CPU you use, and why?

[TheFalcro]

Hello all,

 

I am new to the forum but not new to LTT,  I am a tinkerer as a lot of folks are that haunt any of the forums. I build custom PC stuff just for the fun of doing it and you will often fin me commenting on case mod posts. the purpose of this thread is to have your say about why you use the CPU that you do. I only want your opinion about your personal choice of CPU. PLEASE DO NOT berate someone for their personal choice the topic is WHY YOU CHOSE YOUR CPU not why is everyone else stupid for thier choice.  People choose the processor they have for sometimes very personal and private resons which are none of your business to judge and copmpletely inappropriate to comment on so don't put others down and call them stupid or tell then that they use a Sh**y CPU just tell me why you use what you have and why you decided to go that route.

 

For the record I own and use both, none of my personal tech is new in fact most of it is more than 6 years old and some is more than 10 years old.

 

My current daily driver is a 6 year old. core i7-3770  on a Lenovo Mobo coupled with an Nvidia GTX 650TI Boost which also happens to be about 6 years old. I game on it everyday and get about 80 fps on Medium high 1080p settings. Why do i run this processor? Honestly because the PC was free other than my time to clean everything, gut the Lenovo ThnikCentre SFF case and make all the stock parts fit into my CoolerMaster elite 430 series case.....there are a few mods in there but none are for better perfomance other than cooling, and power I can hear some of you screaming in the night , WHY??? I have done it because that is what I like to do with PC's

 

Here are all the specs on my current toy

 

Lenovo M82 ThinkCentre

Motherboard; 03T8227 Q75 LGA-1155

8GB (2X4GB) Hynix DDR3 1600Mhz RAM

CPU; Core I7-3770 75W

GPU; Nvidia GTX 650TI Boost

PSU; Thermaltake 600W 80+ Bronze plus the 24 pin to 14 pin adapter for the Lenovo mobo

Storage; Intel Pro 2500 series 180GB SSD (boot drive) WD Caviar Blue 7200 RPM 500GB HDD

Cooling; CoolerMaster EVO Hyper 212 air cooler 3X 120mm fans 2 in case and on on air cooler

Optical drive; (X2) Pioneer DVD RW and a LightScribe DVD RW

Case; CoolerMaster Elite 430 (modified)

 

come on and tell me whatcha got!

 

[Dedayog]

Another one of these.

 

8700K, Fastest gaming CPU when I bought it.

[Fasauceome]

6 minutes ago, TheFalcro said:

I only want your opinion about your personal choice of CPU.

got it for free baby!

[monjessenstein]

Got a 1600, mainly just because it came with a good box cooler, good long term support for the cpu compared to the intel chips at the time (7000 series) and was banking on games becoming more multithreaded in the future, which I'd say payed of.

[minibois]

I have a Ryzen 7 1700 system, which I got right after the first Ryzen 5 CPU's came out. At the time, it was just the most logical CPU to get.

The alternatives were either:

- Ryzen 5 1600 (6c12t)

- 7700K (4c8t)

- 7600K (4c4t)

- X99, which was out of my price range.

 

The Ryzen 7 1700 just made a lot of sense for the price. My main focus is not gaming at high refresh rates; rather I was planning to get a 4K 60Hz panel right back then. I also wanted to do more video recording and editing, which you need to the cores for.

The price just made it an obvious choice. The board being compatible with new Ryzen chips for years was cool too! (in hindsight I should have gotten a different board, but whatever).

 

I have thought about upgrading a little while ago, but right now I am actually thinking I will be good with this CPU for another couple years and might just get a new GPU instead.

[Stormseeker9]

2700x. Took it Over intel due to pricing, recommendations from others + being able to upgrade my cpu without needing a new mobo in a few years. 

[MeatFeastMan]

I did my first ever build just over 2 years ago. I'm currently using an FX 9590 and 1050ti, it's been rock solid, no issues at all. Just some points to make before the FX haters come in and start a war:

1. My room is not a sauna

2. My electricity bill is basically the same as it was before I bought this

3. My NH-D15 does the job just fine despite these silly myths that you needed water for a 9590

 

Here's my build below:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz 8-Core Processor	Purchased For £170.00
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler	Purchased For £75.00
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 R5 ATX AM3+ Motherboard	Purchased For £110.00
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LP 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory	Purchased For £110.00
Storage	Corsair Neutron XTi 960 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	Purchased For £340.00
Video Card	Asus GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB STRIX Video Card	Purchased For £160.00
Case	Corsair Air 740 ATX Full Tower Case	Purchased For £130.00
Power Supply	Corsair 860 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	Purchased For £200.00
Monitor	LG 34UM69G-B 34.0" 2560x1080 75 Hz Monitor	Purchased For £250.00
Keyboard	Corsair K95 RGB PLATINUM UK Wired Gaming Keyboard	Purchased For £200.00
Mouse	Corsair KATAR Wired Optical Mouse	Purchased For £20.00
Custom	MM300 Extended	Purchased For £30.00
Custom	T1 Race Gaming Chair Corsair	Purchased For £300.00
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£2095.00
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-28 16:47 GMT+0000

I will soon upgrade to a 3950x with a Radeon VII that I bought in March so I can max out my 2560 x 1080 75hz monitor. I'll also be keeping some of the parts I'm currently using in this build for my new build. I have no regrets buying the FX 9590 at all and it has shut the critics up.

