Hi all As some of you know from my other posts I'm considering doing a mini itx build in the coming few months. I was thinking of getting an i5 3570k but have read about the new Haswells and have shifted more towards the i5 4670k, good choice? I've also been looking at the available Z87 motherboards (not a great deal of choice really and somewhat expensive) and can't make up my mind on whether I should buy now or wait and hope that there will be more on offer in a months time or at least the prices will drop a little. Does anyone have a crystal ball that can advise me on whether I should wait for any price drops in the near future or more options to land on the market? Thanks! J
Question is, if you'll be adding a dedicated GPU or not. If you want to use the integrated GPU then Haswell is twice as powerful as Ivy Bridge. Haswell won't be dropping in prices anywhere soon, as the next gen of intel CPUs will come earliest in Q2 2015, coupled with a 14nm process. If anything, then prices will slightly rise towards christmas, but in general they'll stay the same for the next 18 month.
hmm I've never gone down the second hand route with tech, not sure why but just don't want to lol. I'll be using a dedicated card for sure. I've read a few reviews and most say for a new system build it's Haswell all the way due to the slight increase in performance and given it currently only costs like £12 more? I meant more that hopefully there will be more motherboard options available which would hopefully mean more in the budget end of things as opposed to a drop in the Haswell chip itself.
But the mobo costs are higher too, and the performance increase from Ivy to Haswell really isn't that much to worry about. If all you are doing is gaming then even going down the Sandy route really wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. One thing to think about, would you actually be overclocking? Because if not don't waste money getting Z chipsets, just get H/B.
You can OC on H and B these days though, but the degrees of freedom is much less due to VRM/BIOS constraints. But tbh, on mini ITX most Z series boards (apart from ours ho-ho-ho) have no better VRMs than H series anyway.
Hey Bindi, been a while. All I can say on this matter is my ASRock Z77 E-ITX is one of the few parts of my build I'm keeping after my upcoming upgrade session. Sorry I'm too hungover to be more specific on the subject but yeah.
Hi all yep I know that the Z77/Z87 boards cost more as they are a newer chipset etc but I was wondering if it was worth waiting a few months to see if cheaper boards will come out? The boards I've seen for Ivy are around the £80 mark whereas Haswell boards I've seen are around £110...those aren't for the cheapest boards in the range however. The Haswell chip itself is only about £12 more than the comparative Ivy. Given the better power draw of the Haswell chip as well I'm kind of leaning towards Haswells + Z87 in case I wish to try out some OC'ing in the future. The build itself will be used for light to medium gaming, streaming of videos, a portable media unit and some Photoshop design work as well. Thanks! J
I'm in the same boat, looking to build a small gaming PC that has both a 4670k and ideally a GPU similar to a GTX 760. Any suggestions to parts, including a motherboard & PSU would be great.
Hmmm, the ASUS Z87M-PLUS is about £100 I dare say you can't go wrong with ASUS I'm lacking reviews of Haswell boards though.
