Going to SandyB - IvyB for OC

Hello folks !

For those who knows me : OKAY ! I surrender.

Well, for some reasons (winter is coming, Arma3...) i may buy a quite cheap rig with SB or IB

The facts are : holy S*** so much cpu/motherB on the market !!

I read some info on the net, and it seems i may go with those :

Socket 1155 :

i5 2500K (110€)

i7 2600K (150€)

i7 2700K (160€) (think i'm going with this right now)

OEM so basically need fans and heat sink... Mostly low stocks in retails today.

i7 3770K (260€)

Mobo :

Asus P8Z77... admitting i don't know nothing about thses boards. don't want a bad surprise.

GPU :

Asus GTX 660 DCU II TOP (200€) (nice and quiet)

PSU :

something around 700W i guess?

----------------

My goal :

Run DCS BS2, in high settings (and i mean it), in 1920x1200 or 3840x1200

with skhval ON, over a large city, with a huge battle going on.

OverClocking admitted and intended by the way.

Nuclear Power Feeded, i don't care about greenpeace. anyway, we will mine the moon soon enough for helium-3 :smartass:

Moreover, i'm already about 500W idle and 700W in charge with current rig.

Right now, in medium i'm at 10FPS, and low settings 18FPS, CPU bounded.

What i don't want :

Liquid Cooled system

700€+ rig

Haswell UltraBook 10W processor for facebook. (nice screwing intel, thanks !)

ED thinking they made a great source-code.:smilewink:

So ? can you give me some advices?

My GF can't wait to inherit my Xeons (for GW2 :cry::cry::cry::cry: )

Given the prices there I do feel the i7-2700K or i5-2500K are probably the best value, though the i7-3770K does offer PCIe3 - not strictly relevant right now, but possibly nice for future-proofing.

P8Z77 mobos are pretty good, though which exact version is it you are looking at? There's a lot of them.

700 watts sounds good for the PSU, though you really do want to make sure you get a good one. The added expense of a highly efficient one (80+ Silver or 80+ Gold) can usually be made back on the electricity bill quite easily over the lifetime of the unit - Corsair AX series models can, for example, be had with 7 years of warranty, meaning they can easiuly be re-used. I'm personally very happy with my AX850w.

That 660, is it a 660 or a 660Ti?

Ok EtheralN, i'm taking in your advices. thanks.

Clarifications :

- Actually tests always showing understressed PCI 2.0

As long as the gaming maket will be led by crappy consoles, better save $ for this. So 2700K i7 has a great chance to win here.

- Mobo.. a long story. I want something which easily allow OC and tweaks.

the case-size doesn't matter. they all have at least 2PCI and some S-ATA 3/ usb 3. even 2 ram slot would be sufficient (2x8Gb)

- PSU : AX850 is roughly 150€, think it's a bit overpriced for future proof.

- GPU : 660 DirectCU II TOP. (Overclocked 2Gb Vram @200€)

the 660 Ti DirectCU TOP adds 80€, and gains 1fps in most games.

Not TOP version is stock Mhz and i don't like stock MHz ;)

My next move will probably be another MacPro with Broadwell or Skylake, depends if intel stops kidding with high-end users and if the MacPro Line still exists. Probably sell or give this rig when the time comes.

My very concerns are right now options on Mobos (heard Asus auto-voltage sucks, and i'm not wedded with them), and 70-80€ PSU.

thanks for the help EtheralN

Oh by the way, in my first post, i should add :

Huge battle... and a bad dynamic weather :)

As mobo, why not Gigabyte's P-67A-ud3-B3? Good quality (I'm torturing one without any problem) and not too expensive...

An option like an other

Yup or an ASROCK Extreme 4, having said that I use a P8Z77 V Pro and it's a nice stable mobo. I'd recommend Gigabyte but I didn't like their choice of VIA audio chip on most of their Z77 boards.

I had a Z77 D3H and it was great, cheap motherboard. It booted quicker than my ASUS, although my V Pro board has a really nice low DPC latency which helps for audio, but it has a VT2021 VIA chip and I didn't like it and it didn't work as expected.

Probably a dodgy board so maybe you could give it a shot? Certainly for me, when looking for a good performing and fairly inexpensive board, it came down to that being a great budget buy.

I went for the ASUS due to it using a different onboard chip and was reviewed to be a great board for DPC latency and overclocking. Although a bit extra I'm glad I got it.

