Looking for best way to upgrade my PC for 3440x1440 gaming

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Venen

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Nov 13, 2010
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Hi there and thanks for checking the post!

As it is I have a rather strong, but 2 years old pc:
CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K @ 3.50GHz
Mobo: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z87-A (SOCKET 1150)
Graphic: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (NVIDIA)
RAM: 32.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 774MHz (9-9-9-24)
PSU: 750W FSP 80+ Silver

And while it was working very well, I've recently upgraded my screen to DELL U3415W which runs at 3440x1440 and at that resolution it is not longer enough power to run new games at ultra with stable 60fps.

So I am looking for a best way not only for now, but also with potentail future upgrades. Ideally I would also at some point upgrade the system to run 64gb of ram (or 128 if possible), but that is due to work reasons, not gaming related. For the same reason I am also looking to potentially upgrade the CPU to one of the 6 gens, as I use both RAM and CPU rather heavily for work.

What do you guys think would be the best steps? Could I maybe just buy additional 980 TI and put them into SLI? I am not even sure can I do that with the current PSU and motherboard, and finding this on-line is rather vague (I admit, this isn't my strongest area!). Or maybe there is something new coming along in few months and it's best just to wait and then do a major overhaul?

Thank you kindly for all replies in advance :)
 
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weberdarren97

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Aug 10, 2015
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SLI is an option, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I would wait and until we see some performance benchmarks from the upcoming next generation graphics cards coming out soon.

However, if you are unsure of the exact model of your PSU then I would not use it for SLI even if SLI turned out to be the better option.
 
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smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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http://wccftech.com/intel-kaby-lake-core-i7-7700k-cpu-leaked/
there going to be a few cpu dropping that you could go to. the newer kaby lake for mainstream pc. use 1151 pin mb
there the newer skylake e gaming cpu that dropping latter on. and there newer xeon dropping now and latter on.
myself i would go with the next xeon. go with 6 or more cores for work and a lot more ddr4 ram. the high end gaming and server mb have more ddr4 ram slots for more memory. also the newer mb will be supporting sas drives. .
 
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gondo

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Apr 20, 2004
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If you want to upgrade today a second 980Ti would be the best path. I did a calculation and depending on your hard drives, case fans, lights, etc... you are running around 710W. Your power supply will run a second 980Ti, but barely. And I think that FSP has 4 6+2 pin connectors for the extra card.

This is the exact reason I don't like 750W power supplies. A single 980Ti gets you just under 500W. So 750W is overpowered for a single video card, but under powered for 2. I prefer a 650W PSU for single setups, or 850W for dual video cards.



 
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Geekwad

Geekwad

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Sep 25, 2015
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A second 980ti would certainly be able to drive that resolution, and is possible on the Z87 motherboard. Your PSU would ideally be a high quality 850w or greater though, so upgrading that would be recommended.

What work do you do on this system? If you're finding yourself limited with I/O or need more CPU power, then good deals are to be had on the outgoing Haswell-E processors:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/437203/Core_i7-5820k_33_GHz_LGA_2011-V3_Tray_Processor

Especially if you're lucky enough to live close to one of those stores.....
 
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V

Venen

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Nov 13, 2010
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Thank you all for the answers, highly helpful!

My disks at the moment:
223GB Corsair Force LS SSD (SSD)
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (SATA)
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (SATA)

And as I am planning to put in another Seagate into the mix pretty soon, PSU upgrade will be a must (http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/tx850w looks fairly decent judged by reviews) if I decide to go the SLI route. And I guess on that part I will just wait and evaluate when they are announced, if I can switch to single next-gen card and have the results I went then will do just that, and if not - new PSU and 2nd 980 TI it is. And I guess when they will come out 980 TI will drop in price a bit.

On the other side of the update it seems that new motherboard is a must if I want some of the new and very cool cpus. So I've looked around and figured that I may at the same time get a board that will allow me to upgrade to 128 gigs of ram. So after toying a bit I came up with this as new base:

Mobo: ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard
CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor
RAM: 2x Kingston Savage 64GB DDR4-2666 Memory

Which should also work well with whatever graphic upgrade route I will pick.

Does that make sense? Or did I miss something important?

And for those curious: I need that amount of RAM and CPU as I am working on statistical software that works with large datasets, but sadly not in a way that can be passed to GPU. So to optimize my workflow I initially load all of the data to memory as then I am not bound by disk IO, especially since this access is random and in highly varying sizes. I did test using SSDs before, but moving data to RAM gave me much better results.
 
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