[Solved, for now] Looks like I might be doing a new build soon...

[Ttaskmaster]

People are doing that as the 6-core S1366 Xeons are starting to become cheap second-hand. The X58 boards are starting to die though!

Do you think it's not worth doing, then?
People seem to be lapping up the EVGA X58 Classified boards lately and the benchmarks do look quite impressive, but I don't actually know much more about it beyond that...

I only know I'd need a WC loop and a bigger PSU.

[Biscuit]

People are doing that as the 6-core S1366 Xeons are starting to become cheap second-hand. The X58 boards are starting to die though!

I had a quick look, whilst there are some bargains to be made, it doesn't look hugely tempting. Motherboards are extremely scarce.

I have recently bought a £20 S771 Xeon and pin modded it to work on an old nForce 740i mobo though

[shaithis]

It depends on how much you can pick a board and chip up for and how much of a risk your willing to take. X58 boards are not going to get any easier to find.

[ZaO]

I'm trying to look into the Xeon vs i7 thing. I keep thinking that there must be a catch with these, other than not being overclockable or having an onboard gpu.. Some people are saying they're not as good with CF/SLI. I'd love to hear more if anyone could add to this? Anyone know any good gaming benchmarks between i7's and Xeons? I'm looking at the Haswell Xeon's btw. Thanks

[Biscuit]

I'm trying to look into the Xeon vs i7 thing. I keep thinking that there must be a catch with these, other than not being overclockable or having an onboard gpu.. Some people are saying they're not as good with CF/SLI. I'd love to hear more if anyone could add to this? Anyone know any good gaming benchmarks between i7's and Xeons? I'm looking at the Haswell Xeon's btw. Thanks

[Ttaskmaster]

It depends on how much you can pick a board and chip up for and how much of a risk your willing to take. X58 boards are not going to get any easier to find.

When you say the boards are starting to die, do you mean die out and become very scarce, or are so old and heavily used that they are actually karking it?

If the former, then it's not a worry - Aforementioned friend already has a set and is only wanting to mess around with a bit of OCing - Which means I can buy it afterward (cost him £70 for the lot), unless the highly unlikely situation arises where he borks it.

Either way, it'll be better than what I got right now, I'm sure!

[Biscuit]

When you say the boards are starting to die, do you mean die out and become very scarce, or are so old and heavily used that they are actually karking it?

Looking at what's on ebay.... both!

[MrRockliffe]

Last year for part of my course, I had to build a virtual setup, for music production. The build I went with was as follows:

i5 4670
Gigabyte H87 HD3
Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Fanless power supply of some sort
Some fanless GPU etc

I've got Ableton and a 4760K, so if use that software and would like me to time an export of a song, just send me a track with all the samples in it and I can do so, to give you an idea of performance.

I wouldn't change too much, since the 4670 (and presumably 4690) is a great CPU. I've not had any complaints so far, and I run two cores @4.7 GHz because it keeps heat lowers, and most games only take true advantage of two cores anyway.

This is what I'd go for now:

http://prntscr.com/6isd8l

Case is up to you, and graphics card I left because of what AMD could potentially release.

The only reason I didn't go Xeon, is because the i5 will be better for gaming simply because of overclockability.

[ZaO]

Last year for part of my course, I had to build a virtual setup, for music production. The build I went with was as follows:

i5 4670
Gigabyte H87 HD3
Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Fanless power supply of some sort
Some fanless GPU etc

I've got Ableton and a 4760K, so if use that software and would like me to time an export of a song, just send me a track with all the samples in it and I can do so, to give you an idea of performance.

I wouldn't change too much, since the 4670 (and presumably 4690) is a great CPU. I've not had any complaints so far, and I run two cores @4.7 GHz because it keeps heat lowers, and most games only take true advantage of two cores anyway.

This is what I'd go for now:

http://prntscr.com/6isd8l

Case is up to you, and graphics card I left because of what AMD could potentially release.

The only reason I didn't go Xeon, is because the i5 will be better for gaming simply because of overclockability.

Hey thanks. It's cool though. The music production part was pretty much irrelevant to my build (I will edit my opening post to remove that bit). I'm just building a gaming pc, which will also be used for music production. I can handle a bit of a ambient noise no probs. I'll just make sure I get good coolers on the components and case

[MrRockliffe]

In that case 100% 4690k or if budget allows, 4790K. Games prefer higher clocked quad cores rather than lower clocked 6cores+ (as you probably know).

What is your budget by the way? (sorry if I missed it)

[ZaO]

In that case 100% 4690k or if budget allows, 4790K. Games prefer higher clocked quad cores rather than lower clocked 6cores+ (as you probably know).

What is your budget by the way? (sorry if I missed it)

Yeh, 4690K looks like the choice for a gaming cpu really. It's about £90 cheaper than the 4790K, also. But I would quite like to have the hyperthreading (or 8 cores). Whatever I build, I'll end up using it for at least a couple years. Star Citizen is supposed to support hyper threading, so that's another reason on the gaming side to consider the 4790K. I feel almost decided on the 4790K right now tbh.. It's mainly a case of whether the Skylake cpu's will be released within the next couple of months so I can see how things and prices look then. But after looking around, it seems they might be delaying them until around August/Spetember time. And I'm going to be building sooner than that, of course.

I don't have an exact budget yet. But I feel like the 4790K will maybe be pushing it too far seeing as I'm literally doing a whole new build this time round. I just don't want any regrets with my cpu choice. I've got to sell a few things to make up the money for this build. Hopefully I can get all the bits I really want

So with that said, I think I can probably leave things there and make a choice on the cpu now. Though I might end up having second thoughts and asking questions again lol...

Thanks guys!

[MrRockliffe]

To make sure you're happy, save until you can buy EXACTLY what you want, otherwise I guarantee you'll end up changing it sooner than anticipated.

[chrisFletcher]

Build now, just do it.
Always something better around!

[ZaO]

To make sure you're happy, save until you can buy EXACTLY what you want, otherwise I guarantee you'll end up changing it sooner than anticipated.

Build now, just do it.
Always something better around!

Thanks guys. Well, I don't have all the money just yet. It's looking like it's going to be very difficult to make the standard of build that I want. I am still holding out, hoping for Amd and Intel to release some new hardware soon, so that I can hopefully pick up some current stuff for a bit cheaper. But I will be posting another thread within the next month or so, once it gets closer to buying time

[chrisFletcher]

Thanks guys. Well, I don't have all the money just yet. It's looking like it's going to be very difficult to make the standard of build that I want. I am still holding out, hoping for Amd and Intel to release some new hardware soon, so that I can hopefully pick up some current stuff for a bit cheaper. But I will be posting another thread within the next month or so, once it gets closer to buying time

I'm not sure you'll find that the current stuff will get much cheaper, although you might be able to pickup a couple of bargains. In my experience companies tend to introduce replacement products at the same price points as previous products (they just suddenly go out of stock).
On the upside though the mid-end becomes the low end so you can build a PC with the same performance for less. You just have to make sure that your expectations don't go up over time also!