Old Iron - which one to deploy

[J7SC_Orion]

I recently did a thread titled 'Old HWBot warhorses makeover - fixing bent pins and other past sins' after visiting a storage area full of older parts...being in a computer related field, you can never have enough functioning 'old iron' for back-up, mundane tasks or retro gaming etc (I'm excluding machines here that have full server and firewall tasks here as a back-up location). In addition to my 'regular' machines that run daily (a TR / 2x 2080 Ti /  MSI X399 Creation; the recently rebuilt 5960X / 2x 980 CL / Asus Rampage Ex IV; and a recently updated 6700K / 2x 780 Ti CL / Z170 SOC Force), I ended up deploying the fully rebuilt 4960X / 2x 980 CL / Asus X79-E WS) as a NAS + retro gamer.

 

Now I'm left with a choice of deploying either a highly-binned 3770K / Asus Maximus Extreme V (e-atx + extra PCIe slots) or a highly-binned 4790K / Asus Maximus Formula VII (faster, fewer PCIe slots). Both setups were rebuilt and fully stress tested, but not completed / deployed...but the time has come to make a choice for another full retro build. I have all the other pieces (PSU, Case, GPU, HDDs). Rationally, I think the 4790K makes more sense, in part because of the much faster memory bandwidth...but emotionally, I'm really fond of the 3770K setup as that was one of the first hardcore daily + oc builds I ever did...

 

What do you folks think ? Which one should get the nod for a build to pass the time before the next power build in early 2021 (Ryzen5K and/or TR Zen3) ? I'm itching to do a build before then, but only have space for 'one more'...

 

As an aside, I also did manage to test out the old Abit 7 (G) / Pentium 4 below...even found the OCZ (rare) gold heat spreader RAM that went with it. It runs, but it's filthy - be thankful I converted pic to grey-scale -and I do not have an AGP card for it anymore, just some Virge S3 / DX PCI. Besides, I really don't want to fool around with IDE HDD 'master and slave' pins anymore. May be I clean it up and mount it as 'wall-art', the big Zalman Copper 'flower' cooler will look great once cleaned and with the right lighting. The '''loser''' of the above query re. 3770K and 4790K will probably end up right next to it on the wall...

  

  

  

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Edited November 13, 2020 by J7SC_Orion

[Bastiaan_NL]

Performance beats emotional value, so I would go for the 4790k! 

 

(Even in grey-scale the old board looks nasty  )
I have some old hardware on the top shelf of a display cabinet, It's nice to be able to look at it sometimes. 

[J7SC_Orion]

33 minutes ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

Performance beats emotional value, so I would go for the 4790k! 

 

(Even in grey-scale the old board looks nasty  )
I have some old hardware on the top shelf of a display cabinet, It's nice to be able to look at it sometimes. 

  

TX...the 4790K does make the most sense I guess (sniff, the 3770K is 'looking at me'  ). The 4790K also has decent RAM bandwidth (slightly oc'ed DDR3 2666)  

 

BTW, that Abit IC-7 G came from an office and time when people would smoke at work, including cigars...cough 

  

[Supercrumpet]

And on the flip side I vote 3770k because of emotional value for me as well. That was the generation I got into PC building and I started out with a 3570k. That was the motherboard I ended up dreamily staring at on Newegg because of how fat it was.

[Bastiaan_NL]

14 minutes ago, J7SC_Orion said:

BTW, that Abit IC-7 G came from an office and time when people would smoke at work, including cigars...cough 

I once had to fix a pc for someone, ended up returning it without touching the thing...

[J7SC_Orion]

45 minutes ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

I once had to fix a pc for someone, ended up returning it without touching the thing...

  

What about fine Dutch pipe tobacco ? My dad used to smoke this:

  

 

 

 

55 minutes ago, Supercrumpet said:

And on the flip side I vote 3770k because of emotional value for me as well. That was the generation I got into PC building and I started out with a 3570k. That was the motherboard I ended up dreamily staring at on Newegg because of how fat it was.

