Mother Board likely dead; looking at options. (1 Viewer)

[Jeff]

Pretty sure my mother board died last night. I still need to get the RAM tested but I find it more likely to be the board than to have both RAM chips die.

If it isn't the RAM:
Trying to decide if it's worth it to keep trucking along with the same CPU and just replace the MoBo or to get something more current all together. As is, I don't really have the budget to replace the whole rig at the moment.

The CPU is a i5-3750k (3rd generation). It was built about 5 years ago as a hackintosh. It needs a LGA 1155 socket. Almost everyone I found seems to be either used or refurbished. They seem to average at around $150 (Newegg and Amazon). The cheaper ones don't have the memory slots from what I've seen. I'm almost reluctant to get rid of the i5 and start over as it still did what I needed and from the little I've read, it's still holding up though starting to show it's age. At the same time, I hate the idea of buying a used MoBo for more than what it originally hit the market for.

I really don't do any high end gaming anymore. I mess around on World of Tanks, play at digital painting with Photoshop, and Rocket League. That's about it.

Any suggestions welcome. Particularly interested in trustworthy sites to buy from as well as opinions on AMD vs. Intel. I haven't really researched since this one was built.

 

[buzd]

You can significantly upgrade by just buying a MB/cpu combo, but then you will probably be somewhat limited by the speed of your existing RAM (if it's even compatible). Seeing as it's 5 years old, I would either buy used or just bite the bullet and upgrade MB/cpu/RAM. You can probably get buy with your old video/case/power.

 

[Jeff]

You can significantly upgrade by just buying a MB/cpu combo, but then you will probably be somewhat limited by the speed of your existing RAM (if it's even compatible). Seeing as it's 5 years old, I would either buy used or just bite the bullet and upgrade MB/cpu/RAM. You can probably get buy with your old video/case/power.

Short Verizon: It's working again. I'm starting to allocate budget to replace it Any thoughts on the Ryzen 5 1600 or the i5 8400? or the state of Intel vs AMD in general?

Slightly longer version:
Never did find out what the issue was but it pulled a Lazerus and came back to life. Saturday, I had spent a good bit of time playing with it when it initially happened and it would never proceed past the mobo screen (and wouldn't allow function keys to work). Did a number of reset options and RAM slot swaps....nothing worked.

To make a long story short (or a short story long?) on a whim, Sunday morning I decided to try booting it one more time. It gave me boot options...I followed that until it gave me the option to reinstall Windows (the only option it gave me) and everything is working fine. Dunno if it is an intermittent hardware issue or what. I'm going to ride it until it craters and save money on the side to rebuild.

 

[buzd]

Weird, but I've seen it happen. It could be dust that got moved, or a heating issue that warped something - who knows.

I've always been an Intel fan over AMD, but that's mostly because I'm more familiar and comfortable with their architecture. I know AMD has some good products, but I've never really taken the time to delve into them.

 

[Zztop]

Weird, but I've seen it happen. It could be dust that got moved, or a heating issue that warped something - who knows.

I've always been an Intel fan over AMD, but that's mostly because I'm more familiar and comfortable with their architecture. I know AMD has some good products, but I've never really taken the time to delve into them.

the AMD Ryzen 7 2700k series goes toe-to-toe with the Intel i7-8700k. Reviews just came out today. Ryzen has better multi-thread performance, but lesser single-thread vs the 8700k. One thing that has soured me on Intel recently is their forced motherboard upgrades for seemingly every new cpu generation.

Compared to AMD, their AM4 platform is guaranteed to still be supported until 2020. This might not be a big deal for some, but say instead of just upgrading the cpu with Intel, you'd also have to upgrade the cpu in addition to the motherboard.

Depending on usage, the avg joe would not notice a difference between AMD or Intel. Best bang for the buck right now in my opinion is the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G or Ryzen 3 2200G, both of which have integrated graphics. Both are plenty for general usage and beat the pants off the pathetically weak integrated graphics that Intel offers (the AMD cpu has integrated graphic power on par with a $100 video card so a person could build a very nice budget system for a lot less).

 

[Eeyore]

I built a computer with the 2400g for the office. It's an excellent value. I'm building 3 more.

 

[buzd]

the AMD Ryzen 7 2700k series goes toe-to-toe with the Intel i7-8700k. Reviews just came out today. Ryzen has better multi-thread performance, but lesser single-thread vs the 8700k. One thing that has soured me on Intel recently is their forced motherboard upgrades for seemingly every new cpu generation.

Compared to AMD, their AM4 platform is guaranteed to still be supported until 2020. This might not be a big deal for some, but say instead of just upgrading the cpu with Intel, you'd also have to upgrade the cpu in addition to the motherboard.

Depending on usage, the avg joe would not notice a difference between AMD or Intel. Best bang for the buck right now in my opinion is the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G or Ryzen 3 2200G, both of which have integrated graphics. Both are plenty for general usage and beat the pants off the pathetically weak integrated graphics that Intel offers (the AMD cpu has integrated graphic power on par with a $100 video card so a person could build a very nice budget system for a lot less).

I built a computer with the 2400g for the office. It's an excellent value. I'm building 3 more.

I suspect this is good advice from those more knowledgeable than me.

 

[Tapxe]

One thing that has soured me on Intel recently is their forced motherboard upgrades for seemingly every new cpu generation.

I get what you are saying, but at a certain point, an older MB/RAM combo would significantly hinder the performance of a newer CPU so it's not really worth it imho. Why chain your rocking new CPU to 1/2 it's FSB architecture or speeds and then give it RAM that can't supply the throughput it needs to work.

 

[Zztop]

I get what you are saying, but at a certain point, an older MB/RAM combo would significantly hinder the performance of a newer CPU so it's not really worth it imho. Why chain your rocking new CPU to 1/2 it's FSB architecture or speeds and then give it RAM that can't supply the throughput it needs to work.

CPU roadmaps are planned years in advance.

Coffee Lake processors use the same physical LGA 1151 socket as Skylake and Kaby Lake, but there are marginal differences. Coffee Lake supports ddr4-2600 vs ddr4-2400, and has 2 extra cores. Yet Intel, with knowledge of where they were headed years down the road could have very well built in compatibility into the motherboards from day 1, but they chose the planned obsolescence route instead.

Kaby Lake came out Jan of 2107. Imagine building a computer with a $300+ CPU and $200+ mobo then 12 months later your cpu/motherboard is EOL w/o an upgrade path.

Meanwhile modders managed to get "incompatible" Coffee Lake CPUs to run on older motherboards, and in this article Andrew Wu, a product manager Asus, commented that it was "Intel's decision" not to support Coffee Lake on older boards. He also downplayed the power requirements, saying it only "makes a little bit of difference, but not much."

 

[wnelson]

My 2017 motherboard smokes my old 2012 motherboard with comparable hardware.