Thinking of buying a used cpu off Ebay

[Sonikku]

H77m Motherboard http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H77M/
Intel Pentium G630 cpu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116406
8gb DDR3 Gskill Ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231308&cm_re=f3-8500-_-20-231-308-_-Product
MSI Radeon 7770 Video card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127687

I want to play the Witcher 3 and Inquistion and the like (game at 1080p, med with low aa and no shadows is sufficient) and going forward, Ye Olde Pentium G630 just can't cut the mustard any longer with only two threads. If I had $300 I'd get a $100 1150 motherboard and a $200 i5 haswell, but being a gamer on a shoe string budget I kind of do with what I've got and if an i5 like the SR00T can work with my motherboard and enable me to save towards a better $150-180 range video card a little down the road than I think that might be my best option, but I thought I'd ask for feedback before I spent any money first. Here's one listing I was looking at.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-...569?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43de0323d9

What drew me to the i5-2500 SR00T is that while it's clocked for 3.3 ghz, it can do turbo to 3.6, which is a good compromise considering my low cost motherboard wasn't built for overclocking and the chip's multipliers are locked anyway.

 

[SPBHM]

it's going to perform like a stock 2500K, should be fine for the games you mentioned and way faster than the g630

 

[richierich1212]

I did a quick search on eBay and Amazon. It looks like that's the best deal for a quad LGA1155 cpu.

 

[waltchan]

My favorite used CPU of all time is Celeron G460 for $10 shipped, which is gradually becoming like LGA775, but it's always sold instantly after few minutes.

 

[eton975]

My favorite used CPU of all time is Celeron G460 for $10 shipped, which is gradually becoming like LGA775, but it's always sold instantly after few minutes.

Why take that over a G530 dual-core for $10 more?

 

[cbn]

If I had $300 I'd get a $100 1150 motherboard and a $200 i5 haswell, but being a gamer on a shoe string budget I kind of do with what I've got and if an i5 like the SR00T can work with my motherboard and enable me to save towards a better $150-180 range video card a little down the road than I think that might be my best option, but I thought I'd ask for feedback before I spent any money first.

I think the i5-2500 is a wise choice.

For the video card you might want to consider something used in the high end category ---> http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2434551 (Just realize the used AMD cards will not come with the free rewards games)

P.S. My personal opinion is that if you are concerned about long term durability, consider a video card design that is known to have an easy to source fan. (See reference design below)

ASUS R9 290:

Fan part# FD7525U12D :

 

[MrTeal]

What is your budget?

If you're gaming on a G630/7770 now and only have a little more than $100 to spend, I think you'd be much better off to sell the 7770, keep the G630 and upgrade at a used 290 for $175 or so. R9 290 might be a little CPU bottlenecked with the G630 vs the 2500, but it will be way less restricted than the 2500 with your old 7770.

 

[XavierMace]

P.S. My personal opinion is that if you are concerned about long term durability, consider a video card design that is known to have an easy to source fan. (See reference design below)

ASUS R9 290:

Fan part# FD7525U12D :

Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.

The reference design was god awful on those cards. I made it a week before going liquid on it purely to do something about the noise.

 

[cbn]

Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.

The reference design was god awful on those cards. I made it a week before going liquid on it purely to do something about the noise.

Yes, the Anandtech review does mention the noise issue:

http://anandtech.com/show/7481/the-amd-radeon-r9-290-review/15

Okay. well then there is always the the Nvidia reference design which is on many cards:

 

[cbn]

Here is a GTX 780 in the FS forum for $210 shipped:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2433527&highlight=780+gtx

So Nvidia reference cooling is not far off his budget.

 

[cbn]

Maybe another option is look for Video cards that don't have the reference cooler, but use very common fan size or type.

 

[SPBHM]

What is your budget?

If you're gaming on a G630/7770 now and only have a little more than $100 to spend, I think you'd be much better off to sell the 7770, keep the G630 and upgrade at a used 290 for $175 or so. R9 290 might be a little CPU bottlenecked with the G630 vs the 2500, but it will be way less restricted than the 2500 with your old 7770.

