Current bang-for-buck performance desktop CPU/MB combo

Janko on 05/12/2013 - 00:08

Time for upgrading but haven't looked at the scene for quite a few years.

Looking for a MB/CPU combo around $500-$600 that is popular and excellent bang-for-the-buck, but with the following constraints:

  • Intel CPU
  • ATX
  • good overclocking ability without mucking around too much or spending the savings on extreme cooling
  • Preference for ASUS or Gigabyte MB but not firm.
  • Will be able to upgrade CPU in same motherboard for quite a few years to come.
  • $300-$600 for the CPU and MB.
  • 32GB potential.

Use:

  • Windows 7 and also running virtualised Linux
  • Regularly do 2D graphics, occasional 3D design/rendering, very rarely video editing.
  • No gaming, no 3D porn
  • WiFi not needed
  • Excellent onboard sound not needed
  • Onboard graphics not needed.
  • Preferably low power consumption as I never turn it off.

Will stick with my old video card and 430W power supply for the time being.

At this stage I'm thinking a i5-4670K, I'll grab 16GB RAM and a Samsung 840 EVO 240GB SSD and slap some one or two existing HDD's in.

Any recommendations?

Computing

Comments

  • ethereal88 on 05/12/2013 - 06:12
    +2

    I built my office box around a 4770 + Z87X-UD4H. Don't really see the point of overclocking anymore. The mobo was for the quality, a better sound codec, and piles of ports and slots. You could swap the 4770 for a Xeon and use that with your GPU. You won't upgrade the CPU though, Intel more or less annually spits out new CPU's and chipsets. Next year Broadwell doesn't look compatible with Z87 at all, due to a change in power delivery. As for AMD, AM3+ is dead with no forecast updates over creaky old Vishera. One thing I'd strongly recommend is an aftermarket heatsink for any Haswell i5/i7 CPU, the stock heatsink is junk.

    • Janko on 05/12/2013 - 09:41

      I've just been doing a bit of reading at oc.au and been hearing the same thing—there's not much point of overclocking anymore. Appreciate the info, very valuable.

  • _Bruce_ on 05/12/2013 - 07:05
    +1

    1: $300-$600 is a big range ($500 else where in your post). It is also way more than you need.

    2: Even ethereal thinks you don't need to overclock, which is saying something (you don't).

    3: All intel chipset motherboards have exactly the same performance. Just have a think about many many PCIE slots you want and USB3, and get the cheapest board that matches this. You will want 4 DDR slots for 32G.

    4: The i5-4670 is a very nice CPU. The i7 is a slim improvement for the money.

    5: All Intel chipsets include on die GPU support (and it is surprisingly good for your listed activities). If you want to save power leave your old video card out (if it is old and/or not high end the included GPU might even be better).

    6: After market cooler is pretty much a waste of money.

    • Janko on 05/12/2013 - 09:55

      Current video card is old and wasn't topend (nVidia 7600GS) - just had a look at it has a 136 PassMark so maybe on-board or a cheap card might be in order. Dual monitor support is a must however but that seems to be standard now too.

      I'm pretty shocked how good the on-board graphics are on a $250 Lenovo i3 laptop I grabbed from an OzBargain deal.

      • _Bruce_ on 05/12/2013 - 10:12
        +1

        Yep, a HD4000 will beat that. HD4600 in the 4670 is even better.

    • [Deactivated] on 06/12/2013 - 08:58
      +1

      6: After market cooler is pretty much a waste of money.

      I use them for quietness, they're inexpensive and worth every cent :)

  • scrimshaw on 05/12/2013 - 09:13
    +1

    CPU
    E3-1230 v3 $290 (4 cores and 8 threads) 80w TDP
    http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2…

    Mobo
    ASROCK B85M Pro4
    $85
    http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2…

    RAM
    Any brand you want,
    16GB Kit 1600mhz
    $120~130
    http://www.budgetpc.com.au/cmso16gx3m2c1600c11.html

    • Janko on 05/12/2013 - 10:41

      Boy that RAM's cheap. MSY have 2x8 1600 Corsair Value Select for $198 — looser timing or is MSY expensive nowadays?

      • scrimshaw on 05/12/2013 - 13:17

        My mistake. That is laptop RAM… not desktop RAM.

        Desktop RAM will cost you $198 dollars. My bad.

        I found that it is cheaper to buy 2 single sticks of 8GB RAM rather than purchasing the 16GB Kit.

        For e.g $84 + 84 = $168 dollars as opposed to $198
        http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=9824

        • Janko on 06/12/2013 - 01:07

          That GSkill RAM is $168 for the kit - the $198 was for the Corsair.

