Worth upgrading from Ivy Bridge to Coffee Lake?

[toms.safranovs]

Hello,

I know this probably has been asked hundreds of times before on this forum, but my situation is a bit different, and I hope you guys can give me some advice.

I currently have a i5-3470 with 8GB RAM and a GTX1060 6GB on a B75 chipset mATX motherboard. I have been really happy with this system since I built it in 2012, but recently it has got a bit unstable. For example, I am not able to wake the PC from sleep - it starts up HDD and fans, but there is no picture. The only way to get it to work again is a hard reset. Also, if I turn the PC off completely and then turn it on for the first time (cold boot), it usually does not boot on the first try (no picture / POST info). I have to do a hard reset and only then it starts. I have tried everything - updating BIOS, changing BIOS settings, changing power settings etc, different Intel ME drivers and many other things, everything I could find online, nothing has helped, and I'm sick of it. I have recently replaced PSU since the old one became loud, but that did not fix the issues I had (was hoping that maybe PSU was getting bad/worn). Then I got a new GPU, GTX1060 6GB, but that has not helped either. So I am wondering if my motherboard could be defective. The problem is that it's very hard to find a new S1155 board, so I'm wondering if I should upgrade to Coffee Lake instead.

1. Cheaper but somewhat unwise option IMO (since Ivy Bridge is getting old) - buy a S1155 mobo on eBay and hope this helps with the issues I have, and keep the existing CPU and RAM for a few more years.

2. Upgrade to Coffee Lake. This will be the most expensive option, as I also need new RAM. The only CPU I'm considering is i5-8400. I know that currently only Z chipset mobos are available, which are meant for OC (which i5-8400 is NOT), but it's not a big deal. Some of them seem to be packed with good features, and I assume that they have top quality / reliability, and some of them have campaigns here locally, so I don't mind spending 100-120€ for a reliable, good quality product that will last me for years to come.

About my intended use, it's a HTPC that I mostly use for ripped Bluray movies (with MPC-HC and MadVR), and sometimes play some games, like Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, but only in 1080p. No multiplayer games, for that I use PS4. I have recently purchased a good Sony 4K HDR TV which also supports Dolby Vision, so I might use it for 4K HDR video playback at some point as well (if it will be possible, haven't looked into it yet).

To sum it up - the current build is enough for my needs, but I am suspecting that my mobo is faulty and in that case the considering moving to a newer platform for better reliability and support / compatibility with Windows 10.

What would you guys do?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[gussrtk]

I think your problem lies more within windows than hardware, sorry there's a lot of info... i skimmed through it (generally you dont get replies to a novel of a problem for this reason)

I think you should keep your system for now, at least till there are H/B motherboards for 8th gen, as well as new nVidia GPUs are set to come later this year. Since you say that you changed your PSU, I would suggest first to try and "re-fit" all the plugs going from PSU to motherboard/Graphics card. Another thing I could suggest is to get yourself an SSD 500gb, it'll be useful now and later in a new system build, that way you could shut down PC, and to start it up it'll take ~20seconds (which is no solution in any way... because your issue is of other reason, I just don't really know much within why it doesn't wake, for me windows reinstall always fixed that, i'm too lazy to find the root of problem)