  

Yeah - that was my first E-ATX experience ( > Dremel for the case). BTW, I still have that 'OC Key' thing for it. The 3770K was (is) a great sample, 5+GHz on 240mm AIO, low 1.3xv range

 

 

 

[J7SC_Orion]

...fyi, after setting this build question aside for two weeks, I decided on building...both    The 4790K will run some development code on MS Server, while the 3770K will be used as a guinea pig for different Linux packages.

[Bastiaan_NL]

Haha, I like your style!
 

[J7SC_Orion]

...old CPU soldiers never die, they just somehow end up in my soho office  

[bonami2]

4790k is still a monster with fast ram

[J7SC_Orion]

2 minutes ago, bonami2 said:

4790k is still a monster with fast ram

  

...yeah !  I'm running G.Skill TridentX F3-2666C11Q-16GTXD (before RAM oc) on that setup

[ENTERPRISE]

I remember my 4790K from Silicon Lottery. 5.2GHz on that baby. Still a solid CPU to be honest. 

[J7SC_Orion]

9 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

I remember my 4790K from Silicon Lottery. 5.2GHz on that baby. Still a solid CPU to be honest. 

  

...still very solid indeed, per Cinebench R20 results below from various runs I did early last year (note that the 3770K did not have 5.2 giggles single core in that table). My 4790K was also from that special batch and would do 5.2 GHz on water..

 

...with a single phase cooler and at just below 1.4v, it would do 5.4 GHz - 5.5 GHz...come to think of it, I still have that single phase cooler (about - 50 C) 

 

Edited January 14, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[ENTERPRISE]

1 hour ago, J7SC_Orion said:

  

...still very solid indeed, per Cinebench R20 results below from various runs I did early last year (note that the 3770K did not have 5.2 giggles single core in that table). My 4790K was also from that special batch and would do 5.2 GHz on water..

 

...with a single phase cooler and at just below 1.4v, it would do 5.4 GHz - 5.5 GHz...come to think of it, I still have that single phase cooler (about - 50 C) 

 

I think you need to bust out that phase change cooler again

[J7SC_Orion]

10 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

I think you need to bust out that phase change cooler again

   

...if you say so 

 

[ENTERPRISE]

6 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

   

...if you say so 

 

5.6Ghz eh, nice ! If only phase change was cheap to run 24/7

[J7SC_Orion]

8 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

5.6Ghz eh, nice ! If only phase change was cheap to run 24/7

  

5.6 giggles was the peering-over-the-edge absolute max. This CPU's voltage "wall" is just past 5.5 giggles. BTW, I actually did run that single-phase cooler a fair amount back in the day, including for gaming, not least as 96% of our power here in BC is 'renewable' (hydro) and relatively inexpensive.  But then I got into HEDT and a single phase cooler's transient response is just not fast enough for those, even with 350W heat dissipation capability.

 

Speaking of phase coolers, DerBauer just got a nice (huge) two-phase cascade for CPU and/or GPU...up to - 110 C. I wouldn't want to plug that into a normal wall outlet, nor listen to it for long. Still, that's quite s.th. if you have the space and power grid for it

 

 

[ENTERPRISE]

59 minutes ago, J7SC_Orion said:

  

5.6 giggles was the peering-over-the-edge absolute max. This CPU's voltage "wall" is just past 5.5 giggles. BTW, I actually did run that single-phase cooler a fair amount back in the day, including for gaming, not least as 96% of our power here in BC is 'renewable' (hydro) and relatively inexpensive.  But then I got into HEDT and a single phase cooler's transient response is just not fast enough for those, even with 350W heat dissipation capability.

 

Speaking of phase coolers, DerBauer just got a nice (huge) two-phase cascade for CPU and/or GPU...up to - 110 C. I wouldn't want to plug that into a normal wall outlet, nor listen to it for long. Still, that's quite s.th. if you have the space and power grid for it

 

 

Yowzer that is one phase cooler, I would not fancy paying for that baby to run.