Faulty CPU / Upgrading PC

[CheesePie]

Hi guys,

I have a 3-year old pc (specs below) that recently died. It's most likely the CPU. When I turn the PC on, there's this noise about four seconds in that sounds like something's turned off and then my CPU starts making a clicking-noise, like when a wire hits a fan. It turns itself off after 30 seconds or so, after that it turns itself off after 5-10 seconds. I never had any problems with it, it suddenly happened one morning when I tried turning it on. I'd used it without problems the day before.

I thought since (if) I have to replace the CPU, I might aswell upgrade the GPU and MoBo too just because, but I'm not very good at knowing what parts to choose and what fits, and I know mmo-c got amazing people that loves helping others out, so I hope one you will help me out

Budget

Budget isn't a problem, but I'll set it to 1000 usd.

Games

I don't need a high end pc, the only games I play now is Heroes of Newerth, CS, Diablo, SC, Skyrim and Crysis on occasions. I'm not superfussed about playing them all on top graphics, esp not Crysis, but it would be nice having them high-ish.

Current build:

CPU: AMD FX-8120 8-Core Processor
GPU: XFX Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3, Socket-AM3+
PSU: Silver Power SP-SS850 850W PSU
Case: Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl

Kind of tired of AMD, so anything else would be preferred this time if possible, but if you think AMD would work better or w/e, I'll follow your advice!
Case can be replaced if needed, but quite happy with it so far.

Thanks!

[Kagthul]

in most cases, AMD isn't the way to go. Would be helpful if we had something more concrete than "spending less is great" - even if you have a higher end budget, a "this is what id LIKE to spend" number would be very helpful.

to give you an example of how far your money can go, though ... Im currently in the process of constructing a mITX enthusiast build for a friend who has joined the Navy. Hes busy with his second stage schooling and its hard for him to get parts, so im ordering and building for him and shpping it to him. His budget was 1200$, for that 1200, he's getting:

Core i7 4790K (4.0Ghz, Quad Core + Hyperthreading), 16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, 1TB HDD, GTX 970 (second fastest card on the market right now), a high end mITX enthusiast case (Hadron Air), and a great Z97 mITX motherboard, with some cash to spare. (Well see how the deals are at Microcenter when i go monday, but i think ill get out the door for ~1100).

Thats a fairly top-end system. Itll crush anything at 1080p and run most games at high/max settings at 1440p. If thats within your budget, someone here can cook you up a parts list (or i can do it later after i get off my ass and clean the bathroom, which ive been putting off for days..).

You can still get a great system for substantially less than that (a great i5 based system for the 700-800$ range is certainly within reason). Just depends on what you want to spend.

[CheesePie]

Good point! I live in Norway, electronics here are usually more expensive than UK / US, so not sure what my budget would translate to (take the gtx 970, it's ~525 usd in Norway, 360 on US amazon). Hopefully uk amazon ships whatever I need, they rarely do though.

I suppose I'll set the budget to 1000 usd, thanks

[Will]

Simply refer to Tom's Hardware if you need help choosing hardware for the money. They regularly run articles called 'best [hardware] for the money - [month and year].

I cannot recommend an i7 for basic gaming - this is often not worth it. So unless your needs require an i7 specifically for its hyperthreading benefits, or unless you plan to do some seriously CPU-intensive stuff (most games are harder on the GPU), I would say get an i5-4690k and put the savings towards something that would reap more rewards, such as a bigger graphics card, an SSD, or a fan speed controller, or perhaps a sound card.

Don't take my word for it; there are numerous tests and research to reveal that an i7-4790k is, under most circumstances, 0-2 FPS ahead of an i5-4690k in most games, if even that. In a lot of cases there is no difference, and in some games it's slightly slower. I'd agree with Tom's Hardware; best value CPU for gamers is the i5-4690k.

I'm going to go ahead and draft up a small PC for you. Amazon will be my only source because I'm lazy. I KNOW you only asked for the CPU, GPU and mobo, but I've drafted up an entire PC anyway. Just take from my advice what you want

i5-4690k
Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2 Motherboard
SeaSonic G Series 550-Watt (80+ Gold Certified+ PSU (5 year warranty, top OEM, love 'em)
MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G (Twin Frozr V design) - Cannot recommend Twin Frozr MSI cards enough, they clock nicely and run really quiet under load.
Cooler Master HAF 912 case
Noctua NH-C14 CPU cooler (comes with NT-H1 thermal compound so don't buy any separately)
Samsung 850 EVO or Crucial MX100 SSD as a boot drive and to put your favourite things on
Hard Drive 1TB WD Caviar Blue (or Green if you're feeling eco!)
Ram: G.skill, 8GB (2x4GB) Ripjaws X-series DDR3 1600 Mhz

So far it comes close to a grand (actually a bit over by my guess but close enough!) and you'll get kick ass performance and crazy value for your money.

With that combination of case, cooler, mobo, and Twin Frozr graphics card you can overclock quite nicely! If you want to possibly throw in a second graphics card in the future then with this motherboard you can, you may want to consider a 750-watt PSU if you really want to think ahead. This is the only area in hardware where I consider 'future-proofing' to actually make sense due to the less 'generation-breaking' nature of PSU technological development, and in part to the fact that PSU's gradually lose capacity over time due to capacitor ageing.

