Got A New Case For 7th Anniversary "i7 2600K" Sandy Bridge Daily Rig.

AllexxisF1

AllexxisF1

n00b
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
6
Since I moved my desk out of my garage studio and back into the house I needed to change my 7-year-old venerable Coolermaster Corsair II for something smaller. So headed out to MicroCenter and picked up a slick Corsair Carbide case.

It was a crazy moment taking everything out of the case, cleaning, brushing and air blasting these main components. Ever since 1994, I have upgraded my rig, like most of you, pretty much every year until August of 2011. Seven years ago I picked up a new shiny Intel I7 2600K "Sandy Bridge" and have been using it ever since.

I still amazes me that I have kept this venerable trio of Sandy and her MSI Z68A-GD80 board. This core system has seen upgrades and leaps into new technologies. This system saw the major leap into SSD's and multiple generations of it. It's seen WD mechanical drives come and go. It's even seen two new sound cards during that time- a component that usually outlasts more than most. The PSU is still the same, an awesome Antec 1K PSU that has just been rock steady over 7 years.

When it comes to video cards, this long-time marriage of components has seen four generations. Always being able to feed the beast and offer 1080P of gaming goodness with most if not all graphics features enabled. From Battlefield 3 to Skyrim and everything else since.

Sandy also saw VR come to its service with my Occulus Rig- A nice gift from an awesome employer. Still, it holds it's own, just barely beyond the mark of smooth. My Sandy is still going strong not only in gaming and VR, but my Star Wars Livecast via OBS. I built my Star Wars news site with Sandy and the livecast a few years later. Sandy was there when I got into photography with my first DSLR and working with Lightroom.

Now that I'm back in the house with this shiny new home for her, it sort of got all nostalgic and sad. The time for a new rig is here and Sandy will be regulated to a home file server or some mundane service. I could use the new performance of an 8700K or 2700X - I haven't made my mind up yet - for OBS and playing DCS World in VR. Post Scriptum has grabbed my heart in the last couple of weeks, and I could use the performance their too.

It's nice to have components that last and make the investment worthwhile. But on the flip side, it's terrible that CPU performance has been frozen in place for so long. I'm an engineer by trade so I have this affinity for things that last. What's equally surprising is my Microsoft Wheels and Pedals and flight stick that I bought in 2000. Both of which are still working and ticking away.

The Intel branch in Isreal created one of the greatest processors in history. The processor codenamed "Gesher" , which means bridge in Hebrew, did just that. It bridged 7 years of fun and productivity for me and just wanted to post this because I thought you guys would enjoy it.

Sandy's current specs:

Intel i7 2600K Sandy Bridge OC'd 4Ghz-ish.
MSI Z68A-GD80 (B3)
GSkill 16GB DDR 3
Asus Strix Nvidia 970
Soundblaster Z
Antec 1K PSU
Corsair Carbide 275R

rNvhNtZ.jpg


Zuz2hM3.jpg


ZUFpH9d.jpg


BNRP85P.jpg
 
AllexxisF1, Thanks for sharing your rig. I have a very similar story regarding my Sandy Bridge rig. My system in my signature is still going strong and is my primary gaming rig. The biggest change regarding longevity is, of course, the video cards. I'd carried over sli'd 8800GTXs from the previous rig, went to the Radeon 6970 and added GTX260 for physX with the driver hack, and now at my current 980 GTX. SSDs made a big difference in longevity along with the video cards. I recently pulled 3 x 2TB spinners in a Raid0 (i know, living on the edge) to a 2 x 8TB raid 1. The way the market is right now, I don't expect that I'll be moving to a new processor any time soon. AMD is looking really good right now, which takes me back to the good old days of my Thunderbird and then Athlon 64. I lived through the Core2 Duo and the 680i motherboard drama and that dropped me into my 2600k and Asus P8P67 WS Revolution and I haven't regretted it since. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
 
I'm actually in a bind right now trying to figure out my upgrade path. I had myself convinced to move to either the Intel 8700k or Ryzen 2700X but after watching a few YouTube benchmark videos, I'm not so sure. Both videos were benches done with my Intel 2600k Sandy with 1080Ti and the FPS were only 10 FPS difference LOL. Also considering a great piece done by HardOCP a year ago on the same subject, I'm seriously considering getting a 1080Ti instead this round and pushing a new Proc, Mobo and Ram next year.

Because honestly, - and this is an open question for anyone here. If you had $800 to spare today, and if you had my rig, what would you do? Keep in mind this is mostly for games (Post Scriptum, DCS World, BF series, etc.) and Livestreaming my Star Wars news show via OBS at 1080p.

Option 1 - Intel 8700K, Mobo and 16GB Memory

Option 2 - Ryzen 2700X, Mobo and 16GB Memory

Option 3 - Nvidia 1080Ti Graphics card.
 
