E3-1231 still a good choice?

[slag]

My motherboard died last night and it was a Gigabyte 1155 coupled with an I5-2500k. I'm going to microcenter tomorrow to replace it but since i cant buy a new one there, I'm going to upgrade. Should i go for the I5-6600k with a MSI Z170A Krait Gaming 3X board and 16 GB of ddr4 memory, or the cheaper route and get an Asus B5M-E and the E3-1231 and set the cores to 38 and reuse my 12 GB of ddr3. I mainly game, but also use it for some movie editing, blu ray ripping, and general home computing.

I figure the 6600k route will run me about 280 for the combo plus another $90 for 16 GB of DDR4. After tax, about $400.

The Xeon route will be $210 for the processor and the board is open box for $68 or new for $85. It's about $300.00 total. I'll reuse my R9-390 and hard drives/cpu cooler.

 

[Arachnotronic]

6600K, you can push that sucker to way higher than 3.8GHz on decent cooling and there is now the prospect of an upgrade path to six-core Coffee Lake.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

If your upgrading then up grade!! Dont waste your hard earned money on old tech when you can buy up to date stuff. The 6600k will wipe the floor with that 2500k and then some!! So my vote is to get the 6600k combo and some new DDR4 and sell off all your old stuff cheap to recoup some of the cost for your new stuff!!

 

[slag]

i had read conflicting info on the lower clockspeed of the xeon not mattering much since it has more threads but that was mainly compared to the older gen i5 processors. I plan on getting a budget board to replace the gigabyte that died and turning it into my nas/plex server sometime after Christmas but want something tomorrow to replace my dead system.

 

[daxzy]

6600K, you can push that sucker to way higher than 3.8GHz on decent cooling and there is now the prospect of an upgrade path to six-core Coffee Lake.

Coffee Lake is not a new socket?

 

[Soulkeeper]

there are only two reasons to go xeon for me:
need/want ecc
can live with never overclocking

 

[freeskier93]

If you're okay spending ~$400...

• i7-6700k - $260 (http://www.microcenter.com/product/451883/Core_i7-6700K_SkyLake_40GHz_LGA_1151_Boxed_Processor)
• Asus Z170-E $119 ($99 after rebate) (http://www.microcenter.com/product/459896/Z170-E_LGA_1151_ATX_Intel_Motherboard)

Knock another $30 off for combo deal and you're at $330 (after rebate). Add in RAM and you'll be just over $400.

I have an E3 1231 and that combo has been super tempting... but the reality is the E3 isn't even close to being a bottleneck for gaming. If you do happen to go the E3 1231 route get a Z97 board. Not all boards allow you to force the turbo boost multiplier to 38 for all cores/threads. My Asus Z97-E is a good example of a board that does allow it. I personally wouldn't go with the E3 1231 at this point though, looks like Microcenter is still selling it for $209, which is what I payed a couple years ago. At the time that was a killer price but not anymore.

 

[slag]

I went to microcenter today and was going to go with the MSI krait gaming motherboard but it was sold out.

Ended up getting the following:
I5-6600k
16 GB Ballistix 2400 Ram (was going to get 3200 but it was another $40.00)
Gigabyte Z170X Ultra Gaming Motherboard (G1 Gaming)
256 GB M.2 onboard SATA drive (for OS)
Artic Silver
Ended up paying $498 before rebate(s)

I'm installing windows now and will play with it later. I was able to activate it with an old copy of my windows 7 license which really surprised me but I was glad it worked.

 

[slag]

Running smoothly at 4.5 GHZ. I just set the multiplier to 45 and set the memory to relaxed OC and it booted right up at 4.5. It wouldn't do 4.7 but I haven't touched voltage yet. It's a nice combo. I have Grim Dawn (thanks humble bundle) and Bioshock Infinite both running (alt tabbed out) and am able to work in my desktop looking up stuff and browsing the web and it doesn't even flinch.

Wish I would have heard about Grim Dawn a long time ago. Super fun game so far.