy a case and a OEM copy of windows 10 and he will be good to go.

My friend Mike helped me and my brother out at a difficult time in my life and this PC that I will be how I'm going to pay that help back to him, I have a limited budget for this part as I'm paying/giving away all the parts beside the case and windows copy.

So hopefully posting this here is not breaking any rules, please let me know if I am also thank for any help and advice.



EDIT: I have a CPU now, will be posting on the build progress and any problem i encounter.
 
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Before I start I was going to post this on the intel side but decided not to because last time i started a thread there about upgrading it was never replayed to...

Anyway I'm building a gaming computer for a friend who help me out bunch in the past, I already have most of the parts, a 7870 HD, 8GB's of DDR 3, 120GB intel 2gen SSD, 650 Watt Antech earth watt PSU (it's from 2009, it should still be good, it has spent most of it's life since 2011 in my closet, if you guys think it's to old let me know I can alwasy get a new PSU) and last but not least a ASUS P8Z68-V pro socket 1155 MOBD, all I need now is a CPU.

I have looked on line and there is very little I can find as far as used CPU's for this socket, maybe I'm not looking in the right places. so I ask two things, first of all is there a online store that has used/new socket 1155 CPU's that is reasonably priced and can ship to Canada and mostly if the first solution is not viable is there any one who has upgraded and no longer needs there socket 1155CPU, I will pay shipping and a fair price for the CPU, it does not need to be anything crazy, I'm probably not going to overclock it because he wont know what to do if the overclock failed, a decent non k CPU would be nice but I don't want to get him a turd CPU either, something with at least 3.2GHz base quad core HT is optional, once I have that I will get him to buy a case and a OEM copy of windows 10 and he will be good to go.

My friend Mike helped me and my brother out at a difficult time in my life and this PC that I will be how I'm going to pay that help back to him, I have a limited budget for this part as I'm paying/giving away all the parts beside the case and windows copy.

So hopefully posting this here is not breaking any rules, please let me know if I am also thank for any help and advice.

I found some listings on amazon for some i5-3570's for $231 US. Of course you should have the latest bios for the board.There are a lot of the k versions of this
Chip on EBay but they have probably been rode hard and put up wet.
 
amazon.com from my experience will not ship to Canada and everything I found on ebay.ca is over priced or very far away from me meaning shipping will be harsh, also my budget is 200$ CAN witch is... wow that's only 148.60US dam...

Well maybe thinking I can get this done on my current budget is more then optimistic, I was under the impression that one could get a sold sadybridge CPU for around 100$ US, anyway I have been looking at a 2500k here for 99$ Canadian on the local kijiji, this price looks to good to be true, Im worried the CPU is either no good or I'm going to get mugged... could just be some one who wants to get ride of there CPU... another red flag is the pic of the CPU is a generic thumbnail of a 2500K for pcworld.com ... man I just have a hard time trusting this advert...
 
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I'm going to increase my budget to 400$ CAN or almost 300$ US, my poor sad CAN droller :( ... anyway I think I'm going to go a different direction,I'm going to see if i can get a decent Ivybriged CPU that is compatible with my P8Z68 chip set, any suggestions? in the mean time I found a i7-3770 bran new on NCIX, it is pricey but I wont have to deal with possible sketchiness that I'm getting with that 2500K I'm looking at, let me know what you guy think
 
after some more searching I found a 2600 for 150$ CAN plus shipping on ebay.ca from a top rated seller, it is well with in my original budget and is exactly what I was hoping to get, this should keep him gaming for a while with the 7870 HD

EDIT: you know your sad when you reply to your own thread 3 times in a row....
 
I was going to say those cpus should be pretty cheap on ebay.

I bought my wife an ENTIRE i5-3570 Dell machine with 4G ram, win-pro 32-bit license, and 500G sata drive for $93 shipped...

The cpus are worth very, very little.
 
after some more searching I found a 2600 for 150$ CAN plus shipping on ebay.ca from a top rated seller, it is well with in my original budget and is exactly what I was hoping to get, this should keep him gaming for a while with the 7870 HD

EDIT: you know your sad when you reply to your own thread 3 times in a row....
that looks good. But I know why you post here, in your original post, but getting specifics for Intel purchases may be difficult. We however can give generic overall help.
 
