Finally Time to upgrade my 5 year old i7 920

By +Warwagon
in Hardware Hangout

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

 

Don't get me wrong, my i7 920 is still working great even after 5 years. The only issue is there are some things I would like to get, and my motherboard seems to be a bottleneck. For instance.

 

I would like to get a Sata III Dock, but to do that I would have to get a Sata III PCI express 1x card, and i'm all out of 1x ports ... the motherboard only had 1. Plus my Sata III SSD is currently running in Sata II and some of my hard drives aren't even sata III. I also only have USB 2 and want USB 3. So i'm looking at a new motherboard. Seeing how my i7 920 has lasted me about 5 years, i'm either going to go big or go home. Here are the specs i'm currently looking at

 

Intel Core i7-4770K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.5 GHZ 8 MB Cache BX80646I74770K 339.99

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i7-4770K-Quad-Core-Processor-BX80646I74770K/dp/B00CO8TBQ0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815075&sr=8-1&keywords=BX80646I74770K

 

Asus Sabertooth Z87 LGA 1150 Motherboard

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-Sabertooth-Z87-1150-Motherboard/dp/B00CRJVZOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815144&sr=8-1&keywords=Asus+Z87+LGA+1150 224.99

 

Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1866 MHz (PC3 15000) Desktop Memory (CMZ16GX3M2A1866C9) $173.48

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengeance-Desktop-Memory-CMZ16GX3M2A1866C9/dp/B007R1SN36/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815197&sr=8-1&keywords=CMZ16GX3M2A1866C9

 

Western Digital WD1002FAEX 84.99

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WD1002FAEX-Internal-Desktop/dp/B0036Q7MV0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815225&sr=8-1&keywords=WD1002FAEX
 

Western Digital WD1002FAEX 84.99

 

Noctua NH-U12 CPU Cooler 66.59

http://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NH-U12-Sockets-Heatpipe-Cooling/dp/B00C9EYVGY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815561&sr=8-1&keywords=Noctua+NH-U12
 

Total $975.03

 

I'm also going to replace 2  aging 250 GB western Digital drive's with some Sata III 1GB drives. As for the graphics card I already have a  GeForce GTX 660Ti 2048MB GDDR5

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

tsupersonic

Posted
Posted

Nice. I had a i7 860 (day 1 adopter), and the PSU died on that system taking out the motherboard. It was a fine computer, but like you said, the motherboard held me back - SATA 2 instead of SATA 3, USB2 instead of USB3. Of course this died a week before Haswell was released, so perfect timing. Anyways, I am a day 1 adopter of the i5 4670, very happy with it - better performance than the i7 860. You should be plenty happy with the i7 4770k. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

AJerman

Posted
Posted

Wow that's 5 years old. I really need to get my old tanker upgraded. It's a wonder I can run any new games on it anymore.  

No kidding. I just finally upgraded to an i3 from my Opteron 165. I didn't realize but I had that thing overclocked to I think 2.2 GHz from 1.8 GHz for the last almost 10 years on air cooling without a single issue. :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+Fahim S. MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

Not bad. I'm still on a C2D E8400, GTX 260, 4GB DDR2 1066MHz RAM :p

 

E6400 here  :pacifier:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Veteran

Farchord

Posted
Posted

 

 

 

Don't get me wrong, my i7 920 is still working great even after 5 years. The only issue is there are some things I would like to get, and my motherboard seems to be a bottleneck. For instance.

 

I would like to get a Sata III Dock, but to do that I would have to get a Sata III PCI express 1x card, and i'm all out of 1x ports ... the motherboard only had 1. Plus my Sata III SSD is currently running in Sata II and some of my hard drives aren't even sata III. I also only have USB 2 and want USB 3. So i'm looking at a new motherboard. Seeing how my i7 920 has lasted me about 5 years, i'm either going to go big or go home. Here are the specs i'm currently looking at

 

Intel Core i7-4770K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.5 GHZ 8 MB Cache BX80646I74770K 339.99

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i7-4770K-Quad-Core-Processor-BX80646I74770K/dp/B00CO8TBQ0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815075&sr=8-1&keywords=BX80646I74770K

 

Asus Sabertooth Z87 LGA 1150 Motherboard

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-Sabertooth-Z87-1150-Motherboard/dp/B00CRJVZOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815144&sr=8-1&keywords=Asus+Z87+LGA+1150 224.99

 

Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1866 MHz (PC3 15000) Desktop Memory (CMZ16GX3M2A1866C9) $173.48

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengeance-Desktop-Memory-CMZ16GX3M2A1866C9/dp/B007R1SN36/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815197&sr=8-1&keywords=CMZ16GX3M2A1866C9

 

Western Digital WD1002FAEX 84.99

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WD1002FAEX-Internal-Desktop/dp/B0036Q7MV0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815225&sr=8-1&keywords=WD1002FAEX

 

Western Digital WD1002FAEX 84.99

 

Noctua NH-U12 CPU Cooler 66.59

http://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NH-U12-Sockets-Heatpipe-Cooling/dp/B00C9EYVGY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377815561&sr=8-1&keywords=Noctua+NH-U12

 

Total $975.03

 

I'm also going to replace 2  aging 250 GB western Digital drive's with some Sata III 1GB drives. As for the graphics card I already have a  GeForce GTX 660Ti 2048MB GDDR5

 

The only thing I'd replace in that build is either replace one of the 2 drives for an SSD or plainly add an SSD for the OS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • Author
  • MVC
Posted

The only thing I'd replace in that build is either replace one of the 2 drives for an SSD or plainly add an SSD for the OS.

I already have a 128.m4 ssd

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

goretsky Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

Hello,

 

I am still using an Intel i7-950 S1366-based system as my primary desktop at home.  One thing i did to increase its usability is to add an Asus U3S6 card to it.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

spaceelf

Posted
Posted

Hello,

 

I am still using an Intel i7-950 S1366-based system as my primary desktop at home.  One thing i did to increase its usability is to add an Asus U3S6 card to it.

Cool idea, but the cards USB3 and SATA3 controllers are 1x PCI-E through a bridge on a 4x board so don't really perform terribly well from what I read.  Someone should've made a new version of that thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Ci7

Posted
Posted

I'd probably wait until the Haswell-E CPUs come out, the i7-920 is still a very good CPU. Sandy Bridge being an upgrade, but Ivy Bridge & Haswell not so much over Sandy Bridge.

 

Also this may be interesting reading for SSDs on SATA II vs SATA III: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-sata-3gbps,3469.html

 

 

I intend to keep my 920 til the universe ends.  Or til 2015.

 

We'll see how that goes hah.

 

 

Yeah, well, too bad X99 is still so far away.

 

 

this, this and this 

 

really ****ed at intel :(

 

prepared to pay and arm and leg for Hasewell-E/X99 , if i can get it now  

 

1st gen i7 are getting really old by now :/ went worthy successor as performer

 

Full USB3/SATA Express ports   FTW !!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Veteran

Farchord

Posted
Posted

I'd normally agree at waiting, but I heard next generations the chips are gonna be soldered to the board which will make our job a little harder.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Phouchg

Posted
Posted

I'd normally agree at waiting, but I heard next generations the chips are gonna be soldered to the board which will make our job a little harder.

 

The people who *originally* created this nonsense should themselves be soldered to the boards. It was a great headline-maker for a moment, I'll give you that, but coming out mostly from misguided ramblings of Semi-Accurate tardmachine.

 

There are already several Haswell Desktop SKUs that come in BGA package only, for AIO and HTPC systems. Broadwell-D *will* use 1150 socket and Haswell-E *will* use 2011-3 socket. HEDT (Intel rakes in raw money from those) will not be deprecated until technical reasons will require it to do so (which, I suspect, is why it is artificially slowed down).

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • Author
  • MVC
Posted

I also do a bunch of Sony Vegas Video editing and run some VMs in Vmware, so this should improve those speeds.

 

I actually have a i7 950 motherboad in another PC that does have some Sata III ports, USB 3 and 2 Pci Express 1x.  Problem is, I remember I could not get sata III speeds out of those ports, even though they said Sata III.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

spaceelf

Posted
Posted

I also do a bunch of Sony Vegas Video editing and run some VMs in Vmware, so this should improve those speeds.

 

I actually have a i7 950 motherboad in another PC that does have some Sata III ports, USB 3 and 2 Pci Express 1x.  Problem is, I remember I could not get sata III speeds out of those ports, even though they said Sata III.

They too probably used a 1x PCIE controller.

 

Even the 2x ones usually still suck as far as I know (mines actually alright once you find a firmware and drivers from a third party...)

 

So it's either built into the chipset, enterprise stuff, or probably awful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.