Time to upgrade my i7 920 £500 budget

[Ciber]

I got my i7 920 over 7 years ago now and my motherboard chipset doesn't have windows 10 drivers, so I want to upgrade CPU, mobo and probably new RAM as well. My system drive is an SSD but not that new so I want to upgrade that as well. Please rate and advise on my build! I'm wantin spend £500. I sue it for general gaming, plus some amateur photo and video editing.


Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
£199.99

Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler
£56.90

Gigabyte GA-Z170-Gaming K3-EU ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory
£51.99

Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
£118.46

My existing GTX960 should be fine for now.

2 New 120mm case fans?

[Bonebreaker777]

When you say your motherboard doesn't have any Windows 10 drivers, you assume it or have you checked the manufacturers website or you actually tried to install Windows 10?

Otherwise the build seems to be pretty solid.

[Ciber]

When you say your motherboard doesn't have any Windows 10 drivers, you assume it or have you checked the manufacturers website or you actually tried to install Windows 10?

I checked on the Asus website for the board and there have been no new drivers for years. When I checked on the intel site for drivers for the chipset, that is long out of support. I googled it and found some people saying they had weird glitches with that board on windows 10, possibly driver related.

[wazzickle]

You can do better for the same price on your DDR4 here http://forums.hexus.net/retail-thera...ml#post3631028

Can't see anything wrong with your build

[Ciber]

You can do better for the same price on your DDR4 here http://forums.hexus.net/retail-thera...ml#post3631028

Can't see anything wrong with your build

That's faster RAM as well, thanks!

I have been considering a Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2 SSD but that might not give any noticeable real world benefit? http://www.ebuyer.com/725818-samsung...sd-mz-v5p512bw

BTW, my budget is loosely £500. I'm willing to spend more if something will give a good real world benefit.

Is the cooler I've chosen a good one? I just chose one with a low noise rating. I have a noctua cooler on my i7 920 but I don't know if that can be adapted, plus I would want to put new fans on it, plus it's probably full of dust! I mostly want it to be very quiet more than getting the maximum overclock.

[malfunction]

I checked on the Asus website for the board and there have been no new drivers for years. When I checked on the intel site for drivers for the chipset, that is long out of support. I googled it and found some people saying they had weird glitches with that board on windows 10, possibly driver related.

For what it's worth I don't have any issues with either of my socket 1366 Windows 10 systems. I did have issues with my daft gigabyte sniper board at first but that was caused by the killer NIC and soundblaster drivers. I turned off the killer NIC in the BIOS (replaced with a discrete Intel based NIC) and only the initial builds of W10 had issues with my on board soundblaster chip. My other socket 1366 is an Asus Rampage Gene II and that's been fine since day 1 apart from a cold boot issue (sometimes it fails to POST, but a quick tap of the reset button and it always works 2nd time) but that's nothing to do with Windows and might be because I'm using a later 32nm Xeon chip (Westmere EP) rather than an i7.

Oh and I'm using the default Windows 10 drivers - I haven't bothered installing any specific drivers for the chipset.

[wazzickle]

That's faster RAM as well, thanks!

I have been considering a Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2 SSD but that might not give any noticeable real world benefit? http://www.ebuyer.com/725818-samsung...sd-mz-v5p512bw

When I was researching my latest build I came to the conclusion there was little real world benefit between the 850 evo, 950 pro and sm951, for enthusiasts and benchmarkers it will improve but I didn't bother.

[Ciber]

For what it's worth I don't have any issues with either of my socket 1366 Windows 10 systems. I did have issues with my daft gigabyte sniper board at first but that was caused by the killer NIC and soundblaster drivers. I turned off the killer NIC in the BIOS (replaced with a discrete Intel based NIC) and only the initial builds of W10 had issues with my on board soundblaster chip. My other socket 1366 is an Asus Rampage Gene II and that's been fine since day 1 apart from a cold boot issue (sometimes it fails to POST, but a quick tap of the reset button and it always works 2nd time) but that's nothing to do with Windows and might be because I'm using a later 45nm Xeon chip rather than an i7.