I'm going to be building my replacement setup this next week, and the CPU, board, and RAM will be available once I verify the new build runs.
Proc is a 2700K-I wouldn't think of asking 300 US for it.
If you are interested, LMK.
 
I'm going to be building my replacement setup this next week, and the CPU, board, and RAM will be available once I verify the new build runs.
Proc is a 2700K-I wouldn't think of asking 300 US for it.
If you are interested, LMK.

I'm not even jokeing you guys but there are people here in Canada selling 2600k and 2700k's for 800$CDN or more, the average price I found was 200-300 used and 600-800+ new, I can't think of any reasion for this pricing, I think i was lucky to find a 2600 @ 150$

anyway with my setup that I'm building do you think the 8 year old antech 650 earthwatts PSU will be good, it not even 80 plus rated, I worrie a bit about it failing and taking the MOBD too, are my concerns not warranted? I would appreciate some feed aback on this if possible, as mentioned before i only used it for about 3 years before putting it in to a computer that gust used and shelved it for that last 3 yeas give or take.


EDIT: just to add i did a PSU calculation and the system only required around 300~ watts
 
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I'm going to be building my replacement setup this next week, and the CPU, board, and RAM will be available once I verify the new build runs.
Proc is a 2700K-I wouldn't think of asking 300 US for it.
If you are interested, LMK.

Samn here...I'll be replacing my 2700k setup at the end of the month. Sounds like I should be selling it in Canada. It's a sweet chip. Prime95 24hr stable 4.9 GHz @ 1.432v.
 
Well got the CPU in the mail today and started assembling a computer with out a case, or valid windows 10 license, but details now lets get started :D

All the random assorted parts that i have in storage are finally going to accumulate in to something useful
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I used this ASUS P8Z68-V pro for about a year, started getting BSOD and had it down to the MOBD or GPU, so i bought a P8Z68 Deluxe and started a RMA for this board to get a BSOD with the new board, turns out it was the GPU that needed the RMA, so this ended up in storage until today. that was about 5 years ago hopefully the battery is still good.

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This memory has never been used, bought it for another build but it was not compatible with the MOBD so i ended up putting it in storage about 4 years ago....

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And the CPU has finally arrived, wrapped in anti static bag surrounded by bubble wrap, i have a good felling about this :)

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ahh the i7 2600, the star of the show

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It has been almost 5 years since i have handled a LGA 1155 socket CPU and MOBD and those pins on the board are so fricken delicate looking, i held my breath when dropping the CPU in afraid i could get dust in the socket... Also I have never used the intel heat sink that comes with there CPU's, this is the one from my 2600k that I never used, you only twist the pins when your pulling it off right? or do i need to turn the pins 90o, i just can't remember either way it is not coming off right now i just want it to be on there proper

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And Post!, the CPU is reading i7 2600, 8GB of DDR 3 detected, now im going to flash the BIOS to the latest rev and install windows 10, I should be able to install with out a key right? just have to activate with a valid key in a few days? my buddy is getting his own copy with the case but i would like to get the system installed and setup before that, anyway i guess i will find out soon

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Stock cooler?!? :(

well I have nothing else, and it's a non k CPU, the stock cooler should be good right? RIGHT?!!

BTW using the original thermal compound the cooler came with, i kept the protective cap on all these years but i also live in a very dry climate so i might have to remount to cooler
 
well I have nothing else, and it's a non k CPU, the stock cooler should be good right? RIGHT?!!

BTW using the original thermal compound the cooler came with, i kept the protective cap on all these years but i also live in a very dry climate so i might have to remount to cooler

If your not overclocking the stock cooler is fine.
 