"a little CPU bottlenecked" is very optimistic, even the 7770 is greatly bottlenecked if you consider gaming with decent settings for the card I think.

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=406

check far cry 2 and starcraft 2
for current games it's worse, so it should be easy to see the difference with the 7770 and medium settings,

I think it's a good choice to upgrade the CPU first.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

It's a good plan, Sandy quads still perform very well in games. Could go down in history as legendary. i5 2400/2500 can be bought for around $100.-. If your budget can stretch a bit 2500k can be had for around $120.- The overclocking headroom could get you extra time out of the platform.

At this point I believe you are more CPU bound than GPU but honestly either way you go is going to be a huge improvement. Keep an eye on 7950's. They are also selling right around $100.- They have 3gb vram, many overclock well, plentiful, and will play most modern games at greater than medium settings.

 

[Headfoot]

Too bad you can't overclock, those chips always get at least 1.0 ghz more. Its still a good chip at 3.3 to 3.6 turbo.

 

[sm625]

It is a bummer that your mobo cannot make use of an unlocked cpu. But if I had your setup, I would buy that cpu.

 

[Jen]

cpu is good choice. my friend is still useing the one i gave her long ago. now useing a 4590T i found on ebay for a cheap price

 

[MrTeal]

"a little CPU bottlenecked" is very optimistic, even the 7770 is greatly bottlenecked if you consider gaming with decent settings for the card I think.

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=406

check far cry 2 and starcraft 2
for current games it's worse, so it should be easy to see the difference with the 7770 and medium settings,

I think it's a good choice to upgrade the CPU first.

True, though it depends what game you want to play. SC2 is a very CPU bound game. It's tough to get a gaming apples to apples comparison, though you can in synthetics like Firestrike.
i5-2500/7770, average ~2800 or so
G630/290, around 5700 or so

Either way you're going to be unbalanced in gaming, but on average I'd say you'll run higher framerates with an upgraded GPU than an upgraded CPU. Looking at sold listings used 7770s seem to go for around $60 or so on eBay while used G630s go for around $30, so the price difference between the two options really isn't that much, anyway.

Now, if he uses his computer for many other tasks that could use four cores or he could grab a really cheap 2500, that'd be another story.

 

[phillyman36]

Forgive me as I cant remember which cpu go with what. Is a i7 2600k compatible with h77?

 

[MrTeal]

6-series and 7-series are LGA1150LGA1155, and can run SB and IB chips. 8 and 9 series are LGA1150 and can run Haswell. That's all assuming good bios support, of course.

 

[Burpo]

6-series and 7-series are LGA1150,

Wrong answer! LGA 1155

 

[MrTeal]

Wrong answer! LGA 1155

LOL.. sorry, typo. Obviously Intel wouldn't use the same socket for four generations of chips, people could just upgrade the processor instead of the whole platform if that was the case.

 

[phillyman36]

I have to check what i have in my basement i have 2 cpus and motherboards that i havent used in a while just sitting there collecting dust. I believe they are a i72600k inside a p8p67 mobo.

 

[B-Riz]

I would say get an i5 2300 or better and a used 7970 / 7970 GHZ / 280x.

*I have a secondary PC with an i5 2310, H77, 8 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD and a GTX 660, I can play whatever at 1080p with some fiddling.

 

[waltchan]

Why take that over a G530 dual-core for $10 more?

No thank you. G530 will eventually reach $5 someday. I lost out on the steep depreciation costs with the LGA775 (Buy $100 new on E8400, sold for $7 today as used). Never again...

 

[Denithor]

Uh, if you're worried about PC parts depreciating in value over time...you're in the wrong hobby! I usually just give my old parts/systems to friends/family when I upgrade my boxes. Keeps everybody relatively current and I don't have to mess with selling (and shipping) parts.