Upgrading a 4-yr old setup (i5-3570K, etc.). Could use some advice

[the_jiveman]

I have a 4-yr old system that's due for an upgrade. However, some components have been upgraded in the meantime. Currently running on i5-3570K, AsRock Z77 Extreme6, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD, and Radeon R9 380 4GB, 600 W PSU. The SSD and the GPU were upgraded last year (to the ones listed), but everything else is 4-yr old.

Definitely want to upgrade at least CPU, Mobo, and RAM. Keeping the case and PSU (if i can get away with it).

Thinking about i7-6700 (non-K) and 16GB RAM as the focus of my upgrade. Not sure if I need to upgrade the GPU since I don't game that much these days (but I occasionally do).

Also, I have a Cooler Master 212 Plus CPU cooler which I love for its low noise. Can I reuse that with the new CPU (and replace the thermal paste as needed), or is it advisable to replace it even if it works fine?

Appreciate any advice I can get from the community. Thanks!

 

[Multipack]

Your cooler will be fine, and if you use your system for more CPU intensive tasks and less for gaming then an i7 6700 would be great. Anything above an i5 6600k is a bit overkill for gaming, and may be enough depending on your needs. A 600w PSU is fine in theory but it depends what model it is too, as you want a reliable one. Budget is the biggest factor in what to choose.

 

[Poozle]

Keep the cooler, Why would you not pay 20$ more for overclocking (which cant hurt for future proofing) and the GPU is fine for another year or 3. When you upgrade, you will need new RAM. Get 16gb for sure. A 650 or 600W gold rated by evga or corsair will be wonderful, if not bronze form them is fine You can PROBABLY keep yours. New thermal paste, amazon has some with quick shipping. Arctic MX-4 I reccomend.

 

[tsnor]

UPDATE: my bad, I assumed gaming when you clearly said this: "Thinking about i7-6700 (non-K) and 16GB RAM as the focus of my upgrade. Not sure if I need to upgrade the GPU since I don't game that much these days (but I occasionally do). "

What will you use the system for? The i7-6700 will be much faster at folding, CPU rendering, multi-cpu enabled photo editing, etc.

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you sure you want to upgrade MB, CPU and memory for a 15-20% performance bump?
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-6600K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-3570K/3503vs1316

Your current CPU / MB / Memory look pretty good.

If you've got the upgrade itch, consider multi-monitor and higher res video. You can see a 2X difference or more.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1080-vs-AMD-R9-380/3603vs3482 You will not see a difference at 1080P, at higher res the 1080 will kill the r9 380.
ditto 1070: http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1070-vs-AMD-R9-380/3609vs3482

 

[the_jiveman]

Thanks for the replies. @tsnor, to answer your question, I do some software development at home these days on the side, so I run a dev VM in VirtualBox lately, and I find that I could use some gains from more RAM and probably a better CPU. So hence the thinking of going more towards an i7 due to hyperthreading support. However, since this is my home system used for pretty much everything, I do occasionally fire up something like Witcher 3 (most recently), so I'd like it to run/look decently, which is why I have an R9 380 GPU in the system at the moment.

Since my post above, I've also considered another alternative. Just upgrading from i5 3570K to i7 3770 (perhaps a used one, even) and getting another couple of sticks of RAM to have total of 16 GB. Then maybe next year after Kaby Lake and whatnot, I might consider a larger upgrade.

 

[tsnor]

Thanks for the replies. @tsnor, to answer your question, I do some software development at home these days on the side, so I run a dev VM in VirtualBox lately, and I find that I could use some gains from more RAM and probably a better CPU. So hence the thinking of going more towards an i7 due to hyperthreading support. However, since this is my home system used for pretty much everything, I do occasionally fire up something like Witcher 3 (most recently), so I'd like it to run/look decently, which is why I have an R9 380 GPU in the system at the moment.

Since my post above, I've also considered another alternative. Just upgrading from i5 3570K to i7 3770 (perhaps a used one, even) and getting another couple of sticks of RAM to have total of 16 GB. Then maybe next year after Kaby Lake and whatnot, I might consider a larger upgrade.

Makes sense. Likely you've looked at Windows Resource Monitor to see if you are getting close to using the 8gb you have. Any memory you buy now is throw away, your next system will use DDR4. But memory is cheap, and if your software can use it buy it.

Consider also the Intel Xeon E3-1240 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 77W BX80637E31245V2 Server Processor . It fits in your socket too, just verify it in your MB's supported processor list and was a good bit cheaper at one time than an i7. No integrated video.

 

[the_jiveman]

Good point. Someone else recommended I consider a Xeon, as well. Looks like my mobo (Asrock Z77 Extreme6) supports it. Definitely wouldn't need integrated video in my case, so it would be fine not getting that feature.