Fully updated UEFI, mem running at full speeds, everything looks happy, dont mind the time and date the update reset the clock, i set it and unplugged it over night and the clock kept ticking


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I had to test that RAM I never used just in case, also any issues with the CPU might show up here, I did one pass and it looked good, I probably should have gone for 2 passes but i was tired and wanted to shut down and go to sleep

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And windows 10 was no problem, it was in fact the easiest part so far, so long are the days of manually installing all your drivers...

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Now the hard part, I first have to decided what GPU to use, I know i said a HD 7870, and yes i do have but it has problems... I had to RMA once and visiontek were super difficult about it, I literally had to recorded the card glitching out in desktop hard before they would approve the RMA, and even after RMAing the card and getting it back it still was troublesome, although not as fricking bad as it was before hand but still, so some drivers would work with the card no problem others would cause BSOD, my brother used this card is his PC before getting a RX 480 and he has had no issues since, so I'm a little hesitant giving this card to Mike who is not very computer literate. Soooo I think I might instead give him my tried and true HIS HD 6950, overclocked to 880MHz on the core and i think i was also a 3GB card maybe... maybe not will have to look, either way it has no problems, I used it as a primary and secondary GPU in a tri fire setup right up until i got my GTX 1070, it is more power hungry then the 7870 and i don't think it is quit as powerful but it is still a solid card. So what do you guys think 7870 or the safer 6950, I think the 6950 will be the better bet or should i uses the 7870, witch can use the crimson drivers unlike the 6950...

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Just one last question can i use the GPU like this with no case support like above, will it be ok for the most part, or will something like a slight bump cause death to the PC?
 
I'd use the 7870 myself.

That setup is fine for benching, do it all the time.

Ya I think your right, I started a discussion here about the vid card i should use and some one suggested that i sell my current GPU's and buy a 1050, after a quick look at hardware compare i found that the clam of both of my current GPU's not having the combined power of a single 1050 was grossly over stated, so after that i decided I'm going to try the 7870 and hope that it is stable.... man I just don't want him texting me how much a POS this PC i built him is because it keeps crashing randomly when he updates his drivers.... I will never buy anything visointek again....
 
just did a run in intel burn in test and 2 of the CPU core got up to 96oC, that seems alittle high even for a stock cooler, do you think the thermal compound is no good maybe or is this normal temps with a stock cooler?
 
just did a run in intel burn in test and 2 of the CPU core got up to 96oC, that seems alittle high even for a stock cooler, do you think the thermal compound is no good maybe or is this normal temps with a stock cooler?

That's normal for the stock cooler, it's bad. Check to make sure the push pins are secure since that is easy to mess up.

That stock compound really doesn't go bad in my experience (it starts bad :p). It's designed for life expectancy over performance.
 
That's normal for the stock cooler, it's bad. Check to make sure the push pins are secure since that is easy to mess up.

That stock compound really doesn't go bad in my experience (it starts bad :p). It's designed for life expectancy over performance.

ya i will look at the pins and make sure they are seated all the way, if they are already I might think of using some better thermal compound and reset the cooler, 96oC is just way to hot...
 
ya i will look at the pins and make sure they are seated all the way, if they are already I might think of using some better thermal compound and reset the cooler, 96oC is just way to hot...

You will be disappointed, if you are going through the effort of replacing the compound just throw a better cooler on there.
 
You will be disappointed, if you are going through the effort of replacing the compound just throw a better cooler on there.

I removed the cooler and found about 1/4 of the thermal compound had gotten a bit hard and did not spread out, i did check the pins first and they were fully deployed before i pulled the cooler off.

you can see were the thermal paste did not spread out
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lets put some real thermal paste on

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I had to pull off the stickers as they were literally peeling off, and i have to say it looks 100% better, ya I'm happy with this

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well after testing with burn in test i found i had a temp drop from 96oC to 89oC, in truth that does not look to big but i would like to add the CPU got up to 80oC after the 2rd pass the first time around, after remounting it did not get up to 80oC until the 6th pass
 
well it's Monday and that means case time!

I with Mike's help assemble the PC

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Well that's it, we got the case, Windows 10 64x home, keyboard/mouse, DVD drive, monitor and speakers. I activated windows with the product key, moved about 35.5GB's of music from Mike's laptop to his new PC, installed some games and that's it, the only problem i had is the dam veiwsonic monitor only came with a VGA cable so i had to give up one of my DVI adapters.