        • aim54x on 09/12/2013 - 14:46

          I would try to avoid buying singles…kits are usually matched to the same batch and even consecutively numbered ensuring you don't come across any funny issues. It is silly that RAM pricing has not recovered yet…HDD's have finally done so

        • scrimshaw on 09/12/2013 - 17:58
          +1

          I know in the semiconductor production process they do what's called product binning: they categorize products into higher quality and lower quality segments.

          At most, the slight variations in the different kits of RAM will only limited overclocking potential — it won't cause any problems in normal operation. My frankenstein HTPC has 4 sticks of RAM with different brands and it's been working for 5 years now.

          Unless you're looking at some overclocking then having matched DIMMS are important but as a non-overclocker having mismatched RAM kits isn't going to cause any problems.

        • p1 ama on 09/12/2013 - 20:12

          Yeah, completely agree here, I wouldn't exactly recommend using different branded RAM, but if they're the same brand and model it should be fine. I've use mismatched stuff before and there's been no stability issues at all.

          Maybe for mission critical stuff it'll be important, but if you're going down that route, you'd be looking at ECC regardless.

          Btw, overclocking RAM is a waste of time, like there's pretty much no performance benefit whatsoever, but I understand why people do, it's a hobby…etc.

        • p1 ama on 09/12/2013 - 20:13

          HDDs haven't recovered, 2TB hard drives are the same price now as they were like 2 years ago, completely rubbish in a world where tech is meant to be exponentially decreasing in price.

  • ethereal88 on 05/12/2013 - 09:14

    Intel's stock heatsink idles at 40+ celsius, loads to 60+ celsius. A decent aftermarket drops that to 30/50. So yes, I'd say its worth it. I'd also take Gigabyte over Asrock anyday.

    • _Bruce_ on 05/12/2013 - 09:34

      How is that relevant? It's not even like the CPU being warmed makes the room warmer - the cooler just spreads the heat into the room. The exact same computing power and heat exists in both cases.

      If your load temperature was more like 100 degrees causing throttling it would matter. 60 degrees is nothing.

      • p1 ama on 05/12/2013 - 09:55

        It's not just that though, I've had stock heatsinks just break on me, the pins just jam and all that rubbish. I'd rather just invest in a Coolermaster Hyper TX3 which is $25 and will work really well.

      • Janko on 05/12/2013 - 10:25

        The reason I'm actually updating my Asus P5B Deluxe MB is a cap has gone (and the 500 deg soldering iron I just bought to fix them couldn't get past 300 deg), so too hard…

        I was running at 60 deg which was fine for the CPU but I'm not sure if not getting rid of the heat well enough lead to premature motherboard failure. But then again, 7 years @ 24 hours/day isn't bad :)

        • _Bruce_ on 05/12/2013 - 10:32

          It's not a problem. Even if it was, a better cooler is only going to spread the heat into the nearby area (ie: the motherboard).

        • p1 ama on 05/12/2013 - 15:50
          +1

          I wouldn't call a motherboard that's been running 24/7 for 7 years failing premature at all. I would say that it probably lasted longer than it should have :P

        • ethereal88 on 06/12/2013 - 16:25
          -1

          It is. A well built box will ventilate the heat (hot air rises). And really its your fault if you buy a junk B85 board with 2 phases and no heatsinks on the board that can barely run stock.

        • p1 ama on 06/12/2013 - 21:10

          I actually agree, if you feel the VRM and chipset heatsinks on some of these crappy boards, they actually run extremely warm even when not under load.

          Compare this to something like an X79 or Z77 board with 3 + 2 phase power or a better power delivery architecture (e.g. Gigabyte's "3D power") or just better heatsinks on the board and it'll run a lot cooler.

        • Janko on 06/12/2013 - 21:37

          Also I run the motherboard upside down (which I suspect sort of hinders the heat pipes on the P5B deluxe and the Scythe cooling tower I had).

          The Asus boards I'm looking at boast 5000 hour cap ratings, but under 105 deg conditions. I'm hoping I get far more than 200 days!

        • [Deactivated] on 06/12/2013 - 22:57

          boast 5000 hour cap ratings

          Are you sure that isn't meant to be 50,000?

        • Janko on 07/12/2013 - 00:46

          Multiple Asus literature I saw said 5000, like about 60% down the page at http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87A/

          And they boast that's 2.5x what other boards are rated for. I'm hoping this is just some standard test taken at a nominal temp for relative comparisons between boards.

  • p1 ama on 05/12/2013 - 09:53
    +1

    I'm an overclocker, so my advice would always be overclock because it's free performance. My workstation is a 3930K at 4.5 GHz, my "play" machine is a 3570K at 4.7 GHz and my HTPC is an i5 750 at 4.0 GHz .

