i7 930... Is it time for an upgrade to Skylake?

[Headly]

Hey guys,
So 5 or 6 years ago I built an i7 930 rig. Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Mobo, 12GB DDR3, GTX 550Ti, with the CPU OC'd to 3.5 Ghz. I added a Samsung EVO840 SSD later down the track.

I don't do a lot of new title gaming, but I do a lot of audio production with ProTools. As My sessions get larger and larger my CPU starts to struggle and I get playback errors as the 930 bottlenecks.

So it's time to have a big upgrade again and I'm thinking I'll go down the Skylake path. i7-6700k CPU, Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Mobo, 16GB DDR4, Samsung 850 Pro SSD and a Nepton 240M Liquid Cooler.

What do you guys think? Is this a smart move? Any recommendations? Cheers!

 

[Speedstang]

Hey guys,
So 5 or 6 years ago I built an i7 930 rig. Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Mobo, 12GB DDR3, GTX 550Ti, with the CPU OC'd to 3.5 Ghz. I added a Samsung EVO840 SSD later down the track.

I don't do a lot of new title gaming, but I do a lot of audio production with ProTools. As My sessions get larger and larger my CPU starts to struggle and I get playback errors as the 930 bottlenecks.

So it's time to have a big upgrade again and I'm thinking I'll go down the Skylake path. i7-6700k CPU, Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Mobo, 16GB DDR4, Samsung 850 Pro SSD and a Nepton 240M Liquid Cooler.

What do you guys think? Is this a smart move? Any recommendations? Cheers!

I think it'd be better to wait for more Skylake CPU's to release, these current two they gave us are very expensive and not the most powerful, they are beaten out by a lot of Haswell/Broadwell CPu's.

 

[HEXiT]

for what your doing yes. if you were just gaming i would say stick with it and just upgrade the gpu.

 

[Guest]

Hey guys,
So 5 or 6 years ago I built an i7 930 rig. Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Mobo, 12GB DDR3, GTX 550Ti, with the CPU OC'd to 3.5 Ghz. I added a Samsung EVO840 SSD later down the track.

I don't do a lot of new title gaming, but I do a lot of audio production with ProTools. As My sessions get larger and larger my CPU starts to struggle and I get playback errors as the 930 bottlenecks.

So it's time to have a big upgrade again and I'm thinking I'll go down the Skylake path. i7-6700k CPU, Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Mobo, 16GB DDR4, Samsung 850 Pro SSD and a Nepton 240M Liquid Cooler.

What do you guys think? Is this a smart move? Any recommendations? Cheers!

Well, I'm in the same position as you are in that I have a 2009 model Dell XPS with a first generation i7 940 cpu and with 6GB of DDR3, GTX 650 Ti and a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD. The video card and SSD were both upgrades I made to improve game play and speed, of course.

For me the question is whether I want the i7 6700k or the i7 5930k. Both require new motherboards and DDR4 RAM, and while the i7 6700k would be a great replacement and cost less, the i7 5930k is more powerful but costs more.

Because I keep my computer for several years and use it daily (I'm retired) I plan to go with the i7 5930k. It has the cores and power to handle my chess software (actually my chess software will use as many cores as I can throw at it but an i7 5960x is really more than I need for the extra $500 that it would cost for just 2 more cores and how often I use that software).

I don't know about audio production and what that might require from your cpu, but more cores might help if your ProTools software can take advantage of them, like Adobe's Photoshop can do. Too, if you do any video editing or plan to in the future at all, the power of the Haswell-e line of processors (i7 5820k, 5930k, 5960x) makes that task much faster to do. And, since it seems you might have your computer for a long time, having more power now might benefit you for a long time, as well... until your next upgrade five or six years from now. Besides, the i7 5820k, the cheapest Haswell-e processor is selling for only about $20 more than an i7 6700k, and has 6 cores. A Haswell-e motherboard will cost more, however. But again, you might want to consider time of use vs cost. Paying a little more might be better now for the long run.

Something to think about anyway, as this is the time to weigh your choices. If I wasn't interested in evaluating chess games for better play I would go i7 6700k in a heartbeat. It's the best 4 core/ 8 thread cpu out there at the moment, and the new motherboards for it offer great features. I wouldn't upgrade from a relative new system, such as an i7 4790k, for example, but your system (I really mean cpu/motherboard) is like mine - OLD by today's standards! lol

Here's a Tom's Hardware article about the i7 6700k you might be interested in:
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2752766/skylake-upgrade.html