feeling impulsive.....silly upgrade?

[monkeydelmagico]

Hi all,

I've used the same ECS A785GM-M AM3 mobo for at least 3 years now. The bones of my system have seen two athlon upgrades, and now the phenom in my sig. The dilemma.....I hear AMD has stopped Phenom production. I'm eyeballing a microcenter deal on a 1090t. $160 gets me the last CPU upgrade this build will ever see. I can offset costs by selling the free bundled Gigabyte AM3+ mobo for about $50.-. There is also a $10.- rebate. The phenom x4 I have currently should sell for around $50 too.

That leaves an end cost of around $60 to do this upgrade.

I do about 90% gaming and really enjoy tinkering with overclocks. I've read the 1090t is a good OC'er.

Sound like a nutty scheme or genius bargain shopping?

 

[Ken g6]

I think you should stick with your current x4, or get a faster one. More than 4 cores really don't help gaming, in general, and in general they make overclocking harder.

 

[mfenn]

Not worth it IMHO. The Phenom II X6 is faster for sure, but it isn't that much faster in gaming.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

What about a phenom ii x4 970? It would make the upgrade final cost around $40.-

I gotta admit I'm drawn to the Thuban though. There is a certain symmetry in this......x2, x3, x4, and now possible x6. :awe:

FYI ordered a 5870 GPU to either compliment this upgrade or go into whatever comes next.

 

[mfenn]

A 970 still isn't going to be much faster than an 830 @ 3.5GHz. Let it go man, let it go. :awe:

 

[monkeydelmagico]

I should have listened.

Went ahead and bought the 1090t. It made my MoBo sing, and not in a good way. High pitched noises and clicking. Too much wattage under load. Thankfully my son and I were diligently monitoring so it did not kill the board. Ahhh but we had a backup plan....

We tried it in his board, an MSI NF750-G55. Ran significanty cooler at load but there was also an audible hissing. Research showed numerous failures of MSI boards with this CPU. We pulled it out after about a day of benchmarks and gaming. It didn't really give appreciable gains over his current 955be. Not worth the risk.

Sigh. FWIW my son and I had a great couple of days testing, gaming, learning, and bonding. He had never been inside a microcenter before either....the place is like a candy store for computer geeks. If the 1090t sells on ebay for anywhere even close to purchase price it will have been time well spent.

 

[mfenn]

Good for you that you got to spend some quality time with your son!

Gotta get an "I told you so" in there though. :awe:

 

[Zap]

He had never been inside a microcenter before either....the place is like a candy store for computer geeks.

That's the truth! Very difficult to leave there without buying extra stuff.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Good for you that you got to spend some quality time with your son!

Gotta get an "I told you so" in there though. :awe:

We had a good time and nothing got blown up. We did have a minor mishap with a Xigmatek Gaia cooler welding iteslf to the cpu...couple pins got bent on that deal. I learned a new trick though. My son showed me how to fix bent pins on a CPU with a mechanical pencil. The pencil tip works great as supportive sleeves and you just work your way down the row straightening.

Gotta roll the dice sometimes. I'm going to double down and predict the 1090t/MoBo combo will auction for more than I paid for it (trying to save face and make mfenn eat at least one or two words) :$

I'll post up sale prices, including the mobo that came free with the bundle, in a week.