I'm somewhat put off getting a mobo with killer NIC by that! The other thing with my old mobo/cpu is that I have had to reduce the overclock several times over the years to get it to boot. IIRC I had a stable everyday clock of 3.6 when I first set it up but now it won't boot over 3.2. So I feel like it's time for new hardware that will work all the time with up to date drivers etc..

When I was researching my latest build I came to the conclusion there was little real world benefit between the 850 evo, 950 pro and sm951, for enthusiasts and benchmarkers it will improve but I didn't bother.

Good point. Reading your build makes me wonder if I can do a silent gaming build? My GPU is silent under light loads so can my CPU be fanless?

[malfunction]

I'm somewhat put off getting a mobo with killer NIC by that! The other thing with my old mobo/cpu is that I have had to reduce the overclock several times over the years to get it to boot. IIRC I had a stable everyday clock of 3.6 when I first set it up but now it won't boot over 3.2. So I feel like it's time for new hardware that will work all the time with up to date drivers etc..

They've changed to different (off the shelf) chips with different drivers now - and I think you can just use the generic Qualcomm / Atheros drivers for them rather than the wizzy 'gaming' ones - you definitely don't need to use their network manager (which used to be god awful) so it probably isn't anywhere near as bad as it was, though I reckon it's still mostly marketing, just like almost anything else with "gamer" tagged onto it.

Edit - more info here: http://techreport.com/review/29144/r...eight-years-on

[Hoonigan]

The processor and motherboard are what I purchased a month ago.. Really happy with it! The motherboard comes with a built in overclocking profile for this CPU - Straight up to 4.5GHz without any messing.
I purchased 16GB of Corsair DDR4 3000MHz to go with it.

I think you'll be happy with it all

[Ciber]

The processor and motherboard are what I purchased a month ago.. Really happy with it! The motherboard comes with a built in overclocking profile for this CPU - Straight up to 4.5GHz without any messing.
I purchased 16GB of Corsair DDR4 3000MHz to go with it.

I think you'll be happy with it all

Thanks. I read your thread before starting mine. Do I need DDR4 3000 to get that overclock?

Is the cooler a good one? I want it to be quiet but I'm not keen on water cooling.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would probably stick with what you have for now - at the end of the year both AMD Zen and Kaby Lake will be out,so hoping there should be some decent pricing at that point.

[Kanoe]

To go a little left field (and more help to the photo / video editing you mentioned) have you thought about building a system around a used Xeon E5-2670 (Socket 2011)? 8 core, 16 thread and currently going for around £75 for server pulled chips on the bay.

[malfunction]

To go a little left field (and more help to the photo / video editing you mentioned) have you thought about building a system around a used Xeon E5-2670 (Socket 2011)? 8 core, 16 thread and currently going for around £75 for server pulled chips on the bay.

I must not buy more old Xeons. I must not buy more old Xeons. I must not buy more old Xeons.

(especially when I don't really need the core count)

[Spreadie]

I recently upgraded to Skylake, after deciding it wasn't worth paying a premium to replace a dead Ivy Bridge motherboard.

I went for a SM951 M.2 SSD purely because it means two fewer cables inside the chassis. However, I can't say there's much of a performance improvement over a standard Sata3 SSD in day to day use - other than when transferring files internally - despite boasting read/write speeds of 2150/1260MBs. Still, I thought in for penny.. I'm doing a major upgrade, why not?

[Hoonigan]

Thanks. I read your thread before starting mine. Do I need DDR4 3000 to get that overclock?

Is the cooler a good one? I want it to be quiet but I'm not keen on water cooling.

No, I don't think the RAM has any influence on the overclock of the CPU, they're controlled separately now.

I got a Corsair H75 with this, works a treat! Nothing over 55'C yet.