Calavera's Computer Upgrade thread

[Calavera]

Times have certainly changed haven't they? In 2000 a 5 year old 1995 computer would have been junk that wouldn't be able to run the latest games. In 2007 a 7 year old 2000 computer would have been laughable. In 2017 is a 5 year old 2012 computer laughable? Certainly not! I am still running the motherboard and processor I got way back in November 2012. The motherboard is a ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP LGA 1155 Intel H77. The CPU is an i5-3570k. I can't remember if I bought the GPU in 2013 or 2014 but it is an R9 290X. The newest game I've played is Just Cause 3, but it runs just fine.

I always figured when I wanted to upgrade the CPU I'd just throw in the best LGA 1155 socket processor there is. That appears to be the i7-3770k. Looking at comparisons between the i5-3570k and the i7-3770k there appears to be very little difference. The main difference I see is 8 threads on the i7 compared to 4 on the i5.

I originally bought the i5-3570k for it's overclock abilities but I kind of goofed the floof when I did that. The CPU apparently overclocks to atleast 4ghz with little effort. The problem is the H77 board I have doesn't support overclocking even though it claims to in the bios. It was a bit annoying when I found that out the hard way 5 years ago but I figured eh it runs everything fine there really isn't a need to overclock it.

Now it is 2017, it still runs almost everything fine but some things could use a little extra oomph from the CPU. That would require a Z77 motherboard. Looking on Ebay's sold listings I see the cheapest they can be had is for around $80-$100. Which imo is still pretty high considering the age of the LGA 1155 but like I said times have changed.

My question to you all is this, do you think it would be worth upgrading the motherboard just to overclock the processor? I'm on a bit of a budget that really doesn't allow upgrading at all! But the most I'd want to spend is $100 for the motherboard, and I could sell my H77 board for probably $40. So that would put me at $60 for the new Z77 motherboard. I'm currently just using the stock cooler but I have a spare Zalman cooler, the same one seen in this thread. http://bg.blueguerilla.org/viewtopic.ph ... 981#p12981 in that giant red computer with the Intel brackets. I haven't researched the overclocking abilities deeply but with that cooler I could probably get atleast 4.5ghz which is 1.1ghz over the stock speed.

So what do you say, should I spend $60 and overclock the CPU which should hold me over for a few more years or save up for a whole new system? Which at this point isn't really an option. Or just stick with it at stock speeds?

[melancholy]

It's really hard to say no when the cost of entry is so low. One important question: what OS are you running on your setup? Because if you did the free Windows 10 upgrade, that will be gone when you switch boards.

[Skynet]

It's really hard to say no when the cost of entry is so low. One important question: what OS are you running on your setup? Because if you did the free Windows 10 upgrade, that will be gone when you switch boards.

I did the free upgrade, deactivated it from my PC, then installed it on a brand new build and it activated just fine. It was installed on my old PC for at least a year prior to deactivation and installation on new PC.

[melancholy]

It's really hard to say no when the cost of entry is so low. One important question: what OS are you running on your setup? Because if you did the free Windows 10 upgrade, that will be gone when you switch boards.

I did the free upgrade, deactivated it from my PC, then installed it on a brand new build and it activated just fine. It was installed on my old PC for at least a year prior to deactivation and installation on new PC.

Weird. That's not supposed to be how that works. I do know you can still upgrade for free if you download the upgrade utility from Microsoft's accessibility site, but a clean install on a new build shouldn't work.

[Skynet]

It's really hard to say no when the cost of entry is so low. One important question: what OS are you running on your setup? Because if you did the free Windows 10 upgrade, that will be gone when you switch boards.

I did the free upgrade, deactivated it from my PC, then installed it on a brand new build and it activated just fine. It was installed on my old PC for at least a year prior to deactivation and installation on new PC.

Weird. That's not supposed to be how that works. I do know you can still upgrade for free if you download the upgrade utility from Microsoft's accessibility site, but a clean install on a new build shouldn't work.

Worked perfectly fine. I assume he'll need to deactivate Windows first though, like I did. My Windows wasn't an OEM copy, if that helps.

[Calavera]

No worries there, I'm running Windows 7. I tried out 10 on a VM awhile back and just didn't see a reason to upgrade.

[Calavera]

4 months later I finally found a Z77 motherboard. Picked one up for $82.50 shipped, it was hard to get one for under $100.