    I would say that these days, overclocking isn't as attractive as it was back in the Lynnfield days because back then ALL CPUs could be overclocked and they were horrendously underclocked, like you could get from 2.80 GHz to 3.30 GHz easily with the stock cooler on the i7 860. These days, especially with Haswell, overclocking has become pretty much an enthusiast thing, so I'll have to agree with everyone else on saying that overclocking isn't worth it.

    I'd say get a Xeon E3 instead of an i5, you don't need the iGPU if you're using a discrete one and a Xeon gives you HT for like not that much more.

    Also, get a board with 4 DIMM slots, 2 DIMM slots is highly restrictive in what you can do and unless you're on a budget or looking to build an mITX or mATX system, go with a board that has as many PCI-e slots as you can - i.e. a full sized ATX board.

    • Janko on 05/12/2013 - 10:15

      Yep, full-sized ATX but the only PCI-e I'm currently using is the graphics card. Apart from multiple graphics cards, what else are people using PCI-e for?

      Didn't realise i5's didn't have HT. That could be a decider.

      • _Bruce_ on 05/12/2013 - 10:23
        +1

        Not much any more. There is very little that can't be run off USB2 or bluetooth, without even needed to go to USB3.

        If you want to add thunderbolt or 10Gbps Ethernet controllers or More SATA3 controller you need to think about these things, but generally in these cases you want 4+ channels anyway, so single channel pcie slots are of minimal use.

        HT is of marginal benifit for many use cases.

      • p1 ama on 05/12/2013 - 10:33
        +1

        I use PCI-e for a lot of things:

        Wireless NIC
        RAID Card
        TV Tuner Card
        Sound Card
        USB3 Card - I have an X79-UP4, which only has 2 USB3 ports

        There are even more uses apart from what I use my slots for:

        Thunderbolt Controller
        Firewire/other obscure connections
        PCI-e SSDs

        Yes, you can use USB for stuff like Wireless NICs, but I hate USB, it just adds more things at the back of my case.

        And yeah, HT shouldn't be much of a decider, it's not useful in many cases. However, if you do a lot of video editing, 3D rendering or mathematical calculations - i.e. stuff using MATLAB, compression algorithms…etc, you might want to consider HT.

        • Janko on 05/12/2013 - 10:55

          Probably spend about 5% of my time 3D rendering, but always running VMWare.

        • p1 ama on 05/12/2013 - 12:50

          HT will help with VMWare because it's quite highly threaded.

          At the end of the day though, if you have the money, why not? If you're on a budget, I'd say HT isn't worth it, but it's not a huge price to pay.

      • humdingaling on 05/12/2013 - 10:41

        most people even use the extra slots even for SLI/Crossfire

        the only other popular use for slot is aftermarket sound card

        others include
        Wireless adaptor
        NIC
        raid controller
        tv tuner

    • ankor on 05/12/2013 - 20:41

      Is there much difference in power consumption between a standard cpu and an overclocked one? I'm wary of how much my power bill is. Call me a tightass.

      • p1 ama on 05/12/2013 - 21:49

        You do realise that it's such a minuscule amount.

        I don't know how much you pay for electricity, but $0.21/kWh seems about right. An overclocked CPU, at max, would use like 50W more than a non-overclocked one, so you're paying 1 cent extra every hour your PC is on.

        So even if your PC is on 24/7, 24 x 30 = 720 cents per month, or $7.20. This is at LOAD, if your PC is loaded 24/7.

        At idle, no difference.

        • [Deactivated] on 06/12/2013 - 09:07

          but $0.21/kWh seems about right

          Summer & Winter rates both over $0.30/kWh in SA!

  • Janko on 05/12/2013 - 10:57

    Fantastic information all. This would have taken days of reading to learn.

  • tanksinatra on 06/12/2013 - 14:45
    +1

    I just built myself a rig according to similar parameters. A few notes:

    • Overclocking simply isn't worth it. Intel's beancounters have killed it. Nowadays you need a ripoff K-Series CPU (~$275) AND a decent Z87 motherboard (~$180) and a CPU cooler. Overclocking is no longer 'free'.
    • Even if you do, Haswell doesn't get a great overclock. Maybe 4.4GHz. Don't forget that turbo-boost can sap some of the advantage away. And you lose Vt-d.
    • AMD does allow easy overclocking but Intel has ~150% of the single-thread performance at ~60-70% of the power consumption.
    • Best value CPU (imo) is the i5 4570 ~$222. Or a $300 Xeon if you want HT.
    • Get a cheap mobo. B85 (~$85) is pretty good if you don't need the extra ports. Full size H87 motherboards are also fairly cheap.
    • Janko on 06/12/2013 - 21:49

      All good things come to an end when they become too popular.

