Long Term Build

[msalton1]

I generally build systems with high end parts. I've found this to be beneficial in longevity, reliability and performance. I built my last machine in 2008 around a Q9550 and Gigabyte EP45-UD3R, 8gb RAM and Win7x64. It's served me well all of these years.

Now, of course, it's getting a bit long in tooth, esp. since I recently started playing MP FPS games, which, as you know, require a bit of horsepower for smooth gameplay. I did just recently buy a Sapphire ATI 7870 OC edition, which has helped frame rates considerably, but not enough to stop there.

I'm gearing up to build another system and have been looking at 1150 socket boards and the i7 4770K cpu. I'd like to build another long term system, knowing that when the time comes, I'll likely jump a socket or two (or more).

So the question is, is 1150 socket the way to go or is there an older socket that will fill the bill? It would need to be justifiably cheaper (which may negate 1155), support a reasonable amount of recent technology and carry me through 3-5 more years (assuming technology doesn't require a sooner upgrade).

I don't mind spending the money on the latest (in this case, MB, CPU and RAM). I just don't care to waste it. I'm not interested in AMD atm. Thanks for your opinions.

Salt

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello Salt mate surprised you haven't had a flood of answers on this one?? The latest in here is a thread around the Haswell (1150) technology see this http://www.sevenforums.com/pc-custom-builds-overclocking/302169-i5-4670k-i7-4770k-3.html#post2509333 .

I currently have my latest build - an Ivy bridge machine on the 1155 technology and it runs real nice apart from a cooler that let go it is just great. Trouble is the 1155 boards where I am are getting harder to find and if you are looking at some recent technology at a reasonable price then 1155 would be the way to go and you are not tied to using the most expensive CPU for it either. This is what is available to me where I get my stuff from to give you an idea.

But I am planning on going onto the Haswell stuff in the near future and am watching that thread to see how it pans out first. I think the general consensus is based around Asus hardware but mind you the costs can be quite intimidating unless you have a money tree LOL!!

Myself I prefer the NVidia hardware for graphical stuff and I use the G Skill forum for RAM advice but there are plenty of the members here who are on the money with any of it.

 

[essenbe]

I typed a long post and somehow lost it, so, I'll try again. I'm generally considered an enthusiast by those being nice to me. Crazy by many others and am guilty of that also. I can't answer your question, I can only give my opinion. I typically build several times a year, usually not because I need to but because I want to, and this is my hobby. I tend to try to stay up with the latest technology, but also disagree with anything that is called future proof. There is no such thing. I have no intention of building a Haswell rig. Haswell (1150) has some very nice features in the platform but the CPUs have been a big disappointment in the enthusiast community. They do not overclock nearly as well and are extremely hot. By most technology sites, they offer a 5% increase in performance. Trying to look at the big picture, it is my opinion that the negatives outweigh the positives. The platform and CPU I have now, is my choice for the best gaming rig. The only other platform that interests me is the 2011 platform. That was built for a workhorse platform for those who do heavy duty work such as CAD work or HD Video encoding. They are particularly efficient in programs that use multi core applications. I really don't do a lot of that, so I like the 3770K for what I do. As a gaming platform, Ill take the 3770K without question. Personally I see more negatives than positives with Haswell. I game often but do not own a game that will challange this CPU and don't expect to see one in the nex several years. Games are dependant more on the Graphics card than the CPU anyway. If I decided to build a new rig today, it would either be another 3770K or a 2011 rig, just for something different. In the end, the choice is yours. Everything I have said is my personal opinion. My best advise I can give you is spend a lot of time researching all of your options before making any decisions. Good luck to you with whatever you decide. But again, these are my opinions and I'm sure you will get many others who disagree with me. You can look at the bottom of this post at 'My system Specs' and see what I am running. I'm perfectly happy with it and believe It will be a long time before anything comes along that will make me need to change.

 

[paulpicks21]

I saw your original post Steve and I was in the process of giving you rep for it as I found it an excellent post. It would not let me rep you, not because I needed to spread more rep, it just wouldn't let me press the button after I had entered my comments.
I thought perhaps you decided to edit it or deleted it for some unknown reason.
I then spent quite a while posting a reply on the same subject, but I don't think I will post it now as much of it is similar to what you put.

Edit: Actually I will add what I put as it gives some slightly different info.

With the 4770K it all comes down to whether you want to overclock, obviously it's a K series CPU with means it was designed to be overclocked, but in my opinion they got it wrong with this one. I have heard nothing but bad things regarding overclocking them, big heat and not big speeds compared to Ivybridge.

