Need Advice For Major Upgrade (cpu,mobo,ram)

For the past couple of days I've been checking the market for a new CPU because I've finally reached the point where my old 3.0GHz dual core is just way too weak for what I want to do (Photoshop, music production, gaming etc). I don't know any real PC wizkids anymore so I've just been relying on what confusing information is available on the net. I remember hearing that "some kind" of i5 or i7 CPU (can't find the info now...) was about the best value CPU available for high demand stuff like gaming & production so I had a look at some of them such as the 'Core i5 6550' but it was around £100 over what I'm willing to pay, so definitely not my idea of "good value". I think my entire last mobo (which came with RAM AND CPU) cost less than £200 and was a good setup, so paying £100+ JUST for the CPU is way too much for me. Also, some CPU's are marketed/coined as "for gaming". I'm assuming that just refers to having more power rather than something technically specific which is different from other "powerful" CPU's more aimed at music production for example (hopefully theres no distinction between the 2 kinds of "powerful"!).

The next major problem I ran into (as I suspected... Its always this way with PC upgrading *rage*!!) is that my entire mobo is just too old for anything worth upgrading to. The best I can get IIRC with my old 775 socket mobo is another dual core (lol), SO, time to rack up the expenses further with a WHOLE new bleeding mobo. I did some window shopping for mobo's, thinking that most would COME with CPU's (both of my previous ones did) but for some reason I couldn't find a SINGLE one this time. I'll also need new RAM but I shouldn't need any help with that and hopefully the more recent DDR3-4 is still cheap like DDR2 was (around £15 for a gig or 2, this was years ago).

General budget: Ideally no higher than £200 for everything (CPU,Mobo,RAM).

Sorry for the long post & semi-rant but I've always found "PC upgrade time" a real pain in the grass, and an expensive one! Huge thanks to anyone out there who can tell me what I need to know or share some good advice on compatibility & spotting the best value stuff.

Edit: Current specs = Your grandads Asrock I333-D667 mobo with 775 socket & DDR2 (laugh all you want fellas), 4GB DDR2, 3.0GHZ Intel Dual Core, Geforce GTX 650Ti Boost 2GB. As old as my CPU is though, it can still somehow cope with Fallout 4, barely!

Cheers

 

I hate to break the news, but what you want will cost MUCH more than what you want to spend. I am shooting for modern gaming at 1080P and heavy Photoshop. The other requirements are less demanding. I suggest these steps as finances allow.
Photoshop and gaming respond well to replacing your HDD with an SSD so that can be a first step. 256GB is pretty much a minimum and they are faster than the smaller ones.
When you save up more go for the MB and CPU. i5-4590 would be minimum, i7-4790 would future proof your rig. This will necessitate a RAM change as well, if you are tight on money, get one 4GB stick and add another later on. Stick with DDR3 IMHO.
Your Win 7 key will not work with a new motherboard, but a call to Microsoft should allow you to register.
Lastly upgrade your video card, the video card is a huge variable so see how well your 650 is doing and judge accordingly. Photoshop has GPU acceleration.

As far as spotting best value, you can try Toms Hardware for the ratings. I seldom agree 100% with them, but they give a good base line.

 

Shuriken UK:
You are in a tough spot. I am on my fourth build. I research things to death. Rebuild time is always hard to swallow because of the cost of components. Note: that I also have a current post running on purchasing components. Here is how I started this build. I first looked up the specs on my current CPU. see this link -
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Quad+Q9550+%40+2.83GHz.
Next I went after the motherboard. Now ... here's where it's a little funky. Everyone has their favorite vendors and I am no exception. So my main priority was to get out of the 3GB Sata MB situation and into the 6gb Sata environment. That is very important in the long run so as to get great results out of the new blazing fast SSD's. The MB search led me to ASUS. I have always been very fond of them and have not tried anything else because of never having one problem with ASUS focused builds in 10 years. Again, I reiterate - ASUS is only my personal favorite. That MB search led me to this Motherboard (which is a great price and a great MB for the futurebecause of the m.2 slot for a sata drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cMYe94vXhNIQdMrzVGv76D5NUV5EaFy516_7F8AaAsG98
Also note that it has a very nice rebate!!!
So, anyway, all that said then I went back to the CPU issue. using the info I pulled up on my current CPU I proceeded to explore how far I could go price wise to get better performance than what I currently have. That led me to this OUTSTANDING comparison information link:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
And there you have it. A little bit of info on one way to approach your concerns.
BUT, in closing, I simply have to back up DOA's reply. You will simply have to change your pocket book price point. You simply have to!!!! You must extend your purchase enough so that it will get you a little bit into the future. Do not go for the 'present solve' ... add just a little bit of "Future Wiggle Room".

