The Easy Core i3 Upgrade?
Posted on 15th Jan 2010 at 12:59 by Clive Webster with 10 comments
Now that Intel is done with releasing CPUs for the time being, we've got a chance to analyse the situation and see what's worth buying. For those on a budget, the Intel Core i3-530 is your best bet unless your budget is limited to £70 or so, in which case you'll have to look elsewhere. But I'm betting that if your budget is so tight that you can't go for the superior Intel Core i5-750, you haven't got fancy DDR3 memory or an LGA1156 motherboard. Enter the easy Core i3 upgrade bundle.
Comprising a Core i3-530, Gigabyte motherboard, 4GB of DDR3 memory and a cooler, OcUK's Core i3 bundle looks pretty good. As the kit is assembled at OcUK, you shouldn't have to do much fiddling to get the upgrade installed, and as a bonus the CPU is overclocked to 4GHz as standard. By knowing the overclocking potential of the CPU, the cooling ability of the cooler and the frequency of the memory, OcUK clearly feels confident that it can apply that overclock to every bundle.
The motherboard is Gigabyte's GA-H55M-UD2H, which is based on the Intel H55 chipset - we've had good experiences with Gigabyte's low-end motherboards in the past, so I'd guess that board would be decent. In fact, I'll probably ask for one to be sent in for testing any time now.
The cooler can either be Zalman's CNPS 10X Extreme or Corsair's Hydro H50. The bundle costs £350 inc VAT with the Zalman cooler which, while not the best ever, is at least fairly quiet and should handle the overclock without a problem. By adding the Corsair (surely overkill for a dual-core CPU, even if it is Hyper-Threaded?) you increase the price to £354 inc VAT.
The upgrade looks like a stress-free way to get Core i3 to me, but what do you think? Let us know below.
Comprising a Core i3-530, Gigabyte motherboard, 4GB of DDR3 memory and a cooler, OcUK's Core i3 bundle looks pretty good. As the kit is assembled at OcUK, you shouldn't have to do much fiddling to get the upgrade installed, and as a bonus the CPU is overclocked to 4GHz as standard. By knowing the overclocking potential of the CPU, the cooling ability of the cooler and the frequency of the memory, OcUK clearly feels confident that it can apply that overclock to every bundle.
The motherboard is Gigabyte's GA-H55M-UD2H, which is based on the Intel H55 chipset - we've had good experiences with Gigabyte's low-end motherboards in the past, so I'd guess that board would be decent. In fact, I'll probably ask for one to be sent in for testing any time now.
The cooler can either be Zalman's CNPS 10X Extreme or Corsair's Hydro H50. The bundle costs £350 inc VAT with the Zalman cooler which, while not the best ever, is at least fairly quiet and should handle the overclock without a problem. By adding the Corsair (surely overkill for a dual-core CPU, even if it is Hyper-Threaded?) you increase the price to £354 inc VAT.
The upgrade looks like a stress-free way to get Core i3 to me, but what do you think? Let us know below.
10 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyI would also still like to see some numbers on i3-530 vs AMD Phenom II X2 550BE as budget options.
If Scan were to offer a bundle with a similar overclock and a Fenrir - that could well interest me.
I live next CCL but ocuk just cant be beat in price most of the time imo.
It was most definitely second hand, the stepping is the older sort and the motherboard is a bit suspect but I would go for second hand faster over new, slower components any day.
http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews5686.html
@okenobi - i dont think we'll see that comparison because nehalem is so much better than K10.5 and 550BE are only $30 or so cheaper than i3-530's.
when they first started ocUK was a bit of a pain for me, but only in that 2 deliveries took 1 week each. But this was years ago and now they are flawless from my last few years using them, id rate them everytime.
Well my bad experiences were a while ago too, but that kind of rep is hard to improve. Especially when the people you're now happy with haven't messed up yet.