I would say if you don't plan on overclocking or want to overclock a little (maybe to 4 to 4.2GHz) then it will be a great CPU, if you want to overclock properly then go for an Ivy 3770K.

Depending on how quickly you want to build you may want to consider the new Ivybridge E CPU's which are out within the next month, these are quite a bit more expensive and are really more than anyone would need, but useful in certain situations.

Just depends how far you want to go.


Paul.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

I knew Steve would be lurking LOL!! You see therein itself tells you just about what you need to know and confirms what I have been thinking about the Haswell.


But as said a lot of research mate and you will be ok just post back when you have had a look around

John

 

[essenbe]

Yes, I deleted the first post as somehow I managed to mess it up. It was probably better as I think I put a little more info in it. But, For me and for what I do with my computer, the 3770K serves me well and there is little to no advantage to switching to Haswell, other than having the latest tech toy. And that will only last a few months. It will do heavy duty lifting too. Last week I encoded 300 DVDs with this rig and it never hesitsted. An E series chip, I'm sure would have done it faster, but this will do any job you ask it to. Another consideration is the new technology. You will have several months before the motherboard manufacturers figure out all the new problems and the software companies catch up. Ivy Bridge has been through all of that and is tried and proven itself. You should have none of that with it.

 

[msalton1]

Thanks to all for the informative responses (and appreciation for your diligence, Essenbee ). The committed members of this forum (as in dedicated, not institutionalized...) seem to be a great group and very knowledgeable and helpful. Your time and effort are appreciated here and amongst many others, I'm sure.

I'm in my busy season atm, so I won't be moving on this immediately (I generally start the research process pretty early on). But in checking pricing between the 3770K and the 4770K, there's not much of a savings. I've read about the 4770K's heat issues when OCing (vendor user reviews), but since I haven't overclocked in years, I doubt I'll be doing so now, and most have resolved those issues by installing an AM cooler. Add that my office is a cool 68-70° when occupied (74° when not), I don't see the heat as much of an issue.

Granted, almost any upgrade I make will be a significant improvement. As can be seen here, the 4770K is tested to be almost twice the performance as my current flagship Q9550 system:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 vs Core i7-4770K

But given that the prices aren't significantly higher than the 3770K (seems like 1155 is the only current widely available "other" platform aside from AMD), I'm leaning toward the 4770K (although not set in concrete).

Other than the heat issues, which as stated above, will likely have little impact, is there any other reason not to go with the new platform?

Again, thanks for (all) your efforts.

Salt

Edit

Another consideration is the new technology. You will have several months before the motherboard manufacturers figure out all the new problems and the software companies catch up. Ivy Bridge has been through all of that and is tried and proven itself. You should have none of that with it.

I see you've supplied one good reason before I even finished my post. You guys are good. Damn good. .

And that is a good reason to avoid the newer platform. Anything else?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Well I am with Steve all the way the Ivy is my cup of tea at the moment mind you I don't do all that rendering stuff or a lot of gaming - no time!! the i5 3570K I have in works a treat and was not affected by the crash caused by the cooling going bung.
Personally the Ivy is probably going to be where I stop I am beginning to think and maybe just get a better board, maybe an i7 and GPU than I have got now.

If you are wondering about boards I don't know about the others but I have had no problems with the Asus stuff. Te Gigabyte in my Sandy Bridge is no slouch either with an i5 2500 in it.

 

[Boozad]

Just a small addition regarding Haswell if I may. I've been running a 4670k at stock speeds on an ASUS Sabertooth Z87 since Haswell was released, and during heavy gaming (Crysis 3, BF3, Metro: Last Light etc) I never get temps above 48°C on any core with a triple copper heatpipe air cooler. I can't say Haswell doesn't run hot as I've seen lots of comments saying it does, but I've never seen any actual evidence (I haven't really looked for any) and mine certainly doesn't.
I'm more than happy with the Haswell setup to be honest, maybe the motherboard's assisted airflow has something to do with keeping temps down, I don't know.

I'm not trying to disregard what Essenbe has said here either, just offering my personal experience with Haswell so far.

 

[essenbe]

You'll certainly see a performance increase over what you have now, no matter which platform you go with. But, there is not enough difference between the 1150 and 1155 that you could notice it. Also as a suggestion. You said you had no interest in overclocking, save a few dollars and don't go with the K chips then. The K only means they have an unlocked multiplier (allows you to overclock them) the boards are similar in that the overclocking boards cost more. If you do overclock, I really believe you are underestimating the heat produced by the 4770K. But, on everyday use, not overclocked a very good cooler will be fine, I think. You shouldn't have a problem at all. If you try to run a stabilty test or run applications that max it out, that will be another story. But, either platform will be a great performance increase over what you are running now. You will be surprised. Let us know when you get it built and how it does for you. You'll enjoy gaming more, I promise you that. And your new card will perform better too. I suspect it is being throttled right now by your CPU.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Another system builder's thoughts.