The Systems final specs are as follows: ASUS P8Z68-V pro, i7 2600, 8GB of DDR3 1600MHz, HD 7870 GHz edition, 60GB SSD for windows only (and yes i told him several times not to install anything on C: ) 500GB HDD, and a Antech 650 Earthwatt PSU

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Well thanks for joining me on this ride, this was pretty fun to make out of spare parts, my friend Mike is excited to try the system out, being he came from a 2011 laptop with only a IGPU and i5 of some order this should be leagues faster in not just gaming but general tasks too.

this was physically tasking for me, I'm very sore and tired but i also feel very rewarded for fulling this task i gave my self a few years ago to build and give Mike a gaming PC of some sort and i think i have exceeded my expectation, I would like to thank everyone who help out or just committed for the hell of it, I would lastly like to thank my brothers for all there help as I could not get any of this done with out them, Thanks!
 
So I didn't think i would be posting here again but I'm sure some of you are going to find this amusing, last night I get a text from Mike telling me the computer won't work, of course right, so he sends me this pic so I can see what is going on:


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Well I don't need to tell you there is a good chance this is a issue with the hardware so i had him bring the PC down by today and checked out the 60GB SSD I used and sure enough it was dead.
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Now I used this drive since 2011 when i got my first sandy bridge system, it actually came with a twin bundled with my MOBD and CPU, i used this one for windows 7 and the other one as storage, by 2012 the storage SSD died and it was then i learned these drives in particular have issues and i needed to get a firmware update to stop the drive from self destructing, so i got a 120GB intel drive form my Windows SSD and updated the firmware on the remaining 60GB, used that 60GB in my system for game installs until early 2017 when i upgraded to my current Ryzen build.

I used Crystal disk info on all the drives before i used them in the build the SSD was good, only the HDD had reallocated sector count warning witch i told him to keep a eye on and i thought that drive would be the troublesome, I even asked him to get a better HDD not thinking anything with this 60GB drive would be going wrong any time soon and not even 4 days after getting the PC the 60GB SSD died :(

so today we headed down to the local PC shop and inquired about cheap SSD, now in December 2016 I got a 256GB kingston SSD for 75$ CDN plus tax, now it was SATAII but who cares for that price, so i thought I could find him a 120GB for like 50$ or something like that, but nooo apparently there is a SSD shortage right now and all drivers were up in price, he had to pay 150$ CDN for a 256 Samsung SSD, evo series I think, and man that sucked, was really hoping he would not have any issues with this system and the SSD dies and all new SSD's were up in price, also there was a 128GB SSD there too but it was literally only 5$ less then the 256GB, anyway I installed and setup windows all over again lol

Well this really sucked for Mike he was going to use that money to get a headset with a mic to play online and such, there was something else he wanted to buy for the PC too but now i can't remember what he said, so ya really sucks, was trying to keep the cost down but as we all know when it comes to PC's there is no such thing as keeping the cost down.

well last of all before i leave this here I just want to ask if any one knows if I could fix this drive, I'm thinking the Nand controller is the problem here and if it is, is it possible to replace, I know this 60GB SSD might not seem like it is worth the trouble but if I could buy a 50 cent part and solder it on the PCB I can have a working drive again, i was planing on using this 60GB drive in a old core 2 duo system running the dreaded Windows vista until I decided to use it in Mike's build so please let me know if anyone has knowledge on that subject.
 
amazon.com from my experience will not ship to Canada and everything I found on ebay.ca is over priced or very far away from me meaning shipping will be harsh, also my budget is 200$ CAN witch is... wow that's only 148.60US dam...

Well maybe thinking I can get this done on my current budget is more then optimistic, I was under the impression that one could get a sold sadybridge CPU for around 100$ US, anyway I have been looking at a 2500k here for 99$ Canadian on the local kijiji, this price looks to good to be true, Im worried the CPU is either no good or I'm going to get mugged... could just be some one who wants to get ride of there CPU... another red flag is the pic of the CPU is a generic thumbnail of a 2500K for pcworld.com ... man I just have a hard time trusting this advert...

