help! Need new Motherboard and processor

Tech Support
1

Howdy all!

I’m sorry I haven’t been on mumble lately but I believe my motherboard has bit the dust :frowning: I’m posting from my iPad.

I’ve been using a Gygabite motherboard (which I was super happy with for several years) with a pentium i5 quad core. But, now is the time to replace the two, which leads us to my post:

There’s a lot of new Intel processors out there, some aimed at gaming, some more for audio and others for 3D art and rendering. I need help figuring out what i7 quad core processor would work great for star citizen without having to (hopefully) brake the bank. I’d like to keep it under $500 because I will also need a motherboard. That brings me to the second part:

I will need a new motherboard to run this processor. I currently have two nvidia GeForce 660 ti graphics cards that I would like to use. Down the road I could upgrade this but one of the cards is still new (opened but not plugged in and utilized yet due to what I now believe to be earlier problems with my motherboard’s power distribution giving out) and I’m hoping I could get them to work for Star Citizen. I’d like to stick with Gygabite if possible, but I’m up to suggestions.

Also: I use a SSD drive and I’ve also got a hard drive that I usually throw music and items on that I do not need on the SSD. I’m willing to lose the hard drive compatibility of that is nessisary.

While I have built rigs in the past I never got around to overclocking but I understand some of the newer processors have software that let you tweak the numbers for various applications. I mention this in case suggestions come up for options that involve overclocking; I’d prefer to not have to rely on it but I’m willing to try it out if it is not overly complicated.

All respectful and helpful advice and insights into a new processor and motherboard are greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read my post and lend a hand to a fellow Atlas partner o7

Psylum

2

There pretty much are the same dang thing, only differences being speed and overclocking features. Any processor can be used for anything. K’s are designed to be overclocked, but then you lose some of the virtualization features (which you may never need). It used to be that anything more than 2-4 cores was pretty useless for gaming, but great for Maya, Avid, Adobe stuff, etc, but that will change with Windows 10.

First round of thoughts.

1… Your sure its the motherboard? Reason I ask, is there is maybe a 10-15% difference in IPC, or for the lack of a better word performance between a Sandy Bridge (circa 2011-2012) Intel processor and a New Haswell based chip. So if your current chip was still functional (and its toward the upper end of the i5, i7 spectrum (2500, 2700, 3570, 3770, etc) then it might just be enough to come across a comparable motherboard still left in someones inventory and keep the current chip. You only gains by going to a newer setup might be 10%, M.2 support (which you won’t be using yet), Sata express (again, not yet), USB 3.0, and maybe PCI-E based storage compatibility. So just do a swap, pocket the rest of the cash and save for the next bestest video card.

  1. If were ruling out the old parts. Then do you have a http://www.microcenter.com/ close by? The bundles they tend to have, are pretty much the cheapest way to go, just make sure to run out of the store before they attempt to sell you a Coolmax power supply.

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

Which for $389.98 plus tax you walk away with the GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 LGA 1150 ATX bundle. or if you really want to break the bank, one of the Intel Core i7-5820k bundles. Which will fall under $500, then they break you with buying sticks of DDR4. (so way over $500 in the end)

3

A few thoughts:

MisFire hit the nail on the head with the new processor, although it would be nice to know exactly what model processor you have. i5’s are still going strong and you should experience plenty of gaming life on that processor. That being said if you are looking to upgrade and not just replace you have some options.

Option 1: (more expensive)

i7-5820k like MisFire suggested. However they use Haswell-E sockets. Most motherboards use the new 288 pin DDR4 which is NOT backward compatible with the 240 pin DDR3. Also 5820 is not the best processor for Dual GPU as it only supports 28 PCIe lanes. That basically means your GPU’s would only be using 8 PCIe lanes each instead of the full 16 they could. The i7-5930 is a bit more dollars more and supports 40 lanes.

Is this a big deal? Not really, the difference between cards running at x8 and x16 lanes is not very noticeable for most gaming. Besides your cards are only 2gb anyway so if there’s a bottleneck it will probability be there.

Haswell-E means you’ll have to buy a compatible board (about $150-200) and DDR4 memory ($200-300 ish) so it will get pricy fast.

In my opinion not worth the small performance increase.

Example of costs:

newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6819117402 or
newegg.com/Product/Product.a … -_-Product
newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6813128751 (My current mobo)
newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6820211905 (I own this ram too)

Chip: $389.00 or $579.00
Mobo: $254.00 (yea there are cheaper boards but if your going to spend on a chip and ram, this is not the time to cheap out)
Memory: $299.00

Total: $942.00 - $1132.00

Option 2: (less expensive)

i7-4820K and a compatible Mobo. The i7-4820K supports 40 lanes of PCIe and will get the most out of your dual GPU (just make sure you put them in the right slots, read the manual) as they will both run at x16 lanes. The 4820 is a good chip and its not too expensive. You can use all of your current components. Again your performance increase will be slightly less than Option 1.

Example:

newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6819116940
newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6813157282

4820k - $322.00
Board - $199.00

Total - $521.00

Option 3: (best honestly)

Just replace your motherboard with a compatible and start saving for a major upgrade. Some great new things are coming down the pipe and will be getting cheap soon. (m.2, DDR4, Sata express, USB 3.1 etc) By this time you can make a meaningful upgrade, (ie. 1000-1500 ish) and build a badass gaming PC

Compatible mobo - $100.00 - $200.00

Hope that helps.

4

I used this site to build my existing computer: pcpartpicker.com/
It will generally tell you if you’re doing something wrong, like try to pick a motherboard with the wrong socket type.

I’ve got a GeForce GTX 660, an i7 4770k, and 16GB of memory. I can run at about 20-30 fps in Star Citizen right now.