Couple of Upgrade Questions

[Ryan]

I recently picked up a few upgrades for my rig. Got a Corsair 450D to replace my Cooler Master case that's been falling apart after three years of use; a Corsair H100i to replace my H100 because they were on sale at a great price; and an Asus GTX 970 to replace my HD 6870.

 

I considered picking up an i5 4790K and an Z97 motherboard to replace my nearly 6 year old i7 920 and X58 motherboard, but I've decided to wait and see what Broadwell or Skylake hold. Despite the age of my i7 920, it still handles everything I can throw at it. That said though, given the enormous age difference between my CPU and GPU I'm a bit worried that my CPU will be a bottleneck for my GPU. Any opinions?

 

My other questions is a minor one. My main reason for replacing my H100 with an H100i was because I can now control everything off my desktop via Corsair Link rather than having to open up my case and press the button on the H100 to change the fan profiles. The H100i allows you to control up to four fans. I'll have the two radiator fans connected to it but I was also wondering if I could connect two of my case fans to it which I think would allow me to control them via the Corsair Link software. Or would I just be better off to connect the case fans to my motherboard?

[yoječ]

If you overclock your current i7 to the limit you shouldn't have much issues with bottleneck.

Also, just a note - Skylake and Broadwell will reach the market around the same time, but at first only non-overclockable Skylake CPUs will be available. You'll have to wait some more months for K-series. Broadwell is kinda the opposite, as AFAIK only K-series Broadwell CPUs will be sold.

Edited December 13, 2014 by yojo2

[GG14876]

For the fans: Check the software, but I think it's expecting the connected fans to be in push/pull on the radiator, so it might not handle them the way you want... It will probably ramp the fans to 100% once the CPU temp exceeds a given target (such as 60C or 75C).

 

As for upgrades, there are several options... As you mentioned, the i5-4790k is the predominately suggested gaming CPU (from what I see and remember), there is the X99/i7-5xxx series (all unlocked, usually OC to at least 4GHz) that has 6 or 8 cores and supports DDR4 ram but that comes at a premium as it's all new, Broadwell will not have any "low range" CPUs (Celerons and Pentiums I think) and as yojo said, Skylake will be quick to come out with locked chips first, then the unlocked after a few months.

 

From the looks of it, if you could last about a year or so (yojo's OC idea might hold you until then), the Z170 series (or something like that) should be out and should have some nice high-end unlocked Skylake processors. If you can't wait but still want a "next-gen" system, or if you want to run 16x/16x/16x/16x graphics cards soon (check the MB, only a few support it), or if you need the cores (but it doesn't seem that you do), get a X99 setup. Otherwise, if you can't wait but don't want to also buy new ram, Z97/i5-4970k will probably be your best bet.

 

Hope this helps you.

[Ryan]

Gaming is about the most intensive thing I do so I have no real need to go the X99/Intel Enthusiast Platform route. My i7 920 still handles everything I throw at it so as long as it won't severely bottleneck my single GTX 970 I have no real need to upgrade my CPU at the moment either. I'll probably look at upgrading in about a years time when the mainstream Skylake i5's or i7's (or whatever they'll be called) come out and make the jump over to DDR4 as well.

[GG14876]

Skylake i5's or i7's (or whatever they'll be called)

Hmm... I wonder what they'll be called whenever Intel changes them. I do think that they will roll out new names for when they leave silicon as a primary material in... 2016~2020. At the very least, once they leave the "standard" chips and start commercial "quantum" processor development/production/sales. Could see them using "Proton/Electron/Neutron/Quark/Lepton" names...

 

Anyway, glad to see you got sorted out. Good luck with everything.

[sivispacem]

It's going to be decades before we see consumer-level quantum computing. Our current level of advancement in developing practical quantum computing hardware is, in the context of general personal computing, somewhere around the invention of the transistor circa 1947.