Worth Upgrading MB/CPU?

after_shock3000

I'm thinking about getting a new CPU/Ram/MB for my current pc.
I'm using it as a media centre and gaming pc and I've recently put in a 6950 to boost my frame rates a bit (It originally had a 4850).

I'm thinking about going for something along the lines of a 3570K with a Z77 board and 8 gigs of RAM, but wondering would it give me much of a frame rate boost in the likes of Battlefield 3 and Arma 2/DayZ.

The current system is:

Asus P5K-SE
Q6600 @ 3.25 GHz (with a Prolimatech Megahalems Cooler)
4GB DDR2 6400
Sapphire Dual Fan 1GB 6950
Corsair TX750 PSU
5 Sata Hard drives and 1 Sata DVD Writer (So I'd prefer to have at least 6 Sata ports on the board instead of having to use a PCI Express card to attach some of them)

Any advice on what Z77 boards are good for over clocking would be great. I didn't do enough research when I bought the 775 board last time and ended up with a board I had to mod to get rid of the terrible voltage droop.

Also, if I was to go ahead with upgrading, is there any cheap itx socket 775 barebones or anything like that out there that I could drop my Q6600 and RAM into for a standalone HTPC? (This isn't that important, just thinking ahead)

Thanks.

Edit: Nearly forgot about cooling. Is there anywhere to get a 1155 adaptor for the Megahalems, or do I need to get a new cooler?
Would I be better off with something along the lines of a H100, or does the 3570k do as well on large air coolers as it would on the H100?
I don't want to go for a custom loop just yet, so the H100 would be as far as I'd go water-cooling wise at the moment.

ED E

You'd be fine on air, just wouldnt be able to OC as much.


What resolution are you running? Both BF3 and ARMA2 are heavy on the CPU compared to most games, so you likely would see a significant improvement. Upping to 1155 also leaves room to continue upgrades later.


I looked at 775 boards a few months ago, isnt much selection and from what I saw the prices arent great for such old gear. Im sure you could throw something together though.

after_shock3000

ED E wrote: »

You'd be fine on air, just wouldnt be able to OC as much.


What resolution are you running? Both BF3 and ARMA2 are heavy on the CPU compared to most games, so you likely would see a significant improvement. Upping to 1155 also leaves room to continue upgrades later.


I looked at 775 boards a few months ago, isnt much selection and from what I saw the prices arent great for such old gear. Im sure you could throw something together though.

Knew I'd forget something. Both my monitor and TV are 1920x1080 so thats the res I'll be using for the foreseeable future.

Ya I was looking at 775 boards not too long ago too and I couldn't find many either. I only said ITX for the Q6600 seeing as it's the smallest form factor, MATX would probably do for the htpc in a pinch. It's just the current board is ATX and that would force me to get a case that'd be a bit big for a htpc.

after_shock3000

Ok, so I've scrapped the idea of using the old parts for a htpc. I'm going use those to build a pc for my father.

I've picked out the parts I'm planning to buy from HWVS:

Item|Price
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€208.05
ASRock Z77 Extreme4, Sockel 1155, ATX|€129.14
8GB-Kit G.Skill RipJaws-X PC3-12800U CL9|€34.04
Samsung SSD 830 128GB SATA 6GB's Basic|€87.56
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€477.78

From the old system I'll be keeping the TX750 psu and Radeon HD 6950.
I found a Prolimatech Socket 1156 Kit at Frozen CPU to use with my cooler.
EDIT: Just read that the Asrock Z77 boards have S775 mounting holes on them. Anyone here fitted a Megahalems or any 775 cooler to one? Any issues?

The bit I'm on the fence about is the motherboard. I'm planning on adding watercooling at a later stage so I went looking for a board that was good for overclocking. I chose it because it has a better power circuit than the Asrock Z77 Pro3 version, but I don't really need the other extras that it brings.

Any suggestions on a cheaper board that would be as good as the extreme 4 for overclocking?
I don't need Crossfire or SLI either.

Any opinions/suggestions on anything I should add or reconsider would be appreciated too.

deceit

I just wanted to point out you will see no benefit in bf3 in a cpu upgrade. From a Q6600 and up there should be no increase in fps from a better cpu as it is gpu limited after this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-13.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmark-test,3.html
With arma 2 you may see a about a 20-70% increase though.

after_shock3000

deceit wrote: »

I just wanted to point out you will see no benefit in bf3 in a cpu upgrade. From a Q6600 and up there should be no increase in fps from a better cpu as it is gpu limited after this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-13.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmark-test,3.html
With arma 2 you may see a about a 20-70% increase though.

Thanks for that.
I'm finding very conflicting information on whether it'll help in battlefield. Some say no effect whatsoever, others say none in singleplayer or lightly populated multiplayer maps, but a good increase in 64 player large maps and an increased minimum fps all round.

I might try clocking my CPU up to 3.6GHz later and dropping it back to its standard 2.4 for a while too to see how much of an effect it really has.

Although at this stage I think I'm gonna go for an upgrade either way, I just need to figure out if the Azrock Z77 Extreme4 is worth the extra 45 euro over the Pro3 to me.