CPU & MOBO Upgrade Choices

[Cheapy]

Reached a point where my unlocked X3 is beginning to show its age and hence im looking for advice again on upgrading the CPU, motherboard and RAM. Couple of ways I can go with this which are below.

RAM wise will be 8Gb (2x 4Gb) of 1600 DDR3 which is about £55.
Also considering swapping my Hyper 212+ for the refurbished Corsair H80 or H100 that Scan are offering. Main worry is the unit leaking and whether any gains in noise or temps over the 212+ are worth the hassle.

Option 1 - Haswell
CPU: i5 4670K £190
MOBO: Asus Z87-A £117 or MSI Z87-G45 £124 or Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H £124
Total: ~£365

Asus seems to have best fan control software but the Gigabyte seems to be the best built board out of the three looking at this chart . Could I get away with say 4 phase VRM and hence a cheaper board?


Option 2 - Sandy Bridge
CPU: i5 3570K £180
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H £77
Total: £312

Aria have had the 3560K for £160 on offer so that could reduce the cost to £292. Not sure if the Z77 boards have as good fan control as the Z87 ones. Gigabyte board seemed best available for a decent price but not as nice as the Z87 ones.


Option 3 - Xeon E3
CPU: Xeon E3 1230 V2 £180
Mobo: ~£60 for a 70 series motherboard
Total: £295

Seems a budget way to get a locked i7 just have to check the MOBO supports it.


Option 4 - AMD FX
CPU: FX6300 £88 or FX 8320 £120
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 £78 or Asus M5A97 Evo R2.0 £81
Total: ~£216 to £260

Seems to either perform the same as the intel chips or worse depending on game and testing set-up but is cheaper. Could also look at the MSI 990FXA-GD65 for £86.


Option 5 - Wait
Does what it says on the tin . Probably wait to see what AMD brings to the table later this year and then go from there.


AMD 6300 build seems the best bang for buck here and should be able to drop in Steamroller later if I want.The 8320 is getting very close to the cost of Sandy Bridge or the Xeon build.
The Xeon and Sandy Bridge are similar costs so for gaming the Sandy Bridge build would be the better choice. Haswell seems way to go but at the highest cost, guess I am being tight .

Computer mainly used for gaming (BF3, Rome TW 2, X3:TC etc.) with some CAD (Solidworks) and matlab/python for uni work.
Will overclock if I can but not looking to go to extremes with it. If you made it this far any input on part suggestions or which way to go is appreciated!

[teppic]

I'd go the FX-6300 route if you want to buy now, or wait. If Steamroller turns out to be brilliant, you can sell the CPU and upgrade and still be paying far less than a Haswell set up.

The Ivy Bridge (not Sandy) route has no upgrade options at all. I wouldn't be keen on that.

[AndyG]

I'd definitely go for the Haswell and the Asus board over the other options, but then that's because the up to £100 difference wouldn't matter - if it does, or you've a fixed budget but would use the savings for a better GPU upgrade, then I might reconsider which to vote for.

You don't say what the machine's used for, or what the other components are, or how long you want to keep this for - that'd help too. (Also hard to guess how old the current machine is, could be it dates from Q1'08-Q1'10 depending on which X3 it is.)

[Phage]

Haswell at the quality end, Xeon for the budget. Cat5th is the expert on those.

[iticu]

I'd go Haswell with the Gigabyte board to be honest

[scaryjim]

I believe the ASRock Extreme4 is a well thought of AM3+ board - grab that plus the FX6300 for my money.

Alternatively, if you don't mind mix & match stores, look at the Biostar TA970 (£53) or ASRock 970 Pro3 (£60) from ebuyer - as far as I know they both have decent 4+1 phase VRMs (the Biostar even has a VRM heatsink!)

