Should I replace my Q6600 with I3 4150

[Dragster1254]

My Asus P5P41TD LGA 775 Motherboard Just died and I have tracked down a ASUS P5P41T LE Motherboard which is very similar to the P5P41TD or should I just ditch it with a I3 4150 and a Asrock H81M-HDS R2.0

 

[Ecky]

3 years ago I upgraded my wife's Q6600 PC to an i3 4150, and was quite pleased. Power consumption came way down, and performance in games way up. Multithreaded performance was about the same, but single-threaded was worlds different.

When upgrading, I decided to downsize to ITX, and have no regrets.

 

[Dragster1254]

There should be not much bottlenecks with a gtx 950?

 

[Rookie_MIB]

In general a core i3 should not be much of a bottleneck, and going from a LGA 775 based CPU to a LGA 1150 CPU will bring much cooler and quieter operation. Speeds in going from a quad core like the Q6600 to a dual core (hyperthreaded) i3 should be about equivalent, single threaded operations will be much faster, overall performance will be better.

One other big advantage will be upgrading. Should you choose, you can go to a Haswell i5/i7 later on which will be a solid performer for many more years.

 

[Dragster1254]

will there be any issues with the motherboard due to the non-overclocking chipset?

 

[Ecky]

AN i3 4150 is locked anyway, so no point in a Z chipset.

 

[Dragster1254]

So if i would want to upgrade i would have to buy a non K skew CPU ?

 

[Ecky]

To overclock, you need to put a "K" CPU into a "Z" motherboard. If you put an i3 4150 into a Z97 board, you cannot overclock now, but would have the option of putting a "K" CPU in later and overclocking that chip. If you go with something like an H97 board today, you could still put a "K" CPU in later, but you would not be able to overclock it.

Some people buy "K" CPUs even if they don't intend to overclock, because those chips have a higher frequency. The 4790K turbos to 4.4ghz, for instance, and has practically no overclocking headroom, so it might actually make sense to put one into a non-Z motherboard.

 

[Dragster1254]

Thanks !! Going to buy the items tommorrow

 

[Rookie_MIB]

will there be any issues with the motherboard due to the non-overclocking chipset?

As long as you don't waste your money on a K version of a CPU you'll be in good shape. At stock speeds, the Haswell i5/i7 are plenty fast. If you get a non-Z97 motherboard, just get a non-K cpu.

 

[Dragster1254]

Thanks guys i have replaced the q6600 with a i3 4170 as it was about $10 extra