 

 

 

[Zando_]

Fun.

 

I like to push OCs because higher GHz numbers make me happy, thus I tend to stick with Intel (I had a 2700X on a Crosshair VII for a bit, OCing was pretty oof, couldn't even get over the stock boost on all-core). X58 is the most fun I've had tinkering with and tweaking a system, dialing in the perfect combo of CPU/uncore/mem clock/timings can make for a massive boost in performance over stock (even Window's start menu feels snappier with properly tweaked RAM, lol). I run X99 now because I have a thing for Intel X series chipsets and I got a great deal on my mobo ($99 for an EVGA X99 Classified, official EVGA B-Stock). Have a j-bin 5960X now, tweaking it has been quite fun. So far I'm at around 1.2v for 4.5Ghz core/3.5Ghz ring with RAM at the stock XMP timings (3200Mhz CL16/3000Mhz CL15, I forget which is running rn). Once I get a better cooling setup I'll hopefully be able to push it to 5 with safe-ish voltages, and 4.7-4.8 ez. May also look into RAM OCing but I've heard horror stories about the IMC blowing and I don't wanna brick my CPU. 

 

Have had fun with an R5 2600 in a friend's rig, pushed it to a stable 4Ghz in around 15 minutes or so (then ran a stress test for a while to make sure it was indeed stable), probably a bit more voltage than it needed, but it was under the safe max voltage and temps, and 100% stability was more important than a better clock. Perhaps getting an X CPU on Ryzen was a bad choice, pushing the normal versions seems more fun. 

[Blatcher2]

17 minutes ago, MeatFeastMan said:

1. My room is not a sauna

2. My electricity bill is basically the same as it was before I bought this

3. My NH-D15 does the job just fine despite these silly myths that you needed water for a 9590

I think most of this hate stems from the fact that the 220w 9590 loses or narrowly edges out the 54W Core i3 4360 in games. It's a cool CPU for sure... it just loses to first gen Intel CPU's lmao. Happy to see you're upgrading to a 3950X though

[TrapKetchem26]

I have a Ryzen 5 1600, bought it as my fx 6300 died the day Ryzen 5 first came out ( seems fishy  ) has been good to me ever since but it's about time I upgrade and grab a 3700x on a asus tuf b450m gaming plus and see what it can do 

[asand1]

AMD 3600X best bang for the buck (except for the x part)

 

Xeon X5680 - Free X58 Sabertooth mobo

 

I7-2600 cheap office Optiplex eBay deal

[spartaman64]

my first cpu was a fx 6300 because i didnt want to get a duo core. then i found my parents had a pile of "dead" company computers and I found a lot of them had working cpus and motherboards and they already replaced all of them and didnt need them so i took one of them with a i7 4770 and thats my cpu rn

[jaslion]

Had to buy a new laptop after the old one was barely enough for school (3630qm gtx 675m). Was also using a fx 8320 for my desktop paired with a 7870 xt back then. Had to sell both to afford a 6700hq, 970m, 32gb ram laptop and hated the fact that that cpu was barely any better than my way older laptop but the gpu made all the difference in the applications I used on a daily basis. I lost on combined render power but that laptop was a lifesaver and ran at almost 100% from day one. Nowadays I still do 3D and such on the side and it's really showing it's age quite badly but it'll just have to suffer on till it can't no more. Been running for almost 4 years and still going.

 

I did get a z620 workstation later on due to a company being in debt and that helped a lot for rendering and ended up leasing it out quite a bit dual e5 2697v2's are not to be messed with :p.

[Zberg]

Home PC 9900k because it's the best for gaming, and I mainly game at home.  It is also pretty good at premiere and pretty good is enough for my use case.

 

Work PC (clarification: PC that I keep at work, I dont actually use it to DO work, just like to have my own rig there); 2700x.  I have B450 mobo.  I went to upgrade from 2600 to 3700x.  Got a dud 3700x around launch time and had to RMA.  When I went to get another one, the price of 2700x had dropped so low I couldn't pass up the value deal.  8c/16t and enough performance for gaming, can video edit well, was a great deal at 200$.  Put the extra money into more GPU

[jones177]

My favorite CPU was the i7 2600k I ran two of them from 2011 to 2018. They were the first CPUs that gave me reasonable rendering times and allowed me to be competitive in showing off my 3D designs. Before them I would have to update CPUs every year and they got rid of the mini rendering farms I had to build to meet deadlines.   

 

Before them I used Q9550s that were nice but not game changers.

 

Right now I use two i7 8086ks or binned i7 8700ks.

I like them because I have no issues with them. They run cool without a delid even at 5.1ghz on all cores and all my games(so far) like them.

