Old system glitching up, may need new build soon (Q1 2017)

[Pilotasso]

So, my I5 2500K is finally showing its age.

After almost 6 years running without a hitch I started periodically having blue screens or freezes, for which I tried to fix in the BIOS by changing some stability options.

Then last week it wouldn't finish booting up with artefacts showing up on OS loading screen and sticking there. So I disassembled it completely, cleaned the dust and put it back together. It booted up albeit with lots of hiccups along the way. It now starts somewhat normally but the frequency of the glitches leads me to believe they are accelerating eventually leading to its inevitable death.

 

So...

Time for a new build. Trouble is, Kaby lake and Zen are just around the corner and given the poor IPC improvements in the last 5 years I need to squeeze as much upgrade as I can by waiting for them to make a decision which one I will take then.

 

 

So, considering I will make a new build for the next 6 years this is the guideline for the new system:

 

-GFX: Likely will maintain my GTX970 and have it replaced when a new generation is released (I don't do upgrades in consecutive generations ever).

-MOBO: not yet unveiled, it must support strong overclock abilities but do not want a $300+ plus monster (not going for quad SLI/crossfire thus I do not need to pay the premium for bandwidth on multiple PCI-E ports), likely from ASUS or Gigabyte

-RAM: 32 or 64 GB of DDR4 depends how much money is left after buying the other components

-CPU: Kaby lake, Zen FX edition (8 core) or Skylake-E, definitely want single core performance first, core count second.

-Cooler: May keep the original If I choose Zen, they said it will be excellent, or an Corsair H80 if I go Intel.

-Case: more or less decided on the Corsair Obsidian 750D airflow edition.

-Storage: May byte the bullet for a 2GB SSD+8GB HDD

-Drives: a single Blu-Ray writer

 

usage: playing DCS, MWO, star citizen and run my monstrous excel files I use for work that take 15 minutes to process on my current build.

[PureEvil]

tried booting without hdd/ssd?

[Pilotasso]

I suspect it is the MOBO as I could not isolate the problem by changing the storage, RAM (still have the old 4GB sticks) or the GFX. Any major component craping out will trigger the new build. Theres so much upgrades I could do on an old system that will be worth the money.

[BitMaster]

TBH, I'd go for the 4790k Devil's Canyon CPU, such keep the RAM and GPU and you are off with a good mobo and CPU to buy.

 

From the tests I have read, that CPU is the single core benchmark to beat, per Hertz it's the best and if you get a good sample you might get to 4.8 as some others in here, that is max single core to aim for imho.

 

Newer and more cores may make sense if you have other high end apps that need that power,

other than that, 4790k !

 

 

edit

*you def. need a better H2O cooler than a AIO H60 to tickle any other but a SandyBridge real high cuz of their inferior IHS compared to the SandyBridge series.

Edited September 19, 2016 by BitMaster