GA-H97M-Gaming & i7-4790K ???

[GiulianoR]

Hello All!

I´m planning to upgrade my processor to an i7-4790K and this is my current setup:

Intel i5 4440 3.1GHz
Corsair Hidro Series H60‎
Gigabyte GA-H97M-GAMING 3 LGA
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming
Kingston SSD 120GB & Seagate SATA III Barracuda 1TB
Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600 MHz
Corsair CX 750W

Its a gaming PC and my doubt is: Can I stay with my H97M mobo or should I upgrade it as well ?

I do not plan extreme overclocks, since 4.4GHz (turbo) might be enough for me. Maybe push a little bit, like 4.6/4.7GHz but I'd avoid OC at the first moment.

IF I have to upgrade my mobo I was thinking to get an ASUS Z97M-PLUS with 16GB G.skill Trident 2400MHz, but as you can imagine mobo+RAM would add up another USD 300 on top of the i7-4790K which I´m already going to buy.

I have no doubts that i7-4790K + Z97M-PLUS + 16GB 2400MHz would be a really great setup, but in my case if the difference on performance is not HUGE I'd like to save USD 300 and keep the H97M.

What you guys think?

 

[shortstuff_mt]

The i7-4790K is on the official CPU support list for the motherboard as long as it has BIOS revision F2.

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=5000

You will not notice much difference between the i7 and i5 speed if this is mostly a gaming system. You also don't have the option to overclock with the H97 chipset. What is the system not doing well that prompted the want for an upgrade?

 

[GiulianoR]

The i7-4790K is on the official CPU support list for the motherboard as long as it has BIOS revision F2.

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=5000

You will not notice much difference between the i7 and i5 speed if this is mostly a gaming system. You also don't have the option to overclock with the H97 chipset. What is the system not doing well that prompted the want for an upgrade?

Cool, I'm already running revision F3.
My thought was, from 3.3 GHz to 4.4 GHz its a big step and this could give me extra room for the games that I play (DayZ/ARMA III), which are very BADLY optimized and do not use the full potential of the GPU. Its more processor driven.

At my BIOS version (F3) has something related to OC. You can check some screens here: http://www.clubedohardware.com.br/artigos/Placa-mae-Gigabyte-H97M-Gaming-3/3077/6

I know I can't overclock my current i5 4440, but I thought if I had the i7-4790K I could do it since it seems that this mobo has some sort of OC feature there....

 

[Alectfenrir]

Since you have a H chipset board, the H97 is non-overclockable. Yes the CPU will fit into the motherboard but you cannot overclock it because the motherboard is not capable to do so.

If you want an i7 4790k, I would suggest you getting yourself an Z97 motherboard (allows you to overclock it). Otherwise stick to your 4440, which in itself is already a good processor.