Someday, Somehow... a very budget Haswell build!

[hat]

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=23639251

So I was poking around about the overclockable Haswell Pentium and discovered that some very frugal people were pairing them with certain low end H81 boards and the like. Further web-diving pointed me in the direction of this Biostar board, which costs very little, but should support overclocking, and has all the features I need (excluding PCI-E 3.0, it's only 2.0, but still better than my 1.1/1.0a whatever it is).

Pairing these parts together should prove to make a very capable system, when overclocked. But will it outperform the Q6600 (3.2GHz) in heavily multithreaded tasks such as video conversion, WCG, and newer multithreaded games?

 

[natr0n]

That board looks like its for office use, to stress it like you mention not sure how it would handle it.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I pretty much did the same as you are contemplating a while back, just to play with the Pentium Anniversary CPU that everyone has been shouting about, I looked at various boards to support it but wanted something that kept my options open in overclocking terms for the future, my thought was always to play with the Pentium for upto 6 months then get an i5 Haswell quad so I went for the Z97 Biostar which is still pretty cheap for a Z97 board and got really good reviews from Dave when he tested it. There are some boards out there that are H81 and H97 that can be overclocked with a Bios flash and some have tried it with great success, I can't remember the thread that covered this topic but if you message @RCoon he not only has the list that works he has most of the overclockable Bioses also.

 

[hat]

Well, stock to 4GHz results in roughly 5w more power draw according to a chart I saw. 20w more at 4.4GHz.

 

[RCoon]

I pretty much did the same as you are contemplating a while back, just to play with the Pentium Anniversary CPU that everyone has been shouting about, I looked at various boards to support it but wanted something that kept my options open in overclocking terms for the future, my thought was always to play with the Pentium for upto 6 months then get an i5 Haswell quad so I went for the Z97 Biostar which is still pretty cheap for a Z97 board and got really good reviews from Dave when he tested it. There are some boards out there that are H81 and H97 that can be overclocked with a Bios flash and some have tried it with great success, I can't remember the thread that covered this topic but if you message @RCoon he not only has the list that works he has most of the overclockable Bioses also.

BIOS's plus the weird file required for MSI BIOS flashing
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7hew98jyygsmtqh/AADTuuxTQLBi4FEpB9Nxzkdza?dl=0

 

[newtekie1]

Ok, I know you are going for extreme budget, but spend a little more on the motherboad. 2+1 VRM is scary for overclocking. Especially if you plan to use your H70 which will take airflow away from the VRM area. Not to mention you basically shoot yourself in the foot for future upgrades.

I'd much rather see you spend ~$40 more and get a decent Z97 board like this. You'll be getting so much more. PCI-E 3.0, Frontside USB3.0, 4 RAM Slots, 6+1 Phase VRM, an M.2 port, SATA Express, and Broadwell support when it is released. Plus you can drop an i5 or i7 in this board and overclock those without fear of cooking the board.

As for the G3258 outperforming the Q6600 in multi-threaded apps, I don't think it will. The things I've seen about the G3258 show that because it lacks HT it tends to fall flat in multi-threading, loosing to even things like the FX-4300 and FM2+ APUs.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

oh dont cheap out mobo for g3258 or for overclocking. my b85 mobo fried vrm cause of i put too much voltage and crunch over night. like other said, go towards z97 or z87 boards. because you can upgrade cpu later or after few years.

 

[hat]

Well, it seems the whole idea is tossed into the void due to other plans. It seems I have some new parts on the way I was never expecting!

 

[Vario]

That board looks like its for office use, to stress it like you mention not sure how it would handle it.

h81 works fine, thats a pretty good setup. You can also buy low end dell quad core i5s for about $350 and throw in a graphics card for a complete system.

 

[Schmuckley]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389948&highlight=g3258 motherboard
I would get the next-step up Biostar H81 or b85
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138394R
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138395
..and only Biostar or Asus on low-end boards.
They're the only ones that don't cheap out on the quality of components as far as I've seen.

Ok, I know you are going for extreme budget, but spend a little more on the motherboad. 2+1 VRM is scary for overclocking. Especially if you plan to use your H70 which will take airflow away from the VRM area. Not to mention you basically shoot yourself in the foot for future upgrades.

I'd much rather see you spend ~$40 more and get a decent Z97 board like this. You'll be getting so much more. PCI-E 3.0, Frontside USB3.0, 4 RAM Slots, 6+1 Phase VRM, an M.2 port, SATA Express, and Broadwell support when it is released. Plus you can drop an i5 or i7 in this board and overclock those without fear of cooking the board.

As for the G3258 outperforming the Q6600 in multi-threaded apps, I don't think it will. The things I've seen about the G3258 show that because it lacks HT it tends to fall flat in multi-threading, loosing to even things like the FX-4300 and FM2+ APUs.

As for q6600,It won't.
As for 4300..It can.

http://hwbot.org/submission/2698632_a._coppens_cinebench_r11.5_fx_4300_3.84_points

http://hwbot.org/submission/2656189_munney_cinebench_r11.5_pentium_g3258_3.9_points

oh dont cheap out mobo for g3258 or for overclocking. my b85 mobo fried vrm cause of i put too much voltage and crunch over night. like other said, go towards z97 or z87 boards. because you can upgrade cpu later or after few years.

What board was it?

 

[hat]

Well, I have an i5 2400 coming this way, which is going to crush the G3258, at least at multithreaded tasks. The only thing the G3258 might be better at is SuperPi and older games which are not really optimized for multithreading, which should run well enough anyway.

 

[Vario]

Well, I have an i5 2400 coming this way, which is going to crush the G3258, at least at multithreaded tasks. The only thing the G3258 might be better at is SuperPi and older games which are not really optimized for multithreading, which should run well enough anyway.

i5 2400 will run everything maxed.

 

[Schmuckley]

4 real threads is much mo' bettah!