To upgrade or not to upgrade? Can't make up my mind.

Zapa

Honorable
Jan 13, 2014
2
0
10,510
I having trouble deciding to upgrade now or wait a bit longer. I've been building my machines for the past 15+ years and it's this time I am not sure I'm doing the right thing. Therefore, I'd appreciate any clarity you may provide.

My current system turning 4 years this April is as follows:

Cpu Intel Core I 930 OC to 3.6
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Motherboard Asus P6X58D Premium
Memory 6 gb 1600 Corsair Dominator 8,8,8,24
SSD Crucial C300 128 gb
GPU Radio HD 5970
Sound sound blaster fatality
Power Thermaltake Toughpower 1000w
A couple of storage drives

I do a about 50% gaming at the highest settings possible, but I also do photoshop, spreadsheets and multimedia/multitasking cpu things, so I tend to use everything to the max.

My proposed upgrades are:
Motherboard Asus Maxiumus Hero VI
Memory 16-32 gb Cosair Vengeance 1600 or 1866 perhaps.
CPU Intel Core i7 4770k
Cosair water cooler H80i?
Ssd Samsung 840 pro 256 gb
GPU Nvidia 780 ti
Possibly bluray player

I can't afford it all at once but cpu or gpu I could do first. I like the features and I have the itch to upgrade. There are some intense graphical games coming late 2014 and early 2015. My current system is starting to act up a little bit, but still manageable . So do I upgrade or wait for another generation. If I upgrade now, cpu or gpu?

Thank you for any assistance
 
Solution
When you have the itch, scratch it.

I think a 4770K will be a good cpu for the foreseeable future.
It has a passmark rating of 10281 compared to 5196 for the 930.
I think I would do that first.

I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler can do the job.
A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better
in a well ventilated case.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling, it just puts the heat exchange in a different place.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem.
If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to...
the 4770 isn't a very big improvement over the 930 in my opinion. sure it's much more efficient but i doubt you're upgrading to shave off on the power bill. so the cpu+mobo i would upgrade at the very end.

ram would be nice, but 6 isn't too bad. the samsung ssd is faster but you won't see the performance jump you got when you moved from the hdd to a ssd.

i think i would first go for the gpu and wait on the other upgrades for now...
 
When you have the itch, scratch it.

I think a 4770K will be a good cpu for the foreseeable future.
It has a passmark rating of 10281 compared to 5196 for the 930.
I think I would do that first.

I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler can do the job.
A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better
in a well ventilated case.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling, it just puts the heat exchange in a different place.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem.
If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to exhaust(which I think is better) , then your cpu cooling will be less effective because it uses pre heated case air.
And... I have read too many tales of woe when a liquid cooler leaks.
google "H100 leak"

The value of the Samsung pro, compared to the EVO is longer endurance. Performance will be the same in actual desktop usage. The EVO might last 10 years under heavy desktop usage, the PRO 15. It is a moot point since both will be long obsolete before they run out of writes.

You do need a graphics upgrade if you are gaming. If you can't do it all at once, I would wait a bit on the graphics card.

If you are gaming on a single monitor, I might back off a bit and look at a GTX780 superclock.


 
Solution

Realine

Honorable
Jan 13, 2014
20
0
10,520
I would upgrade now and it depends what you do more? Video editing or gaming? If gaming then the GPU, if editing then the CPU and more RAM is a must have for what you do, but 6 is stil an alright amount.