For a long-term build I would choose Ivy Bridge for at least one year, maybe two. Haswell is technically a fourth-generation intel processor but is a "first-generation" in a lot of things, they added a ton of power saving stuff and tweaks that were not there in the Ivy Bridge.
(was developed after Intel realized it is no more a semi-monopolist as most mobile devices running Android/iOS run on ARM processors an that's on the rise, so I doubt this stuff was an incremental change planned since years ago)

Since:
-performance difference is debatable,
-on a desktop with a dedicated GPU you don't need particular power savings nor the processor's better integrated graphics,
-they are "first-gens" in various fields so they can have unknown flaws or be unstable or have limited support from some programs or whatever.

I don't have anything against the 1150 socket, so the ivy bridge E could be a good way to go if you need the fetaures in the newest boards.

I also disagree with essenbe on the k processors. The price difference is negligible, around 30-50 bucks (especially for a long-term build), and with a k processor you usually get a higher-quality chip (the other ones are not k because they were tested at the fab and found unstable beyond a certain frequency, this implies slight defects in the chip, that can or cannot worsen with time and/or use).

The same is valid for boards. Overclock or gaming boards are designed to withstand more stress and are usually made with better-quality or "oversized" (workload, not physical size) components.
Solid-state capacitors are a must for a long-term build.

As long as you don't want more than one x16 PCI-e slot, (and even if you want two) you shouldn't break the 150$ ceiling for the board alone. This is my favourite board, you pay a bit of premium (170$) and if you SLI/Crossfire you need a full ATX case or a slightly bigger mATX one (although doing so leaves open more PCI-e slots for something else if you use two cards), but I think it's worth it.

And with the possibility of overclocking you can keep using it for a bit longer. (you would start overclocking in the last years of the rig)

Still, if you aren't in a hurry, I would wait a few months and see what AMD cooks up. I'm pretty intrigued at Kaveri. As it is supposed to use its own integrated GPU as a parallel task coprocessor, and if they are pulling this off without the need for specific software support other than drivers, that's a serious performance boost.
But then again it would be a true first-gen, so not the best choice for a long-term build.
Yeah, I'm an AMD fanboy.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

You'll certainly see a performance increase over what you have now, no matter which platform you go with. But, there is not enough difference between the 1150 and 1155 that you could notice it. Also as a suggestion. You said you had no interest in overclocking, save a few dollars and don't go with the K chips then. The K only means they have an unlocked multiplier (allows you to overclock them) the boards are similar in that the overclocking boards cost more. If you do overclock, I really believe you are underestimating the heat produced by the 4770K. But, on everyday use, not overclocked a very good cooler will be fine, I think. You shouldn't have a problem at all. If you try to run a stabilty test or run applications that max it out, that will be another story. But, either platform will be a great performance increase over what you are running now. You will be surprised. Let us know when you get it built and how it does for you. You'll enjoy gaming more, I promise you that. And your new card will perform better too. I suspect it is being throttled right now by your CPU.

Hmm Steve the Haswell CPU's are only $10 different between i5 and i7 out here it is the motherboards that are costing an arm and a leg - at the moment and why I am sticking with Ivy for a bit longer.
For what it's worth I am just thinking of budget considerations for Salt depending on what the prices are like compared to ours over there

 

[essenbe]

EDIT: I just checked, John. My board cost me John, if you want the Haswell, just wait. It's brand new right now and they have the prices up. After the 'new' wears off you will probably see some drop in the prices, just like with Ivy Bridge. When the 3770K came out, here it was $350. It was much less 6 months later. I bought one the day they were released for $350, I bought another one several months later for $319. Same with the boards.

bobafetthotmail is most likely correct about the boards. The overclocking boards are made to withstand more heat and more voltage, so are most likely to be made with higher quality components. But, the CPu's are designed to be locked or unlocked before the manufacturing process. After the 'oven' they are tested and the better quality ones become i7's and the rest become i5's. At least that is the story from Intel.

EDIT: I just checked, John. My board cost me $385 when I bought it. I can buy the same board from the same place now for $357.