Dekade

 

@DOA
Haha I guess I was being a bit romantic. Really I just need a mobo & cpu combo that'll handle my VST's and games nicely. Nothing cutting edge, just capable. On the gaming side, I'm looking for a CPU that can take the 650 to its potential (the card'll run todays games on high so long as they aren't CPU intensive), and on the music production & photoshop side, I just need something with enough umph to handle some newer VST's (you can see the CPU just needs a BIT more "push" on some synths). Photoshop runs fine even on my dual core but I'm sure a more modern CPU will make things even smoother. I'll definitely be upgrading to SSD's soon but really the top priority (originally the only priority!) is a CPU upgrade.

In reality I suppose any 'budget' 3.0+GHz quad core would feel like a big step up from my old Pentium D. The thing is I've just been out of the loop for too long, so I don't want to fork out for "this" CPU when I could've saved £20 on "that" CPU thats just as powerful but not as mainstream. As for the mobo. Something reliable, and just with the essentials like 4+ SATA ports, 4+ USB2.0 (3.0 if 100% reverse compatible), 1+ PCI slot (just in case), 1 PCI-E slot (1 gfx card is enough for me!), IDE, floppy for old times sake lol. I use an external audio interface so I won't need anything with a HD audio chip. Same with the internal GPU, absolute bare bones is good enough since they'll only be used when switching drivers/hardware.

@Dekade
I think I came across this ASUS z97 mobo already, along with another z97 ('game killer' or 'game pro' or something) I recognise the gold 'disc'. The only PC component I've upgraded more than a couple of times is the GFX card so thats the only field where I have a sort of "goto" vendor. I used to think it was AMD/Radeon but then I realised it was Nvidia. My Radeon cards always performed nicely but the drivers were a nightmare to install/update. I decided to swap to Nvidia and bam, no more driver problems! Its true, I don't want to make a tiny investment and end up with something thats outdated in 2 weeks. I just don't want to break the bank! £75 for that Asus mobo is okay, and if you can get a half decent quad core for a similar price, thats not too bad.

Cheers.

 

OK, dropping the price a bit. This build has an MSI MB, you may want to substitute an Asus. This build is very expandable.
http://pcbuildsonabudget.com/best-400-dollar-gaming-pc-build

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I had a look through the specs. Lastnight I was window shopping and it LOOKS like the best I can get cpu wise without paying too much is one of the lower models in these new "Skylake" chips. I found the 'Core i5 6500 6M' going for just under £130 on Newegg, if I can settle on a solid mobo for say, £80, I already looked at RAM and it IS still nicely priced so I'll just get a fresh 8GB. I read a review on one website (taken with a pinch of salt ofcourse) claiming its about the best price/performance CPU ATM. One new problem I'm looking at now though is compatibility between the CPU & the RAM. I've been looking at DDR3 RAM but I forgot, this 6500 cpu states it supports only DDR4 & DDR3L (3L? Never heard of it and haven't found any for sale), so I take it standard DDR3 is a no go or are they sort of 'interchangeable'?

Edit: Seems like that 6500 might be incopatible with the mobo's I've looked at so far too (they're Z97 chipsets but this one supports the '100' chipset...).

Anyway as long as I can find a mobo that has todays common 'sockets' & features but also some small 'legacy' features (like a PCI slot, USB1&2 and support for 1 old hat IDE HDD) I'll be a happy man. I reckon I could stretch to £250 altogether if its a good buy. I'm quite interested in this i5 6500 6M ATM.

 

Well Shuriken UK, It looks like you're starting to zero in on the final draft. Good job of research. I really hope it all turns out the way you want it to. Please don't take offense to me aggressively telling you to open your pocket book at little bit wider. That's just my personality. Get's me into trouble sometimes though.