The reason why Amazon.COM will not ship to Canada is due to Amazon.ca (their Canadian operations covering Canada) - does Newegg.com ship to Canada (despite Newegg.CA existing)? The only reason I see for Canadians ordering from the US side of any company with operations in Canada is if the Canadian company does NOT sell the item - not exactly typical. For LGA1155 motherboards, I would go with Ivy Bridge - not Sandy Bridge - given druthers. Two reasons - better GPUs in the Ivies compared to the Sandies (HD4000 and HD4400 in Ivy Bridge compared to HD3000 in Sandy Bridge); also, for some rather odd reason, Ivy Bridge CPUs are not as marked up as their Sandy counterparts in terms of the used-CPU market, let alone what few NEW (as in sitting in warehouses collecting dust) examples of either.
 
I would suggest a Corsair liquid cooler: The H 60 and the H 80 are under 90 dollars and perform well for years. Even If I do not overclock, I like to put Corsair water cooling systems on my rigs.
 
The reason why Amazon.COM will not ship to Canada is due to Amazon.ca (their Canadian operations covering Canada) - does Newegg.com ship to Canada (despite Newegg.CA existing)? The only reason I see for Canadians ordering from the US side of any company with operations in Canada is if the Canadian company does NOT sell the item - not exactly typical. For LGA1155 motherboards, I would go with Ivy Bridge - not Sandy Bridge - given druthers. Two reasons - better GPUs in the Ivies compared to the Sandies (HD4000 and HD4400 in Ivy Bridge compared to HD3000 in Sandy Bridge); also, for some rather odd reason, Ivy Bridge CPUs are not as marked up as their Sandy counterparts in terms of the used-CPU market, let alone what few NEW (as in sitting in warehouses collecting dust) examples of either.

I would suggest a Corsair liquid cooler: The H 60 and the H 80 are under 90 dollars and perform well for years. Even If I do not overclock, I like to put Corsair water cooling systems on my rigs.


hey guys I don't own/have the PC anymore, it's Mikes now and as far as he is concerned it is perfect the way it is, for some one who has only owned consoles for gaming and a laptop for basically music and internet plus some old RTS's this PC is very powerful. I highly doubt he is going to want to spend money on a Corsair liquid cool, the stock intel cooler is more then adequate as i have mentioned in a previous post also it has less failure points then a AIO cooler...

PGHammer, I know that Amazon and Newegg have Canadian stores, the only reason i mention that is some one sent me a Amazon.com link to a CPU that was not in the Amazon.ca store, actually the American stores had way more products for much better prices then there Canadian counterparts.... but getting off topic, anyway I looked at both the .ca stores for sandy and ivy bridge CPU's and found really expensive brand new 2600K/2700K's and still expensive non k ivy Bridge i5's, I would only get a i5 if I could overclock it (my bro has a ivy bridge [email protected] and it is struggling in games like battlefield one when he plays in big servers) so it was going to have to be a fast i5 or a decent i7, fortunately for me I found a used i7 2600 for 150$ CDN on ebay.ca, and yes i looked for a ivy bridge CPU there too and at the time of looking nothing was listed besides full PC's for sale with ivy bridge CPU's.

like I said before he has the PC now, it works and has a HD 7870 1GHz edition for dedicated GFX, all the temps are good under load, he has been playing The Forest he has told me and it works great on the fantastic settings (He bought The Forest back in the day thinking it would work on his laptop)

Anyway I would like to thank everyone who has replayed to this thread, all help and advice is always appreciated :)

The Final Specs for Mike's Gaming PC are:

i7 2600 @3.4GHz stock intel cooler
8GB's of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 @1600MHz
ASUS P8Z68-V pro
HD 7870 1GHz core
Samsung Evo 240 GB SSD
Segate 5200Rpm 500GB HDD
DVD RAM CD/DVD burner
650 earthwatt Antech PSU
 
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