 

[msalton1]

Lots of good information in this thread. Thanks to everyone for the input. After pondering and looking into some of the points, I see that there truly isn't much difference between the 3770k and the 4770k in performance. So little, in fact, that performance difference isn't really worth considering, as can be seen here:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 vs Core i7-3770K

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 vs Core i7-4770K

I'll likely spend around $200 on a board. I was considering either the Asus Z87 Pro or the
GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD4H for the 1150 socket, and I imagine I'll choose a similar board if I go with the 1155. My last several boards have been Gigabyte (in fact, I have 3 machines next to me all with Gigas). I've also owned many Asus. I've been happy with performance, stability and reliability in both names.

The onboard graphics in the 4770 don't really interest me. So I guess I'll examine the state of the 1150 socket system when the time comes (probably the next few months).

Thanks you for giving me something to think about and another direction. If I were to buy today, my guess is I would choose an Ivy based system.

Again, thanks to all.

Salt

 

[ICIT2LOL]

EDIT: I just checked, John. My board cost me John, if you want the Haswell, just wait. It's brand new right now and they have the prices up. After the 'new' wears off you will probably see some drop in the prices, just like with Ivy Bridge. When the 3770K came out, here it was $350. It was much less 6 months later. I bought one the day they were released for $350, I bought another one several months later for $319. Same with the boards.

bobafetthotmail is most likely correct about the boards. The overclocking boards are made to withstand more heat and more voltage, so are most likely to be made with higher quality components. But, the CPu's are designed to be locked or unlocked before the manufacturing process. After the 'oven' they are tested and the better quality ones become i7's and the rest become i5's. At least that is the story from Intel.

EDIT: I just checked, John. My board cost me $385 when I bought it. I can buy the same board from the same place now for $357.

Yep ok Steve I sorta was banking on something like that happening really and watching what was going on with you folks and the testing.
Yes I often wonder at that story to be honest the Youtube video shows the same screen "printing" on those slices and I wonder what actually happens to the particular die that changes it as it is hard to imagine the component structure being altered so much it affects the performance. ie a few transistors change from NPN or PNP to the opposite of the original for a ridiculous example of course.

 

[kbrady1979]

The question is, do you do any photo/video editing where you need a 6-core Intel CPU? If the answer is yes, you may want to see what Ivy Bridge-Extreme has to offer next month at it's release. If the answer is no, then get the 3770K and a good Asus motherboard. If it were me, I'd skip Haswell.

 

[paulpicks21]

Lots of good information in this thread. Thanks to everyone for the input. After pondering and looking into some of the points, I see that there truly isn't much difference between the 3770k and the 4770k in performance. So little, in fact, that performance difference isn't really worth considering, as can be seen here:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 vs Core i7-3770K

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 vs Core i7-4770K

I'll likely spend around $200 on a board. I was considering either the Asus Z87 Pro or the
GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD4H for the 1150 socket, and I imagine I'll choose a similar board if I go with the 1155. My last several boards have been Gigabyte (in fact, I have 3 machines next to me all with Gigas). I've also owned many Asus. I've been happy with performance, stability and reliability in both names.

The onboard graphics in the 4770 don't really interest me. So I guess I'll examine the state of the 1150 socket system when the time comes (probably the next few months).

Thanks you for giving me something to think about and another direction. If I were to buy today, my guess is I would choose an Ivy based system.

Again, thanks to all.

Salt

Looking at those benchmarks it looks like whatever you choose will be a significant upgrade with twice the power of your current cpu and less power consumption.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

@essenbe: I'm pretty sure that what I said about CPU was correct, although last time I actually checked is more than 6 years ago. I remember the days when the difference between overclockable or locked processor was decided by an external jumper thing on the processor itself.
Can you point me to something more up-to-date?

 

[essenbe]

No, I talked to Intel tech support about a year ago. We were discussing the process and that is what he told me. Plus I have read somewhere just about the same thing. I wish there were some way to do it externally.

 

[msalton1]

Hello again. Just wanted to update. I went with the Ausus Maximus VI Hero, i5 4670 cpu and 8GB Gskill Ripjaws X series. I guess I went against most opinions in this thread, but after much reading and research, I decided that Haswell would be the best fit. I don't plan on overclocking (so heat shouldn't be an issue), but the 4670 should give me plenty of headroom for my purposes. I bought the Hero (even though no immediate plans for overclocking) for the quality components and the likelihood that Intel will produce another 1150 cpu. I have several machines here and when I build a new one, existing components trickle down, so long term boards are a plus (in fact, I have a server running XP on an old Asus PIII board). Again, thank you all for your opinions, and apologies to anyone who might feel 'used' by the fact that I took a different path. Salt