 

The "L" means low voltage. The modules will run on any DDR3 mobo. As an AMD man myself, I can't vouch much for Intel, but the Atom CPU in my ZenFone is phenomenal. Of course, the 4GB of RAM don't hurt either.

You will be hard pressed to find a board with an IDE port on it, you will need a SATA adapter for the device in question. As far as "backwards compatible" on the USB ports, 3.0 is backwards compatible, but some devices may not be.

 

@Dekade
No you were right mate, after checking the market I started getting pretty conscious about 'price/quality'. Reading some of the reviews on the cheapest stuff (seems to be around £50ish) made me rethink my approach a bit but £70-85 seems a lot less murky. CPU's, atleast Intel ones just seem to be expensive in general anyway so I pretty much just thought "smeg it" and semi-settled on that i5 because it LOOKS like the best I can get in that price range. Then again, I completely forgot to look into AMD's stuff so I will before I lay any cash down!

@the mekanic
Thanks for the information! Well with this 6500 CPU I've got a VERY small choice of mobos, but it makes sense given they're apparently pretty new. Still, its a shame the market is pretty closed right now on these processors. Definitely not 100% decided on that one yet. Having said that, atleast I can still use a DDR3 mobo (but just using these elusive "L" RAM sticks). Maybe I should just go with a DDR4 board to get with the times but I've read quite a bit about "hit & miss" compatibility when it comes to DDR4 and DDR4 mobos (in customer reviews) so I'm still a bit dubious. Yea, most of my USB devices are 1 & 2 AFAIK so I really want to be sure about cross compatibility since nearly all these 6500 mobo's are USB 3.0, only some have 2.00 IIRC.

Hopefully after all this I wont have to replace my PSU too. 550W should easy be enough for non-hardcore gear right? All I really have thats juicy is my GFX card but that only uses about 150W max. Crazily enough, reading the specs, it also maxes out at 97*C while my old HD4870 idled at 70*C sometimes (and that card even had BEEFY cooling pipes! Probably to stop it combusting)...

Thanks all, I'm still on the hunt so feel free to drop more suggestions while I look, I'm all ear/eyes!

 

DDR3L is hardly elusive.

 

I see, I just couldn't find any in the few places I looked. It was all DDR3 & DDR4. I'm going to nip up town tomorrow hopefully though and see what I can find in some 'actual' shops. Its always handy being able to just return something to the shop rather than pay to have it delivered back to some warehouse 300 miles away! If I can buy everything "in stores" then I will because I've had more than one nightmare when it comes to ordering PC parts online. The worst one being paying nearly £80 for a 2TB HDD from Seagate (I'll never trust them again) and ending up with a dead drive in LITERALLY less than 2 weeks. Another being my old ATI X1950 pro which didn't even last 2 years. Built to last? Haha yea I should coco.

Anyway I'll see what I can find tomorrow.

@DOA: Just to clarify, so I won't need to reinstall Win7, just reactivate it right?

 

I don't know much about this sort of stuff but I read in one article that Intel have concentrated their efforts regarding CPU development on I) consuming less power (energy) and ii) increasing the integrated graphics power, for a strategic drive in the mobile computing market. This in turn means that actual CPU computing power has remained essentially static since the generation 3 core-i processors; and if you have a 'desktop' and like to play games, you get more graphics power by using (a modern) graphics card than the integrated graphics available from newer Intel CPUs.
This does not include improvements in other areas like memory, display capability or I/O speed

Dumb_Question
19.November.2015
computer - out of date systems only

 

That is my guess, I have always been able to reactivate after a MB change.

 

Thanks for the info! In that case that makes me even more curious about what AMD gets up to with their CPU's. I won't be using integrated graphics though. I'll be combining this with my 'GTX 650 Ti Boost' (the only non-ancient thing hooked up to my mobo). Hopefully with an upto scratch CPU, mobo & RAM it'll equal things out. This card pushes nice graphics, seemingly better than current gen consoles but I think this old dual core is seriously holding it all back. Games like 'Dreamfall: Chapters', Fallout 4, D4, and even Skyrim lag seriously at times and the graphics in all of these games aren't anything eye-popping IMO so maybe its more a RAM & CPU issue. D4 is the worst example: VERY basic graphics, extremely high recommended specs.

