Verseus

As some of you are aware, I recently acquired a i5-2500k gaming pc on the cheap. The PC contained a ASROCK Z68 Extreme7 Gen 3 motherboard, Intel i5-2500k, crossfire HD 6970's and 8GB of 1600MHz Corsair Vengance DDR3 RAM. I currently posses a pc equipped with an MSI 970 gaming motherboard, AMD Fx-8320, and 8GB 1866Mhz EVGA RAM, and a 650W Thermaltake 80+ Bronze psu. What I am trying to determine is which pc to keep, and which to sell. The z68 gives me the option to upgrade to a 3770k, which combined with some high frequency ram should go a long way. Thoughts?

I would personally wait. If you can hold out for a few months with what you have, I would do so. If you can't, then go ahead. A 3770k on ebay isn't cheap. The ones I am seeing are at ~$270 USD. If Zen lives up to what they have said, it should outperform that easily for the same price.

Likely not (at 1080p anyway), but maybe someone has already tested it. That is why so many are hopeful for Zen, because what we are hearing now is that Zen has the single core performance of Haswell, but with 8 cores and 16 threads. This would help in a huge way.

This shows a 4690k (OC) bottle necking a 1070 (@ 1080p 144Hz)

Yes. It requires about 2x the power to render games in 1440p, as it has 2x the pixels. It causes the GPU to work much harder, and the bottleneck is shifted.

Depends on the resolution, but I do believe it is more than reasonable to expect that someone who has $700+ for a GPU won't be playing at 1080p.

Well, the 2500k is actually inferior to the 6600k by quite a lot. There are things you can do to help the 2500k (i.e higher speed memory + O.C) but it is showing its age. And whether or not the 1080 is bottlenecked will be determined by your resolution. An i5 4690k (overclocked) at 1080p will bottleneck a 1070. This can be a problem if you are trying to go for ~100 FPS gaming. But if you are in 1440p or 4k, the bottle neck shifts back to the GPU. I believe that as 1440p and Vulcan / DX12 become the next standards, the importance of beefy CPU's will diminish.

If anyone has interest in any of the components, feel free to gimme a shout. The 3 180mm fans are pending, But everything else is still available.

They don't actually sell pc's. They send 99% of the electronics they receive over seas to be recycled, and they receive a small portion of the proceeds. They actually probably made more than if they had shipped it. But in full disclosure, I told they guy that if I had a way to test it I would have offered much more. He understood where I was coming from, and we both walked away happy.

Yep. It had been dropped off shortly before I arrived. Case is an old silverstone monstrosity with 3 200mm fans on the bottom... The entire thing is metal and weighs an unholy amount. The case is missing a few bits, but otherwise the system was shockingly intact

pm me Yea, this never, EVER happens to me. I was so giddy when I saw it, and was about to lose my mind when he agreed. I hope I could get a bit more than that, but still. I am incredibly pleased. Well, I just had no way of knowing if it worked. There was originally a AX1200 PSU in this thing, but it was removed. If it would have had a PSU, I would have plugged it in. I told they guy that I would have offered much more if i knew it worked. I'm very glad it did though

So while taking some items for donation at my local Salvation Army, I stumbled across this monster. Outfitted with dual MSI Lightning HD 6970's (in croasfire) l, an Intel i5 2500k, and a z68 Asrock MB. It was just laying out in the pile of donations. I asked the man running the donations if I could purchase it, and he then proceeded to ask me what I would pay. As I had no idea as to whether or not it worked, I offered $30, which he accepted on the spot. I tested the gpus, and they work. the system also booted to the bios with no issue. I call that a win.

I don't even know anymore man. Apparently it is Kaby Lake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake

I think that is a good plan. I've also heard rumors that Kabby Lake (or whatever the heck they call it) will release on the same 1151 socket as Sky Lake, so you should have a pretty solid upgrade tree to look forward to.

Well, nothing technically. But that minimum could change. It is usually a better idea to buy a CPU that is a little bit better than what you think you need, just in case. That way you will a.) Get better performance b.) Will be able to stay current longer c.) Give your self a little bit of headroom