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Socket 1156 best CPU to OC with? To upgrade or not?

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Helgaiden

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2003
Hi all. A friend of mine dug up his old PC and while i was hoping it would be socket 1366, it turned out to be socket 1156. Has a good amount of ram, but a weak old i5-750. At this point would it be more cost effective to just sell these parts and upgrade the system (would need pretty much everything...) or is there maybe like a good i7 or Xeon worth upgrading to overclock with? The motherboard is a gigabyte GA-P55-UD3L. Thanks in advance.
 
I don't think first generation i series will cut it much for gaming anymore, so you may be looking at a complete rebuild, if gaming is the intent of the system. If it is just an OC box, I don't see why it can't function as that, even with the parts it has.

If you aren't opposed to going team red, Ryzen 5 1400 or 1500x would be a great place to look. If gaming is the primary purpose, for 1080p, 16 gigs of ddr4 3000 or 3200 ram will work, but you can get away with 2400 and not see any major difference in performance.

For a GPU, the 8 gig RX580(again team red) is the current best for $220. If you want to go team green, a 6 gb 1060 will do the job well enough.

Snatch up a samsung 850 evo 250 or 500 gig ssd, throw a 1-3 tb storage HDD if you need more space after.

Here is a list I made for a friend of mine who is getting his first desktop pc together:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/YX36d6
 
yeah he wants it to be for gaming, i advised on a ryzen build as well with an rx480 or 580. We'll see what happens. Honestly doesn't need to acheive more than 60fps.
 
Well, even if they don't "cut it", they are still faster than Piledriver...

But agreed, good choice would be to grab a R5+B350+RX480.
 
i dunno first gen is still more then good enough for current gaming. depends on the res and how cpu dependent the game is vs gpu dependent. with the way prices are i would get him in the door with a Z2xx board and the i3-7350K.

really though his rig will come down to how much he has to spend and what he needs(ie dvd/bd drive, psu, etc.)
 
I see no reason to get the I3 now that ryzen is here.

Not only that, but AM4 should be here for awhile if previous trends are followed. This means when Ryzen 2 comes out, the motherboard should be compatible if more powerful IPC is required.

That said, the 2 year performance boost cycle is coming to an end, its taking longer and longer to figure out ways to boost processing capability. That, and we are approaching a point where the manufacturing process is getting quantum level electron interference. Silicon processing may be coming to an end soon if we don't manage to find a way to subvert this issue.
 
I would try a new video card first and see if that will do the job for the games played. What do you have to loose?
 
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