 

The article I referring to (I'm sorry I can't remember where I found, other than 'the internet' - not very helpful, I know) did say that this could be a market slot which AMD could exploit, but I don't remember anything else it may have said about AMD's activities.

Does your GTX 650 Ti Boost card (effectively) occupy two slots ? (does it prevent you using the adjacent PCI-e x1 slot ?)

Dumb_Question
20.November.2015

 

@Dumb_Question
Yea, the cheeky thing is blocking a PCI slot by about 1mm, pretty annoying! Luckily its just a PCI though, I only have 1 PCI-E. My old HD4870 was even bigger, almost too big, nearly touching the back of my HDD's, it was a REAL squeeze.

@Anyone & Everyone
For some reason, almost every single i5-6500 compatible mobo (LGA 1151, chipset 100) is marketed as a "gaming board". I'm not sure if this actually means anything or if its just a marketing "catch-phrase" such as when companies add words like "pro", "luxury" or "special" to products when theres nothing pro, luxury or special about them! I just want to be sure: If I DO go for the Skylake (forcing me to use a 1151 "gaming" mobo) will it be good for other CPU-intensive, non-gaming stuff such as music production, 3D modelling and the like? I love to do all of this especially music, so I'd be gutted if all I could do after spending £200+ is play games while everything else lags behind (seems unlikely though). Skylake & Haswell cpu's (from what I read) CLAIM to boot up your PC in 3 seconds too. Can that REALLY be true, hmmm (skeptic face). Mine, with Win-7 takes about 3-4 minutes depending on the weather! Can 2 extra cores and 200 extra MHz really knock 3+ mins off boot time? If so, thats amazing!

The Asus Z-170-P D3 SOUNDED good until I realised it only supports DDR3/3L. Whats the point of a 1151 mobo even supporting standard DDR3 if no 1151 CPU's support it? Very conflicting/confusing information online.

I've just read about AMD's "Zen" cores and it sounds really good too. AMD does seem generally cheaper than Intel, which is always a plus for me so long as quality isn't sacrificed. The way intel add hyperthreading to the cheaper i3 dual cores, and the extortionate i7 quads while completely missing out the i5 middle ground seems a really unfair marketing strategy too.

Sorry to write so much but I want to nail every detail. £250 is a lot to pay if theres even a bit of uncertainty IMO.

 

AMD CPU's have been well known to be less costly the Intel's and they are known for being more 'upgradable' in that the m/bs fit a wider range of CPUs & vv. In the past AMD have supported high density RAM (in fact both HD & LD RAM) which is cheaper than low density RAM, which Intel CPUs and chipsets use.

Iwas thinking of getting a 4850 or 4870 graphics card for my 'core duo' motherboard, one has to very careful and persistent to find a single slot card, but they do exist (as do GTX 750 Ti cards !)

Dumb_Question
20.November.2015

 

I've been running this rig for quite a while now, but the Samsung SSD is a new addition. It took a LONG time to piece this together, and I started out with a Callisto X2 CPU which was unlocked to a clocked quad core.


CPU
AMD FX-8350 Vishera 32nm Technology

RAM
16.0GB Crucial Dual-Channel DDR3

Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. SABERTOOTH 990FX (Socket 942)

Graphics
SAMSUNG (2560x1440@60Hz)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 7870 (XFX Pine Group)

Storage
476GB Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512GB (SSD) 27 °C
465GB Seagate ST3500410AS (SATA) 29 °C
372GB Western Digital WDC WD4000AAJS-00YFA0 (SATA) 30 °C

Optical Drives
PLEXTOR DVDR PX-880SA
PIONEER BD-ROM BDC-202
TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H653L

 

Can anybody confirm what the score is with these motherboards that are only compatible with 1151 cpu's & DDR3 RAM, even though no 1151 cpu's support DDR3 (the 6th gen / 1151 / Skylake CPU's I've seen only support DDR3L & DDR4)? I've now found a total of 3 mobo's that seem to be "incompatible with everything". All on the lowest end of the price range but even by trusted brands like Asus. The other ones are by MSI & Gigabyte but I can't find the Gigabyte one now (forgot to bookmark!). These are the boards in question:-

1. Asus Z170P D3
2.MSI B150 Gaming (Does the B150 mean its a lower model than Z170 or is it apples vs oranges?)

I'll be using an 'Intel i5 6500' and I have some Corsair RAM bookmarked but this mobo confusion is just confusing!