[Kagthul]

I cannot recommend an i7 for basic gaming - this is often not worth it. So unless your needs require an i7 specifically for its hyperthreading benefits, or unless you plan to do some seriously CPU-intensive stuff (most games are harder on the GPU), I would say get an i5-4690k and put the savings towards something that would reap more rewards, such as a bigger graphics card, an SSD, or a fan speed controller, or perhaps a sound card.

Don't take my word for it; there are numerous tests and research to reveal that an i7-4790k is, under most circumstances, 0-2 FPS ahead of an i5-4690k in most games, if even that. In a lot of cases there is no difference, and in some games it's slightly slower. I'd agree with Tom's Hardware; best value CPU for gamers is the i5-4690k.

My only reason for getting an i7 for my friend's build is the availability of a local Microcenter - its literally cheaper than the i5 sometimes (this week, its on sale for 199$ in store). For most people, yes, the i5 will do just fine, particularly if you are not a heavy multitasker.

However, if your machine is not just a gaming machine and is your daily driver/do-everyything-at-once machine, i cant overstate the performance benefits of more cores. its anecdotal, but i can assure you without a doubt that my current daily-driver (a Mac Mini "Server" Late 2011, Sandy Bridge i7 @ 2.0/2.8Ghz) is DEMONSTRABLY faster than my previous daily-driver (Sandy Bridge i5, 2.5/3.1Ghz) because of more threads, despite both the base clock and turbo boost being significantly lower. Most daily-driver tasks are far less bound by CPU clock speed than they are by multi-threading, and if you're doing any daily-driver tasks in the background WHILE gaming, particularly if you leave a bajillion browser tabs open, stream music, and have other stuff going on in the background, the i7 will be a better bet for computer longevity than the i5. If it is in your budget and you're a heavy multitasker, even if it is just simply daily-driver stuff, you WILL get more mileage out of the i7. That being said, an i5 will perform JUST FINE as well. It's about budget vs performance needs, mostly.

And price where you live is definitely something to be concerned about.

[CheesePie]

Appreciate all of your input, guys!

i5-4690k
Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2 Motherboard
SeaSonic G Series 550-Watt (80+ Gold Certified+ PSU (5 year warranty, top OEM, love 'em)
MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G (Twin Frozr V design) - Cannot recommend Twin Frozr MSI cards enough, they clock nicely and run really quiet under load.
Cooler Master HAF 912 case
Noctua NH-C14 CPU cooler (comes with NT-H1 thermal compound so don't buy any separately)
Samsung 850 EVO or Crucial MX100 SSD as a boot drive and to put your favourite things on
Hard Drive 1TB WD Caviar Blue (or Green if you're feeling eco!)
Ram: G.skill, 8GB (2x4GB) Ripjaws X-series DDR3 1600 Mhz

whether I'll go i5 or i7, I'll decide that later. Thanks for the build, I'm pretty sure I'll go for the mobo, cpu and gpu.
as I already have an SSD, hard drive and RAM sticks (Kingston DDR3 HyperX 1600MHz 16GB), I assume I can just continue to use them? are there any reasons to replace them?

the PSU I have now is a little bit overkill, but it's big enough for whatever I throw at it, so I want to keep it. i know the PSU is not the part you want to save money on though, so do you think I should replace it, or is it fine if I leave it in?

regarding the case - I want to keep most of what I already have as I'm quite happy about it so far, nothing's failed on me yet (except the CPU obv), do you know if the mobo and gpu will fit in my current case?

Thanks for all your help guys, it's appreciated

[Spalding]

Hey guys, do keep in mind that intels 5th gen cpu is being released soon soyeah... 20% better performance and more...

[Kagthul]

Broadwell does NOT offer 20% better performance. Not even remotely. It's a pure die-shrink of Haswell, nothing more. Performance gains for the parts that have been seen have been sub-5%.

Skylake desktop CPUs, particularly enthusiast models (K-series, unlocked) likely wont see the light of day until very late 2015 or early 2016 at this point. (All but confirmed now, with Broadwell-K parts debuting at the same time as low-power/mobile/integrated Skylake, with Skylake full desktop and K-parts at least six months behind that so as not to trample on Broadwell).

So, no, there will not be 20% CPU gains with magical 5th generation parts.

to Cheese:

The DDR3-1600 you have now is fine and is the defacto standard for Z97 boards (though most support the older DDR3-1333 and faster OCed parts too) so you're fine to keep that. Same with the HDD and SSD - if they are good SATAII/III parts, no reason to replace them.

If your old PSU is a good quality part and has enough wattage to do what you need it to do, there's no reason to ditch it.

Same with the case - if it's an ATX compatible case, all the parts should fit (GPU length being the only potential issue)

It mostly looks like you only need to replace your CPU, MoBo and GPU, from what you're saying.

I'd suggest (as pointed out above) a good Z97 chipset ATX MoBo, either the i5 4690K or i7 4790K for the CPU, and a GTX 970 for the GPU. (The 980 is about half again as expensive and only performs about 15-20% better, and unless you're gaming at 1440p and want to max evrything, you will likely notice little difference).