Recommendations for an i7 board and tower case

R

Robert P

Member
Looking to go to a Core i7 primarily for gaming. I know there are faster processors but an i7 would be more than enough to handle the titles I have, the newest one is Battlefield 1. My Core2 Quad will run it, I'm sure an i7 will let me run reasonable frame rates.

Look for a mobo that has connections for additional drives. I'd like to be able to use my existing older SSDs such as an SDSSDH3-512G-G25 along with whatever a newer board uses natively - I'm not well versed on the evolution of SSDs. Even if the newer SSD drives are faster I don't think I'll need faster drive speed. What I have going on now is the large data files are on a separate drive instead of the main system drive going under the notion that it's not making the system drive do all the work. My plan is to put an image of my Windows 10 system on it then update to Windows 11 so I don't have to reinstall my games. Is it correct that Windows 11 is a free upgrade that can be patched to Windows 10 just as Windows 10 was a free upgrade from Windows 7? My current Core2 Quad doesn't meet the specs for a Windows 11 update.

I'd like it to accommodate a floppy drive and optical drive - do newer mobos have connections for these? By "newer" I mean something in the i7 realm, my current board is a Gigabyte EP45-DS3L which has connections for the floppy and optical drives. That board has a max 16gb ram, I assume any i7 board will have more ram capacity or not necessarily?

Is anything in the i7 realm going to have at least USB 3.0 connections? Do they have USB-C connections? USB-C is what my SanDisk external drive has natively, currently have it connected to a USB 2.0 connector, obviously I'm not getting anything like the speed it's capable of which is a secondary reason I'm looking to upgrade.

Probably going to go with an i7-13700K which has good speed, can be had at a decent price. Is there something you think is a much more obvious choice in the i7 realm?

Will any desktop i7 cpu fit on any desktop i7 board or is that not correct?

What about cases - will an i7 desktop board fit a traditional ATX case or is it different? I.e. like the one picture below.

Suggestions, corrections to my perception/awareness of things is appreciated.

Thanks


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Robert P said:
My plan is to put an image of my Windows 10 system on it then update to Windows 11 so I don't have to reinstall my games. Is it correct that Windows 11 is a free upgrade that can be patched to Windows 10 just as Windows 10 was a free upgrade from Windows 7? My current Core2 Quad doesn't meet the specs for a Windows 11 update.
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You'll need a new license for windows if its gonna be on a new system unless activation is tied to your MS account and all depends on if it was an OEM version or full retail. Windows 10 can still be upgraded to 11 for free. You can bypass the upgrade requirements but for how long is up in the air.
Robert P said:
Looking to go to a Core i7 primarily for gaming. I know there are faster processors but an i7 would be more than enough to handle the titles I have, the newest one is Battlefield 1. My Core2 Quad will run it, I'm sure an i7 will let me run reasonable frame rates.
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You don't need an I7 to run BF. Battlefield 1 is 8 years old. Frame rates is more about the video card then the cpu, but you'll still need a decent cpu like a high end i5.
Robert P said:
Will any desktop i7 cpu fit on any desktop i7 board or is that not correct?
Click to expand...

Not correct, you'll need to look at cpu support for the particular motherboard you'll be getting to see what cpu's it supports and what bios version needs to be installed to support it. You can't put a slot 1700 cpu in a slot 1200 motherboard or vice versa.
Robert P said:
'd like it to accommodate a floppy drive and optical drive - do newer mobos have connections for these?
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Optical drives yes, you just need sata ports. But you won't be able to use a floppy drive unless you buy a usb floppy drive as newer boards don't have the port for an integrated one. For what purpose would you need to use a floppy drive for?
Robert P said:
What about cases - will an i7 desktop board fit a traditional ATX case or is it different? I.e. like the one picture below.
Click to expand...
An I7 cpu and fit on a mini itx, micro atx or atx board but you must have the correct case to fit the motherboard. Any atx case should fit any atx motherboard and smaller but don't expect a micro atx case to fit an atx motherboard.

If you are going new motherboard just get an NVME SSD. Once you realize how fast it is, you'll never go back to sata SSD or sata HDD again.
 
johnb35 said:
Optical drives yes, you just need sata ports. But you won't be able to use a floppy drive unless you buy a usb floppy drive as newer boards don't have the port for an integrated one. For what purpose would you need to use a floppy drive for?
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For one there's a memory diagnostic called Memtest I use on occasion that boots and runs through the floppy drive. Maybe there are others than run off an optical drive? Granted some of my stuff is pretty horse and buggy, I don't know if it would actually work on a machine with 32 or 64 gigs of Ram.
 
johnb35 said:
You'll need a new license for windows if its gonna be on a new system unless activation is tied to your MS account and all depends on if it was an OEM version or full retail. Windows 10 can still be upgraded to 11 for free. You can bypass the upgrade requirements but for how long is up in the air.
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Looks like I'm out of luck, from what I find my Core2 Quad is too old for the the most recent version of 11 which has a requirement that can't be bypassed - POPCNT - and not finding that older versions of 11 are still available. Looks like I'm just going to have to wait until I get a newer machine.

Apparently it was inevitable anyway - my understanding is 10 is being phased out next year.
 
johnb35 said:
You don't need an I7 to run BF. Battlefield 1 is 8 years old. Frame rates is more about the video card then the cpu, but you'll still need a decent cpu like a high end i5.
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Ended up getting a system on Black Friday sale at Best Buy with an i5 14400F, GeForce RTX 4060 8gb, ASRock B760 D5 board - runs Battlefield 1 without a problem with everything on Ultra, frame rates 70s to 100+ going by FRAPS. I don't think I could beat the price building one with the same specs with all new pieces. What a difference. Interesting to see the extra detail I've been missing out on.

Even Battlefield Bad Company2 which ran fine on the other system with the RX 6600 looks even better, more detailed and vivid - apparently FRAPS tops out at 200 FPS.

Apparently things have changed - it runs with one 16gb stick of DDR5 - didn't it always used to be you had to have either 2 or 4 sticks? I think this board has a 256gb capacity but that would be crazy overkill. None of the games I have even come close to using the full 16gb.
 
Robert P said:
Apparently things have changed - it runs with one 16gb stick of DDR5 - didn't it always used to be you had to have either 2 or 4 sticks?
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Nope, things haven't changed cause this is what manufacturers have done for years. But yes, you should have 2 sticks to run in dual channel mode.
Robert P said:
I think this board has a 256gb capacity but that would be crazy overkill. None of the games I have even come close to using the full 16gb.
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For the normal user, 16gb is more than enough.
 
It's a deceptive thing to quantify because Windows would manage ram usage differently when there's more available. So when you've only got 16gb of ram, its algorithm will dump more things off of ram earlier when its deemed unnecessarily to hold it.

Currently with my use case and using Chrome to browse and watch videos on YouTube, Windows could be using around 18GB for me. Most games I find when you have more ram, will allocate more memory for its purpose.

From just my personal experience, not many games use close to 64gb of memory (only a couple would in my list) but more and more will see benefits of having 32gb at your disposal. It also gives you more headroom for background apps.
 
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