This is pretty much the only thing getting in my way now. I can't spend £250 on something with "mysterious compatibility" though, I REALLY have to be certain. I'd prefer to get a pure DDR4 1151 mobo but all of them seem to fall outside of my budget (they all seem to be above £100) and DDR3 is dirt cheap (my kinda prices LOL). DDR4 flavour is about £10-15 more expensive but I'm not sure if its £10-15 faster or more efficient.


Thanks all.

 

read this http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/319013-30-what-ddr3l article/discussion, it may help (I don't think it's clear how low the voltage has to be to qualify the RAM for DDR3L).

Dumb_Question
26.November.2015

 

The main issue with DDR4 is you are pushing the envelope with new technology. If you are looking for a stable rig and not looking for headaches you may want to look at DDR3 1866.

 

DDR3L has to be 1.35v or below to qualify. 1.25v should qualify as DDR3U. DDR4 is 1.2v.

I have 2 machines running on 2x4GB of DDR3L, one running at 1.35v, the other at 1.25v.

http://www.jedec.org/news/pressrele...anticipated-ddr3l-low-voltage-memory-standard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM#DDR3L_and_DDR3U

If you're unsure of what to buy or what's compatible with a 'board, use the Crucial site.

 

Yep. Agreed. Just finished my new Intel/ASUS MB/Gskill 2400 RAM build. Very pleased. However, my last build was for my wife's computer and it was all AMD stuff. ASUS MB/ GSkill RAM. It is a rockin' machine. It really has been running great for 2 years. Cheaper than Intel was at the time of build. I went Intel this time around because I wanted some really knock down drag out performance for personal video editing. On my previous tower I also went Intel. But, like I already said, I have been very impressed with the wife's AMD build. FWIW - I really like ASUS MB's and tech support.

Just felt like adding this in. Probably too late though.

 

Never too late.

 

No its never too late, especially seeing as I never ended up upgrading in the end lol... Lets just say something bad happened which put almost everything on complete hold!

I'm back on track now though, so after more reading around, I thought to myself: Is it really worth going full on Skylake, because there seem to be other, older CPU's out there that are just as good for a similar price. Everybody was raving about how Skylake was going to be "the next big jump", but (I should've guessed), this was all just Intel hyping up their new CPU which is only really a negligable step ahead of the previous gens (people were anticipating 20+% performance jumps, but in the end they got like 10%... Hmm, not impressive) but then again, I'm sure ANY CPU less than 4 years old will be a major upgrade for my PC. In terms of older gen Intels being better, I've read that the i5-4690k is a prime example. I guess overclocking must factor into that, but what else?

Pro's & cons I've discovered with Skylake:-

Pros (mostly speculation?)
+Its the latest gen, so surely that must count for something more than a high price tag?
+3 Second boot time (I just find that REALLY hard to believe)
+Opens up the door to new tech, meaning hopefully I wont have to go through this same hardware compatibility nightmare next time I upgrade.
+No more lagging 3D Modelling, Music Production & Photoshop painting/drawing, hopefully.

Cons:
-The i5-6500 is only 3.2GHZ (thats only 2.0MHz faster than my ancient dual core!! WTF??)
-I'm not able to use normal DDR3, meaning I have to throw away my perfectly working DDR3 RAM, resulting in more unwanted expenses. Probably an extra 30-40 quid.
-The price of the i5-6500 has shot up by about £15 compared to when it first hit stores atleast on Newegg. Amazon UK & Ebuyer are both charging silly money, and I don't know any other online vendors I "trust".
-There aren't many affordable MB's compatible with Skylake (especially from trusted brands like Asus IIRC).
-I don't want to pay an extra £70 or whatever for Intels built in GPU because my GFX card is probably better than the Skylake iGPU anyway, and if it ISN'T, then that raises concerns about how many corners they had to cut with the CPU to get such a great GPU all in the same package for £140 considering my GTX650 nearly cost me the same price!!
-No HyperThreading on a 2014-2015 CPU, although I'm not sure how much of a big deal that is. Still, its a concern.

With all this, what would you guys say is the absolute BEST CPU/Mobo combo you can get for less than £300?

