Upgrade questions, wait for DDR4 and get secondhand now?

[twinnie]

Hi guys,

I'm pretty out of the loop regarding hardware, I'm still running an E6600 with 6gb of DDR2. I've recently bought a new GPU after my old one went again and I got sick of taking it apart to put in the oven. I was planning on upgrading soon and I got a good price on a 560ti. I was looking to plan an upgrade based around Haswell and DDR3 but now I see DDR4 on the horizon. After going more than five years between upgrades I don't want to get stuck a gen behind on the RAM. I was thinking about just upgrading my current system a little but my biggest bottleneck has been that my current RAM doesn't seem to like me overclocking the CPU.

I could just wait but I'm guessing it could be another year before we see some DDR4 stuff coming out that is decent bang for buck. I'm thinking about just getting some secondhand bits to put together a machine now that's more in line with the 560ti I have rather than the 770 I was looking to buy, then sell those bits off when I'm ready for another upgrade in about a year. I'm gonna take a hit on buy vs sell prices but it won't be unmanageable and I want to put together a media centre so I'll be deciding what I want for that at a later date.

Does this sound like a good plan? I just got a cheap Q6600, should I just keep upgrading my DDR2 build? I was wondering if anyone would know anything that will be a good buy secondhand? It'd be nice to get it cheap as I also want to buy a new laptop for work. Thanks for any help.

tl;dr
Can I get a cheap DDR3 RAM, mobo, and CPU or should I upgrade my DDR2 until DDR4 is out?

 

[chrisso]

Well, I was gonna suggest a Q6600, as they are cheap as chips (ha ha -englishman about!) For gaming, 6 gig of ddr2 667 meg or higher is ok with that setup, the quantity trumps speed every time.
Overclocking that cpu to 3 gig per core on standard volts is easy, and a 1-1 cpu / bus ratio will come out at 667 meg,ideal for the ram.
Dont base your platform wait on ram generations, base it on cost. ALL ram is expensive at present because of the hynix factory burning down last year, so try and hold out for a bit. At least get the Q6600 in, it will improve things a lot.
btw, even 2nd hand ram is expensive. It just isnt the time to buy it.

 

[twinnie]

Thanks for the reply. The high prices for fast secondhand DDR2 was what made me start thinking about upgrading. A fast secondhand 8gb is more expensive than the equivalent DDR3 brand new. I was messing about overclocking my E6600 but it kept crashing which I suspected was the RAM. The first 2gb is some gaming RAM but the other 4gb was a kickback from work I got on an order so it's just office PC RAM. When I get round to it I'll pull those 4gb out and see how far it'll go. The heat isn't an issue as I have a huge passive cooling heatsink in there which I've attached a fan to and it handled it fine.

I was following some guide telling me how I should overclock the RAM with the CPU but to be honest I've not normally bothered with this, it's just this seems like a good excuse to give it a go. It looks like it's gonna cost me about £80 to get some decent RAM whereas I was hoping I'd be able to get a CPU, mobo and DDR3 RAM for about £200.