      I tossed up between Asus's H87-Pro and Z87-A, but chose the latter in the end simply because the other one wasn't in stock and I'm limping bad on a laptop at the moment. MSY didn't have a B85 in ATX and ASUS didn't make the Q87 (which had my eye for V-Pro) in ATX either.

      Put a 4670K because it was a few bucks over the 4670 and I don't curse myself in future for being so stingy. Will be easier to sell I imagine too.

      Boy the thing flies—it's the first time I've put an OS on SSD.

      Only frustrating part so far has been using IE8 for the short time needed to get Chrome.

      I won't bother with OC for the time being.

    • p1 ama on 07/12/2013 - 19:27
      +3

      Overclocking isn't worth it any more because since Sandy Bridge, Intel's chips haven't been severely underclocked like they were back in the Nehalem and Lynnfield days.

      E.g. i7 920 at 2.66 GHz, i7 860 at 2.80 GHz

      Both of these chips and all chips of the era were capable of pushing far higher clockspeeds than what they were sold at. Back in those days, you could easily achieve 3.20 GHz on these chips with the stock cooler. I managed to get 4.00 GHz on my i5 750 (originally at 2.66 GHz) with a $25 Coolermaster TX3 cooler.

      The reason why Intel decided to clock the first generation Core i7 and i5 CPUs so low was that:

      1) It was a first generation product, so Intel probably wanted to be cautious
      2) Intel was allowing itself leg room to make Sandy Bridge huge

      And Sandy Bridge was huge, with massive performance increases when compared horizontally. Yet, most of the improvements were not so much architectural improvements but clock speed improvements. Take a 4.0 GHz 860 vs a 4.0 GHz 2600K and you'll see there isn't MUCH of a performance difference at all, around 10%.

      Thus, from the original Lynnfield architecture to Haswell now, each generation increased performance by around 10% on a clock for clock basis, meaning that at the same clock speed, Haswell is only 1.1^3 = 1.3 times faster - i.e. just a 30% improvement.

      This means that many i7 860 and 920 desktops from 5 or so years ago are still going strong these days and are probably rivalling a Haswell system bought today.

      But that is the problem with technology, it is as much controlled by market forces as it is by technological advances. When you have a PC that is five years old still being more than fast enough for basically the majority of users, you know that Intel owned the field when it released its Nehalem/Lynnfield architecture 5 years ago. So much so that AMD has never managed to get a foot in the door since.

      But talking about market forces, there simply hasn't been a demand for more powerful systems. The difference between Intel's i7 4770 and its most powerful Xeon chips available to consumers is actually very minuscule in most day-to-day applications. This is a positive shift, however, with shifts moving towards improving the computing experience rather than simply improving how many mathematical calculations per second. There simply isn't a demand on CPU performance increase. If you've used an SSD, you would understand the whole concept behind improving the computing experience.

      Market forces and demand aren't hard to understand, given you can look at GPUs and see how much they have improved. Look at the GTX285, released at around the same time as the i7 920 and the GTX780, released at around the same time as the i7 4770K and there is a remarkable difference. Look on Anandtech bench, we're talking like many orders of magnitude larger. Of course, this is due to applications other than games beginning to leverage GPU computational power and the increasing visual complexity of PC games.

      • [Deactivated] on 08/12/2013 - 09:13

        You know that Intel owned the field when it released its Nehalem/Lynnfield architecture 5 years ago. So much so that AMD has never managed to get a foot in the door since.

        Prior to that time, wasn't AMD on top of Intel for quite a few years?

        • p1 ama on 08/12/2013 - 10:13
          +3

          Intel pulled away starting with their Conroe (Core 2 Duo) architecture and have pulled further and further away since.

          AMD was on top of Intel during the Pentium 4 era, where their Athlon 64 actually sold better than the P4 for a while.

      • tanksinatra on 11/12/2013 - 13:30

        Good post above by paulsterio. I agree entirely. I remember overclocking a Core 2 Duo (Conroe) E6300 from 1.86GHz to ~2.8GHz. Massive gain for free. The 65W TDP left you lots of headroom. Back then it was worth it to simply buy a high-grade motherboard and a moderate CPU. Intel didn't hit you with their 'K-series' surcharge.

        These days the gains have diminished and you pay for the privilege.

  • demiurge on 07/12/2013 - 23:45

    Forget about it if you want to upgrade your cpu, intel will have a new cpu socket next year.

    • p1 ama on 08/12/2013 - 11:59

      This isn't relevant anyway, since when was upgrading yearly ever a good idea? It'd be the same as upgrading from Sandy to Ivy Bridge.

      A Has well CPU today should last for three or four years at least before requiring an update.

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join