Fountain of Eternal Youth - 2500k to 3770k?

[small256]

Hello all,

i5 2500k - what a cpu, eh? Except I never really pushed it with an AIO cooler, and now it's too late (41C on idle - even with excellent case flow, 3.4ghz. It hits 81 on "real world" load, which makes me twitchy.)

I recently swapped the GTX 570 for a 580 that I managed to get for peanuts and it got me thinking - why not upgrade the CPU too, and get a bit more life out of the ol' girl?

I'd heard of using 3rd gen on 2nd gen boards so I had an email exchange with Zotac to double check all supported chips for my board, and the nice man told me all about the 3rd gen cpus working with a BIOS update for Ivybridge support (which I believe I've found).

So why not go for 3770K, I'm thinking? They're not a bad price used.

Does anyone have any experience of this, or advice they'd be willing to share?

 

[PP Mguire]

It'd work and be a little upgrade, but you need to figure out why your 2500k is hitting 81c on an AIO.

 

[small256]

It'd work and be a little upgrade, but you need to figure out why your 2500k is hitting 81c on an AIO.

Absolutely - that was going to be part of the investigation. My assumption is either the AIO or thermal paste conking out. Money on the AIO. But every part (except the 580) is 7 years old, to be fair.

These temps are outliers, but they do happen. The plan was to try and get a gen 3 for a good price, new compound, see what happens and go from there. Don't think the thermal paste has ever been changed, now that I think about it...

Am I likely to see any real world improvement over the 2500k? Don't get me wrong, I know how incredibly subjective that question is. I'm really very interested in opinions though.

 

[PP Mguire]

With only a 580, not too much. I have a video showcasing my 2500k running a pair of Titan Xps albeit at 4.5Ghz and 5Ghz. It didn't struggle too bad at 1080p even on CPU bound titles like GTA V.

I suppose ultimately it really depends on what you are doing on your machine. If your goal really isn't gaming but rather productivity that will take advantage more of 8 threads rather than 4 then yea it'll be a good upgrade (as the clock speeds are a tad higher too). Another 8GB of RAM would go a long way too.

 

[small256]

I suppose the goal here is to cheaply breathe new life into it - to tweak or upgrade so that I "feel" a difference.
Whether that's better FPS in Skyrim, or faster resposne/load times.
I'm not expecting a like-new experience, but feeling as though your tinkering and effort have paid off is why we do this, I think.

If £100 towards a 3770k would be better spent on improving OCability, cooling etc., or maxing RAM, I'm open to suggestions!

I guess the point of this is to have a fun little project that won't cost too much financially, and that gives me an appreciable difference in performance (nebulous concept) once complete. One day I'll start afresh, but probably not until TES IV!!

 

[PP Mguire]

If that's the case I'd get an SSD then and some more RAM. Figure out what's up with your cooler and try some OC, even if it's just a small bump to 4.0GHz.

 

[small256]

TES VI, I meant, of course... eh heh.

Anyway, thanks for the advice! Seems thermal compounds have changed a little since the last time I looked. Maybe that and a nice new cooler would be enough to push the envelope.
And delidding is a much hotter topic! That'd be a fun thing to try, but I don't think I want to risk not having a CPU at all...

 

[PP Mguire]

TES VI, I meant, of course... eh heh.

Anyway, thanks for the advice! Seems thermal compounds have changed a little since the last time I looked. Maybe that and a nice new cooler would be enough to push the envelope.
And delidding is a much hotter topic! That'd be a fun thing to try, but I don't think I want to risk not having a CPU at all...

Delidding is not meant for your CPU, Sandy Bridge is literally the coldest running chip Intel has ever made.

Grab some Thermal Grizzly for the TIM. Something like an H50/H55 (probably similar to what you already have) is more than enough for a small 4Ghz overclock. Back in the day I ran mine 24/7 at 4.5Ghz on a push/pull H50 setup with a GTX 580 as well. Make sure all the dust is off the radiator and fan, double check pump works well and it should be good to go.

 

[small256]

Noted.

And really, thanks for all the advice. You've been very helpful, as per usual!

Fun fact: hit 90C on two cores yesterday.

 

[PP Mguire]

Yea that's no good, tjmaxx on those chips are lower than what we have today. Definitely get that taken care of quick.