Been a long time. Upgrades, what's good?

Perkomate

Active Member
Hey gents. The laptop I found in the tip has finally thrown in the towel, and it's time to get my desktop going again.

Based on my diagnosis, I know that at least the RAM is toast, the motherboard probably is and the CPU is old and might be as well.

So, in regards to processors, I'm looking at the descendant to mine, the I5 6600K.
Is overclocking worthwhile with them? If not, is there that much of a difference between it and the non-K?

For motherboards, is there one that's generally regarded as reliable? Last I remember ASrock were becoming the best, but that was 2012.
-edit- And which chipset, Z170?

RAM is fairly straightforward as before I would think

(-Side note, does anyone feel nostalgic about PCing in 2010-11? It seemed so much more interesting then, or am I just getting old)
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Asrock has never been the top of the line, I don't think. Gigabyte is your go to motherboard nowadays and yes, it would be the Z170 chipset board. If you want to overclock then get the K version.
 

Perkomate

Active Member
Is there much point in over clocking with Skylake though? On sandy bridge it was great, but I seem to remember generations after that didn't see many gains
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
All depends on the user. There is always someone wanting to get that extra 500mhz-1ghz extra out of that processor.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Is there much point in over clocking with Skylake though? On sandy bridge it was great, but I seem to remember generations after that didn't see many gains

You don't get diminishing returns when you overclock in terms of pure processing speed. If you can overclock a 2GHz chip to 3GHz, you're going to get a 50 percent increase in pure processing power regardless of the architecture. Some generations or architecture can overclock farther than others, but if you can overclock it you'll get increased performance regardless. You'll get diminishing returns in actual/noticeable performance as there's more at play than pure clock speeds. But that has more to do with software being able to utilize the extra speed.
 

Perkomate

Active Member
Is it worth it as in can you push Sky lake very far
With my 2500k it went from 3.3 to 4.5 with no issues, and that had a big increase in actual speed that I could feel
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I'm not all that familiar with Intel hardware in terms of overclocking, but just looking around on the Internet it seems a decent amount of people can push the 6600K to 4.4 or so without any trouble on a CM 212+.

I'm Denther by the way, my name has changed since I last saw you around here I think. :p
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Yup the hardware seemed much more interested between 2010 and 2013 but there you go.

i5 6600K is great for overclocking. ASRock do have some premium boards though to be honest I tend to stick with Gigabyte these days. Get a Z170 board and if you get the 6600K go with DDR4 RAM, unless you get a Z170 board that only supports DDR3, in which case stick with DDR3.

Are you looking at replacing any other parts?
 

Perkomate

Active Member
Awesome, guess I'll go with the K then.
Nah just those 3, I think everything else works. But I might get a new cooler because why not. And if the 580 is a bit long in the tooth for new games then that as well
Gotta get it running first
 
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