Thanks

 

After more reading, it turns out that installing Windows 7 on a Skylake & Chipset 100 Mobo is going to be somewhere between "Complete nightmare" and "completely impossible"... WTF is wrong with manufacturers, or whoever is responsible for creating all this compatibility mess?

Long story short, I'm pretty much decided that I'm keeping Windows 7. I'm not interested in upgrading my OS at all, I'm only interested in upgrading my PC. If theres no way to install Win7 on Skylake hardware (using USB & an image) then I guess I have to forget about Skylake & chipset 100... What a kick in the teeth lol! Still, I haven't looked into AMD yet but I've read so many discussions where people are just pure hating on AMD CPU's VS Intel, it all seems really childish, but is there any logic or truth behind this "general anti-AMD mentality" or is it all just teen angst lol??? I have no problem going with AMD so long as I can still get just as much power for the money without sacrificing on quality!

 

Frequency is important, but the big thing is how the CPU has it's cache structured.

For Level 1 (L1) a separate D&I cache is fundamentally better. The size of the L2 cache can range from less than 1MB up to 8MB and as time goes on I'm sure that will increase. The L3 cache, if present just makes the CPU even more capable.

I did upgrade to W10, and have only one complaint so far. But, it comes via AMD and the change from Catalyst to Crimson. Not enough options in Crimson for someone "old school" like myself.

 

Thanks for the info on CPU's. The i5-6500 has a 6MB shared L3 cache & a 4x 256KB L2, I'm not sure what the L2/L3 on my current CPU (I need Everest back!) but I'm guessing it'll be way lower.

As I was looking through some CPU's from Intel & AMD, I noticed that a lot of AMD's stuff seemed to have higher specs than what Intel is offering at the same price ranges. For example I looked at the AMD 'FX8350 Black Edition Vishera' and spec wise it looks better than the i5-6500 in almost every way, plus its £20 cheaper. It has 8MB of L3 (6500 has 6mb), its got 4x 4mb L2's (6500 only has 4x 256kb!), it has double the cores and it runs at 4.0GHz and 4.2 in turbo (6500 is 3.2GHz & 3.6 in turbo). The only thing that I didn't like was that it runs at 125W while the Skylake only needs 65W. This CPU came out around 2012 AFAIK so its surprising how it looks next to the 6500 from 2015! Now I'm seriously considering this chip...

I have a GTX650 but apparently mixing AMD & Nvidia hardware is fine. I'm still not sure how Win7 will factor into all this though. I'm hoping Win7 should be fully supported, given the FX8350's from 2012ish. Now I just need to look around for the best AM3+ mobo I can find for about £100 or less then I'll see how it all stacks up against the "i5-6500 & Z170" build.

 

Hmmm, reviews don't seem to be treating the FX8350 very nicely. I guess it had to all be too good to be true. So many customer reviews are saying the chip runs way too hot and the stock heatsink+fan are completely inadequate. The fan itself is apparently very loud. Despite having 8 cores and all round better specs, an old 3rd gen i5 will "allegedly" blow it away. In terms of gaming, a few reviews mention more stuttering and crashing with this CPU. People are complaining that they ordered an FX8350 marketed as the 'Vishera' model, but actually got the older 'Zambezi' model (false advertising? who's to blame? AMD or retailers?).

Seems VERY shady. Just when I thought I'd found the answer in AMD... Now its back to Skylake with its high price and the Win7 headache...

 

Does anybody know of a tested & working way to install Windows 7 on a i5-6500 or a chipset 100 motherboard? I've been asking around for a while but haven't really come up with any solid info. I don't want to buy a Skylake & 100 Mobo (eg Z170) just to find out I can't even install Windows, because I'll have to buy all of this online, meaning it will COST me money (probably around £4.50 P&P on each item) just return the things.

I need to know if its going to work BEFORE I buy rather than after, because then its too late. If any physical, highstreet shops sold Skylakes or these 100 motherboards it wouldn't be a problem (I'd just be able to go straight back down the shop and get my money back) but buying online is a gamble so I want to be sure.

I want to install Win7 using a USB like I did with my current build, but apparently thats a complete grey area on these newer CPU's & Mobos. People have suggested tools which "might" make it work, but I just can't rely on words like "might", it has to be "will" if its something I'm about to spend £250 on.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!