 

[tsnor]

Good point. Someone else recommended I consider a Xeon, as well. Looks like my mobo (Asrock Z77 Extreme6) supports it. Definitely wouldn't need integrated video in my case, so it would be fine not getting that feature.

Think you have a good plan. I have purchased used CPUs and done fine off ebay. I would not purchase a used K sku out of fear that someone really pushed the voltage to see how high they could get the CPU to overclock, so I think your approach of looking for an i7 3770 (not K) makes a lot of sense. Alternative is $60 MB, $315 i7-6770, $85 2x 8GB ddr4 = $460.

I think stock cooler for i5-3570K was the same as the cooler for i7-3770. If you plan to use the extra processing in the i7 for sustained periods of time consider spending the money for a CPU cooler. Likely you will be able to carry it forward to another build. I use one of the coolmaster Hyper 212 varients on one PC and like it.

I got curious on price.

The S and T models both are low power, lower frequency. With your MB OC settings you may be able to set them to run all cores at their max turbo speed, 3.9ghz for s and 3.7 for T which is the same speed as the i7-3770 (3.4, 3.9 turbo). The 3770S and 3770T have ebay listing with bids of $50, no idea if these bids rise to $150 before selling.

xeon "new in open box" is $150, http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1240-v2-8M-Cache-3-40-GHz-686684-001-SR0P5-/272484798434?hash=item3f715c0fe2:g:5ucAAOSw44BYUF9f

i7-3770 seems to be $150-200 used in ebay..

 

[the_jiveman]

@tsnor, I am actually using a Cooler Master 212 Plus (as mentioned in my OP), which I was hoping to simply remove and reuse with a new CPU. But yeah, I agree with your point there.

Regarding CPUs, though... So, I was a little surprised to find these benchmark differences sort of unremarkable. The 3770 doesn't seem to have anything on 3570K other than more threads of course. In fact 3570K shows better speed ranking, if I'm reading this correctly:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3770/1316vs1979

And Xeon E3 1240v2 seems to compare even worse:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-Intel-Xeon-E3-1240-V2/1316vsm5484

I liked the idea of upgrading the CPU, but given that it seems I would only gain the threads but possibly even "lose" some effective speed, perhaps it's best just to upgrade the RAM at this time, and stick it out for a bigger upgrade next year (new motherboard, DDR4, Kaby Lake, new GPU, etc.). Hmmm...

 

[tsnor]

@tsnor, I am actually using a Cooler Master 212 Plus (as mentioned in my OP), which I was hoping to simply remove and reuse with a new CPU. But yeah, I agree with your point there.

Regarding CPUs, though... So, I was a little surprised to find these benchmark differences sort of unremarkable. The 3770 doesn't seem to have anything on 3570K other than more threads of course. In fact 3570K shows better speed ranking, if I'm reading this correctly:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3770/1316vs1979

And Xeon E3 1240v2 seems to compare even worse:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-Intel-Xeon-E3-1240-V2/1316vsm5484

I liked the idea of upgrading the CPU, but given that it seems I would only gain the threads but possibly even "lose" some effective speed, perhaps it's best just to upgrade the RAM at this time, and stick it out for a bigger upgrade next year (new motherboard, DDR4, Kaby Lake, new GPU, etc.). Hmmm...

Sorry I missed you having a cooler already, my bad.

You see now why the first recommendation was to stay with your current CPU. It's very good for lightly threaded workloads. For "software development at home" the "build/compile the entire source tree" type processing will likely be a highly threaded workload where the i7 will cut elapsed time by 15-25%.

The i7-3500K vs i7-3700 benchmark results should be essentially the same for single thread with the i7-3700 being slightly faster (same micro-architecture, i7-3770 has 8MB cache vs 6 MB, and a higher boost clock). The fact that the "reported" benchmarks show i7-3500K ahead gives you the benchmark margin of error and bias in user reported numbers -- the K sku users are apter to have faster memory, etc., . For your workload you want to focus on the MULTI_CORE workloads where the extra threading helps= "Faster multi-core speed. +26% " The +26% for the i7 vs i5 is about right (or maybe a bit high) for the value of hyperthreading.

The Xeon numbers will show two biases in the benchmarks that will give a lower than perfect compare with your i5. The Xeon runs at lower clock speed, and is more apt to be in a slower, more stable server chassis. If you get the Xeon you'd want to boost the clocks on all threads up from their normal clock rate to their "boost" clock rate. Most good MBs like yours can do this on a non-K sku. I did not check your MB. If you got the Xeon up to its boost clock on all threads it would hang in there with the i7 at a lower cost. The "run at boost clock rates all the time" was the same play for getting an i7-3700S --> if you can get it to run at boost clock all the time it's the same as an I7-3700 for a lower price.

 

[the_jiveman]

Really good info. Thanks!