If I was to buy again and the D3H had worked as expected I'd easily recommend it. There are other similar versions that I didn't check out all that much, D3HX or summit can't remember.. I'd also give the ASROCK a shot but although I hear nothing but good reviews I kinda suspect underdog sorta status where the praise is heaped slightly more...enthusiastically? than need be.

I've heard reports that it feels slightly flimsy but not much worse than that, other than all the usual problems you always hear about with certain

users their PC builds and subsequent manufacturers of the parts used...

One thing I will say, although 850W might be overkill, I know it is for me after having an HX850W PSU, I'm pleased I got a high quality PSU and for the last 10 years of building have always maintained that it is one, if not the most important parts of your build.

GPU wise I'd probably stump up a bit more cash and go for a 2 or 4GB (depending on your resolution and monitor/s) GTX670 card. The EVGA FTW cards would be my choice. I wanted one but couldn't 'step up' to the FTW version at the time so went for the reference design 670, which is a great card. Step up is EVGA's way of allowing you to upgrade to a newer card and only pay the difference, all having to be done within 90 days. Their support is exceptional and their warranty is extensive.

If you aren't doing a lot of audio/video rendering work then I really think Hyper Threading is a bit of a waste of money. If you do, then great. For me I managed to test my typical audio work load on my current i3570K compared to the same project run on an i7 2600K and I really couldn't tell any difference, using Cubase/Nuendo. in fact my system felt snappier....but then I would say that! Differing software may make better use, of course, but for a gaming system, especialy with DCS? No.

You can overclock non K versions o these i5/i7 chips, albeit not as far as you maybe can with SB/IVB and bear in mind that IVB do run a hotter than SB chips but either way you'll want a good cooler, lots out there so if you need advice I'd come back and let you know a few I've been looking at, hydro coolers don't do it for me, though, so if you want one o those....

All reasons why you want a good quality and stable/efficient PSU so don't skimp on your choice here.

All right, thank you for thoses advices !

I'm just coming back from the shop. i've bought :

I7 3770k BOX 270€

Gigabyte z77 D3H 92€

Asus GTX 670 DCUII 375€

2x4 kingston hyperX predator 2400 60€

a 750W PSU coolermaster or so, i don't remember ;) 90€

What missing.. An ATX case... LOL

i've tried salvaging old PC case, but the MoBo is too fat to fit !!

I'm just coming back from work, played with Xeon Westmere dual CPU all night ;)

Time to sleep, and dream everything's gonna be allright.

PS : no, i'm not selling my Xeons ;)

Thanks ! See you around

Enforce, Any update on your I7 3770K and the DCS performance? Heat? OC?

Any else gone for the 3770K or even the 3770 standard? I'm just about to order a new rig.

Jack

Hello,

I have a 3770k @ 4.6 ghz. I possibly get more FPS than anyone else I have seen, for whatever reason...

I'll piggyback into this thread .

Guys what is your opinion: is ivyB i5 3750 upgrade from SB i5 2500k ? Basically I might have a possibility to trade in my current platform and playing with he idea.

Unfortunately, i'm very new to PC Kit. would gave you advices happily on Xeons systems though :)

But what i can remember from all discussions around the web (and Here OFC):

- IvyB is 5-10% faster than SandyB at same speed.

- SandyB can over clock greater than ivy bridge, thus annihilating the speed difference.

- Pci3x is not relevant right now. thank you Xbox/PS3/PS4

- Sata3... meh.. it's cool for benchmarking ultra-compressed files atm.

- Socket 1155 is dying. socket 2011 is freaking expensive for extreme versions and Xeons (?)

- No real High power CPU haswell Roadmap (socket 1150), high doubts upon AVX-2 supports.

My personal advice : if you want to stick with your CPU a long time, maybe you should consider i7 ivy. not i5.

DCS put apart, i see more and more games using using 4 threads at 100%. (R.A.G.E. for example)

If it's simple trading without more cashing, i'd say why not ??

If EtheralN speaks here, take his words like a Guru. (unless water-cooling :D )

Hope i cleared the haze a little more.

I'll piggyback into this thread .

Guys what is your opinion: is ivyB i5 3750 upgrade from SB i5 2500k ? Basically I might have a possibility to trade in my current platform and playing with he idea.

I wouldn't bother with that change i5 2500k is good enough...for now and i5 3750 wouldn't be much of an upgrade especially as you can overclock the 2500k easily