Maybe split the difference and upgrade to a 2600x (very cool transition from 2600k) and get the 1080? Despite review sites not seeing a difference, I definitely felt a performance improvement going from my 4790k to my 1600x and it was even more noticeable when I went to a 2700x. I do streaming and some video-editing, if you only game, and have nothing else running in the background, their maybe no difference. But I sometimes play PUBG and Fortnite and Overwatch at the same time and it's cool that the 16-threads allow me to run all three game simulaneously. When I die in PUBG, I alt-tab over to Fortnite, then when I die their I alt-tab to OW and play an arcade mode.

Long-short, if you use one program at a time, going to a newer CPU won't net a big diffence. But if you are an extreme multi-tasker, it feels like going from my 2.8Ghz Opteron 165 to my 3.6Ghz Q6600.
 
My 2600K is still going strong also. It's in a full-size NXZT Phantom case and I'm thinking about moving it into a smaller case.
 
I recently did the same thing, but also replaced the mobo with a "less used" and better built version. I have been lusting after some sort of upgrade as well, but I just can't justify one with my usage pattern. My main trepidation is having to change to Windows 10, since 7th and 8th gen do not "support" Win 7. So I am considering the used 6th gen path as well. CPU stagnation has really slowed the upgrade cycle for me, hopefully Zen+ will kick Intel in the butt a little, and get us some innovation.
 
Well, cannot be old like the sandy bridge, but my Ivy Bridge E5 1650v2 on X79 from Dic 2013 still running strong and in my plans I m not going to change it until late 2020 or early 2021, because I want this cores war to unleash all his force with 7nm and Intel 10nm before. For my usage 6c/12t is still plenty and I've not even overclocked the thing, top at 3.7Ghz turbo. now using 1070GTX and latest SSD, and on 64GB RAM it is feels so fast still. Damn !! buy now 64GB RAM alone will cost me more than in 2013!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: mikeo
like this
My 2600k is STILL my main CPU. I built that system with a Sapphire P67 mobo, 8gb (4gb x2) ram, Radeon 6950, 1TB WD drive, Asus DVD burner.

Over the years I added a 120gb SSD, then upgraded the 1TB WD drive to a 4TB WD, and the 120gb SSD to a 1TB SSD.
The DVD burner upgraded to a Blu-ray burner and eventually got rid of optical drives all together.
P67 full ATX mobo upgraded to an Asus Z77 mITX board.
ATI 6950 gave way to a GTX 970, then a GTX 1080.
Ram went from 4GBx2 to 8GBx2

When I got a vive I got the upgrade itch, looking for the best VR experience I realized I could "upgrade" my CPU to an Ivy bridge with a straight swap. Got an awesome deal on a 3770k & Z77 ATX board +32gb DDR3, so now I had enough parts for TWO z77 systems. The "newer" 3770k went into the VR machine in the living room along with a new 1080Ti, and the 2600k into my work machine in the office.

I remember telling myself I'd upgrade as soon as a new CPU could double my 2600k's 4.4ghz Cinebench score (160/750 in R15). 7 years later I've settled on waiting for double the core & thread count. Not looking forward to paying for DDR4 :hungover:
 
I was going to upgrade recently as well to a threadripper 2, but didn't want to give up the single core performance on a OC'd sandy bridge-e 3930k at 4.6. Instead I patched the BIOS to support UEFI booting from an M2 via pcie, got a 970 evo m2, and filled the 4 additional empty ram slots so i'm at 64gb. Plan on getting a rtx 2080 ti and get several more years out of this thing. Might OC it back to 5ghz later on if needed, but really no need when I can run 4.6 with 1.352 vcore 24h prime stable, I've booted it at 5ghz before and it does superpi 1m at 7.54 seconds beating a stock 8600k at 7.78 seconds. I'll probably upgrade when a 16 core chip can beat it on single threaded performance, or if games ever start using more cores. At 4.6 it also still easily beats a stock 8600k in multithreaded cinebench since those don't have HT.
 
Funny cuz I recently put my i7 Ivy (sig) into a new (well, nearly new off ebay) house too (Silverstone FT03B). Probably going Ryzen R5 after Cyberpunk 2077 and/or ddr4 prices drop, whichever comes first.
 
Recently got a Lian Li PC-07S case for my new build. Depending on what it costs, i'll most likely put in a 9900K in it or a TR if too expensive. Have a Titan XP atm, so will wait a while and see if they have a new Titan or such down the road before I decide to upgrade as I'm on a wait and see on the 2080Ti. (Or may wait for the newer refresh) Will definitely go to 32GB ram. Also will put in a AIO cooler. (Corsair most likely) And will keep all my drives.
Currently have a 4930K on a Rampage 4 MB with 32GB ram but my Brother will be getting that. :) He's still using my build from 2011 I sold him..lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top