 

I used AMD from 2006 to 2007 but had software issues with them. At the time my main 3D software was Lightwave by Newtek and on some rendering settings I got constant crashes. I did use them for object creation in 3d Studio and to play games but I had to go back to all Intel for rendering. They were replaced with Core 2 Duo E8400s and a Q6600.   

 

 

[Zando_]

3 hours ago, TheFalcro said:

*snip*

Wait, you're telling me that so long as a PC does what you want it to it's good?  

 

Almost like I had a great time with my 2.9Ghz dual core pentium and 1050 Ti, and only upgraded when it didn't run the games I wanted it to at the settings I liked, and my other upgrades have all been because I wanted one thing or another from the PC that my current hardware config didn't offer. 

 

it's like the whole point of the PCMR is finding a PC hardware combo you love and working with it 

Edited November 7, 2019 by wkdpaul

[TheFalcro]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

Wait, you're telling me that so long as a PC does what you want it to it's good?  

 

Almost like I had a great time with my 2.9Ghz dual core pentium and 1050 Ti, and only upgraded when it didn't run the games I wanted it to at the settings I liked, and my other upgrades have all been because I wanted one thing or another from the PC that my current hardware config didn't offer. 

 

it's like the whole point of the PCMR is finding a PC hardware combo you love and working with it 

Zando Bob, Welcome to the big kids room!! yeas that is exactly what I meant lol

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, TheFalcro said:

Zando Bob, Welcome to the big kids room!! yeas that is exactly what I meant lol

 I'd do fingerguns but I don't have that emoji here. 

But yeah I've always been a fan of both complete overkill rigs (mine is quite overkill for what I do, I just like the hardware) and lower spec rigs that still kick ass. I've always liked older hardware because pushing old stuff to compete with the new parts is hella fun. My main rig is sporting a 5960X now, a CPU from 2014 that can still beat the 2700X I used to have, and is more fun to OC (moar PCI lanes and quad channel RAM too). I'll be building an X58 rig again in a bit too, used to run that platform in my main with a 980 Ti, killer setup especially for the price (my first X58 mobo and CPU was only $120 for the full package). Fun to see CPus from 2009-2011 still usable nowdays, hoping to get a pair of older GPUs to pair with it too and see how they do (have 780s on order but they're taking a while to ship so I'm lowkey worried). 

Still have my OG i5 2400, which was the first upgrade I did from the Pentium I mentioned. Need to do a rig with that again sometimes, it was pretty damn solid for a tiny 2nd gen quad core (LGA1155 CPUs are so teeny compared to my Xeons and HEDT i7s lol). On the Intel mobo I have for it, it actually hackintoshed without any issues too, and for running macOS it's pretty overkill, that OS isn't hard at all to run. 

Heck I had a Core 2 Quad system running Vista for a good while before I got into building my own PCs, and that kicked ass for what I did. And before that I was running a Core 2 Duo laptop with random RAM I found in my dad's tech drawer, with Ubuntu 12.04 - 14.04. Ran VMs and all sorts of stuff off of that just fine. You can do a hell of a lot with not much hardware if you use it right. Something I should take to heart so I stop spending so much on more hardware, but the GPUs and mobos and CPUs are just so pretty... 

[WkdPaul]

* Thread cleaned *

 

Please keep it on-topic and civil.

[Kilrah]

9900K, to cram as much power as possible in the smallest case I could: 

No AMD because the high end parts don't have integrated graphics which I wanted to have in case I occasionally need to use the PCIe slot for something else than a GPU. Plus I do editing and QuickSync is sometimes beneficial.

 

[TheFalcro]

Kilrah thank you for replying excellent information shared in yout post. I followed your link to Case Modding and I left a comment for you there on your amazing project/ Nice work!

[Janne]

3900X because i think having this many cores is cool

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Janne said:

3900X because i think having this many cores is cool

Moar cores = moar better, logic checks out. I'd be running a biggboye 6950X if they were reasonably priced, for now I have to make do with a mere 8c/16t j-bin 5960X .

[Mister Woof]

1) I chose the 8700k coming up from an i5-4570 for scrictly gaming two years ago even though everyone said to just get a 1600 instead. I saw the 720p benchmarks and knew the 30-40% difference would be worth the extra cash. Seems I was right, and many of those who got 1600s ended up also upgrading to 2600s and then 3600s. And even the 3600 doesn't really beat my two year old 8700k today in any meaningful way.  I also considered the 8600k, but coming from an i5 that lacked hyperthreading, I wasn't going to make that same mistake again. 

 

2) I have a 1600 system for my upstairs bedroom gamer. It was a dirt cheap black Friday sale being only $149 for both CPU and motherboard. Unfortunately the motherboard took a shit and I ended up having to buy a new one. It's fine for 1080p/60. I spend more time using this one because of location, oddly, specifically for console ports.

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

for now I have to make do with a mere 8c/16t j-bin 5960X .

Still have one of those in my old system. With OC it's 80ish% as good as the 9900K so no upgrade needed yet