Hello guys, 3 years ago I bought my Core I7 Hex Core Processor with a LGA 1366 Asus Rampage III Motherboard to accommodate it. I was very happy to get my hands on this processor since it was the fastest at the time but shortly after the LGA 1366 Socket became obsolete. Although I love this processor I feel frustrated by the limitations of not being able to increase the memory and other things. I mainly use my Pc for Web Development, Photography and Video Production, I do like to play games on occasion. So my question is would this Processor serve fine on the long run or shall I upgrade to something different while I can still sell this processor and get something in return for it and invest in something more modern in this day of ever-growing technology? If so what which would would be the best option.
Thank you very much for your advice,
Gio
If you have decent cooling, this CPU can overclock like a beast. Finding an upgrade will cost ~$800 USD and may not be worth the performance boost compared to a hefty overclock. If OC'ing is not an option then I would suggest waiting until Haswell-E is released or going dual-socket 1366 with 2 Xeon L5520's (about $200 for a board and processors on Ebay). In my opinion, you should stick with that CPU for another year or two. It is still a powerful CPU and depending on the rest of your build you may be better served by an SSD, more RAM (I believe this platform supports 96GB, not sure how you can't add more), a workstation GPU to offload some rendering tasks, among other things.
Thank you so much for your excellent advice. My cooling is pretty solid but it's all fans and a heat sink, for that reason I have yet to overclock this processor. I've been considering upgrading to liquid based cooling soon. Yes I do have one SSD drive. I've actually stuck with 24gb just based on the specifications of the processor found on the intel site.
(http://ark.intel.com/products/52585/Intel-Core-i7-990X-Processor-Extreme-Edition-12M-Cache-3_46-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI)
It shows Max Memory Size 24GB, I always thought that meant the processor is limited to that. Lol, Still kind of a rookie when it comes to hardware, but happily learning. Once again thank you so much for your great advice.
Yet to overclock...... Get to it. Those chips are some of the best oc'ers still and will wipe the floor with some current gen stuff.
Grab a cooler like a noctua d14/ noctua u12s, or an AIO wc cooler (h100 or whatever will fit) and follow one of the many guides out there for overclocking the 1366 chips (OC3D etc or youtube).
If you are new to the guts of your pc, open it up and learn. - google be your friend.
Wait, you have a 24 GB SSD? Max memory size is for the RAM, not the amount of storage.
Like Mmcx125 said, you might want to hold onto that processor for another year or two. Intel's Haswell-E is coming out with at least one new socket, and DDR4 RAM is right around the corner. In my opinion any major upgrade at this point in time should wait until DDR4 comes out because the instant it does, DDR3 is on its way out.
Thank you very much for your advice. Yes i will definitely go ahead check out those coolers first, they sound great. I actually I built my pc but always been scared to overclock just cause it was such a expensive investment, so I really didn't go in to it all.
Thank you for your advice. After all the great advice I've gotten on this thread I'm planning on keeping 990x.
That is what my concern was actually, I've been working very complex projects as of late and wanted to upgrade to 32GB RAM but thought this CPU is limited to 24GB. My SSD is a500gb Samsung Evo.
Of course if DDR4's release right around the corner, I'll definitely wait.
What is found on the Intel site is for the lowest common denominator of tested configurations that take into account what was available at the time. 6x4GB of DDR3 was the most that you would really ever see that long ago, while today you can get up to 32GB sticks if you really look for them. 16GB sticks are relatively cheap. If the board can accept 16GB sticks (Rampage boards can) you can populate all 6 slots with them. Anything more than 32GB is really a waste though, even editing and rendering multiple 4k videos you will hit a speed wall before a memory one.
Overclocking is actually fairly easy on those chips and the damage potential is overstated by many. If the thermals get too high the PC will automatically shut off and there is just about no risk of frying anything unless you have a crap PSU or are trying LN2 cooling and pushing volts like Jung pushed coke. Find a Nehalem overclocking guide and experiment. You have no worries as long as the temperature keeps under 70 C. HWMon by CPU-ID is one of the best tools for this, and it is completely free.