I'm looking to make the jump to quad-core and upgrade the CPU on my Alienware, but I'm not exactly steeped in hardware expertise, so I'm looking for a bit of advice. So far I'm looking at the i5 2500k Sandy Bridge; $250 is about as much as I can spend, and this seems to be the best around for that price or cheaper. I've heard, though, that these are not backwards compatible, and I'm concerned as to what extent this is true. I've currently got a Dual-Core intel i5 650, Corsair 1333mHZ RAM, and Dual Radeon 5760s. Should I go with the Sandy Bridge, am I going to have to get new RAM/video cards as well, or am I all right to go ahead with the upgrade? (If this is a poor choice, and anyone has any suggestions within said budget, feel free to let me know about that, too) Thanks!
Hi, From what I read about the sandy bridge not being backwards compatible, it is in regards to the socket type. Your current CPU, the i5 650 I believe is a socket 1156 and the sandy bridge processors are going to be running on 1155 and 1356 sockets so you are going to need a different motherboard with the cpu purchase (unless anyone has heard something different). When you buy a new motherboard, you need to be sure that it supports your CPU socket type, RAM type and whether it supports a SLI setup or crossfire one (which it sounds like what you have now). If you are looking for alternatives, you can look at some of these 1156 socket type cpu's Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,CPUs / Processors,Processors - Desktops,LGA 1156