[ConnorLowe]

I'd say go with the i5 4670K and the Gigabyte Z87 board

[scaryjim]

I have to say the Haswell just looks like a lot of extra money to me - there are a lot of things you could spend £150 on. Basically, the improvement in performance from an FX6300 to an i5 4670k has to be worth not having that £150 to spend as you please. I know which way I'd go

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't really get the case for the 8320. Compared to 6300 you gain two cores, but for the money it doesn't have enough clock speed, and that clock speed matters for gaming. Some people would say you can get that back with overclocking, but if you want to overclock then you should be getting the better silicon which means 6350 or 8350.

[iticu]

If you want Haswell for the same price of Ivy bridge, why not go with this?

i5-4670k - £180

Gigabyte Z87-HD3- £88
Sure, it's like £10 more expensive but that's worth the price IMO.
The motherboard is pretty much the same spec as the Z77 one you pick out as far as I can tell.

[DeludedGuy]

Personally, I would go down the FX route and use the left over money on something else.

[Noxvayl]

I would go for the AMD FX6300 and Gigabyte motherboard myself. You said you are going to mainly use the machine for gaming so the FX6300 is able to handle all current games and most probably newer ones considering similar cores are going to be the design focus of future games thanks to the AMD hardware in next gen consoles. I also favour the option for a drop in CPU upgrade in the future, it makes more sense to have your motherboard last for more than one CPU purchase.

I like to overclock and was disappointed with the thermal characteristics of Intel's 22nm processors and their choice of TIM instead of flux-less solder. You can still overclock but despite having top quality cooling the processor still got above 80C in IntelBurnTest at stock settings; not much thermal room there even if you can easily get 200-400Mhz more out of the chip. I like to do more tweaks to the system so overclocking on AMD setups is more enjoyable for me because you have the option of using the multiplier and base clock of the motherboard.

So from a future upgrade-ability standpoint, and general value for money, I'd choose the FX6300 setup. It also happens to be the more enjoyable system to overclock in my estimation so I would prefer it for that as well, although I'd choose the FX6350 rather.

[Bonebreaker777]

For quality go for i5-4670k and the Z87-G45.
For budget FX6300.

[DanceswithUnix]

... although I'd choose the FX6350 rather.

To be honest the 6350 would have been my ideal processor, yet somehow I ended up with the 8350. I mean, it is 50% more expensive, has about the same clocks and only 2 more cores that I probably get very little use out of. But hey, I like toys

[Cheapy]

The Ivy Bridge (not Sandy) route has no upgrade options at all. I wouldn't be keen on that.

That was a pretty big slip by me, glad you knew what I meant.

AndyG: Current machine is as per system specs in the drop down box. Computer is mainly for gaming, the current build was 2009 but graphics was updated earlier this year with the intention of upgrading rest this summer. Hoping to get at least another 4 years out of it if not longer.

Phage: Thanks I will have to ask Cat about the Xeon's then.

Scaryjim: I will have a look at the suggested boards.

DanceswithUnix & Noxvayl : I was torn between the 6300 and the 6350, was not sure if the 6350 was worth the extra over the 6300. Then again I could follow Unix and pick the 8350 .

iticu : I was struggling to find any decent reviews on the lower price boards but people seem to be paying them a bit more attention now. Thanks for the suggestion.

DeludedGuy & Bonebreaker777 : Pretty much sums it up.

Looks like the 6300/6350 at the "budget" end and high end would be the Haswell though as Noxvayl said the thermal limits seems to be the biggest limit with Haswell. Xeon is inbewteen but I am leaning towards the 6300/6350 route at the moment.

As for socket upgradability I am a bit dubious about it having thought that an AM3 board might allow me to jump to Bulldozer when I purchased my current build. My main concern about the 6300 is its lack of single threaded performance in games. I am guessing that some like Rome Total War 2 will still be mainly one or two core games which seems its weakness compared to the more expensive intel. Though as pointed out above the trend is towards multiple cores hence the 8320.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you are considering the Xeon E3 1230 V2,the following motherboard would do the trick:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...hdmi-micro-atx

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-down....aspx?pid=4150

However,Ebuyer has this Z68 based motherboard with a free cooler which is cheaper:

http://www.ebuyer.com/276562-gigabyt...rd-ga-z68ap-d3

OTH,it seems to need a BIOS update to work with IB.