Opinion on whether i should upgrade

AndyDalis

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Well, it's that time of the year again. Tis the season of sales and I have been contemplating upgrade. Should I upgrade to a skylake build or stick with my current build (See below). I use my current rig (See below for it) for both gaming, with heavy to mild modding, and school work. With the possibility of streaming/recording in the future, my friends and I have been thinking of starting a streaming group.

Current Rig:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler (Purchased For $0.00)
Motherboard: Asus - SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK1 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Patriot - Viper 3 Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Patriot - Blast 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Green 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 960 4GB Video Card
Case: Cooler Master - Storm Stryker (White) ATX Full Tower Case (Purchased For $0.00)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA P2 750W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link - TL-WDN4800 PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter (Purchased For $0.00)
Case Accessory: NZXT - Hue+ LED Controller (Purchased For $0.00)
Monitor: Acer - P238HLbd 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor ($0.00)
Monitor: Asus - VX248H 24.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor ($0.00)
Keyboard: Logitech - G510s Wired Gaming Keyboard (Purchased For $0.00)
Mouse: Logitech - G502 Proteus Spectrum Wired Optical Mouse (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $0.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-04 23:49 EST-0500
 

AndyDalis

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May 3, 2015
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What about Kaby Lake? or i that just a beefed up Skylake
 


KabyLake is just a better clocked SkyLake. Still you get only 4 cores as your current rig.
 

AndyDalis

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Aye true, but if I wanted more core I could just do a Skylake and or Kay lake i7 or i9
 
i7 still has only 4 cores, just hyper-threading. i9 is not exactly SkyLake or KabyLake - it's called SkyLake-X, and requires it's own motherboards. Plus, -X are expensive, both CPU and motherboard, and need a lot of power.
 

AndyDalis

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Ah ok, but wouldn’t the coffee lake i3 be better since it has a higher clock speed. If i remember correctly clockspeed is more important than core for gaming

 
It used to be so. But now, new games are starting to use more then 4 cores effectively. Check out charts for AC Origins for example. If I were to build now for few years, I would definitely take 6-core Coffee Lake. Plus, CPU like 8600K can be OCed to 5 Ghz easily, so it has the speed too.
 

AndyDalis

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Well that’s new and good. So something like this then?
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor ($295.99 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler (Purchased For $0.00)
Motherboard: Asus - ROG MAXIMUS X HERO (WI-FI AC) ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($264.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($199.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Western Digital - WD Green 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB ROG STRIX Video Card ($469.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master - Storm Stryker (White) ATX Full Tower Case (Purchased For $0.00)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA P2 750W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $1230.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-07 15:19 EST-0500
 

AndyDalis

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On pcpartpicker 1070ti is atleast 100$ less than a 1080
 

AndyDalis

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But if the 1080 is worth the wait I will wait
 

spdragoo

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You're probably not going to see much difference. Even without overclocking, at stock the i5-8600K is not much faster per core (3.6GHz base, 4.1GHz max Turbo with 5 or 6 cores, 4.2GHz max Turbo with 3 or 4 cores) vs. your current i5-4690K (3.5GHz base, 3.7GHz max Turbo with 4 cores, 3.8GHz max Turbo with 3 cores). And Tom's Hardware had problems getting all of their applications to run when Coffee Lake was OC'd to 5GHz (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-coffee-lake-core-i5-8600k-cpu,5264-11.html), which limited them to 4.9GHz for most of their testing.

So, if your overclock is anywhere in the region of 4.9GHz right now...you'll probably see very little improvement (call it 5-10%, maybe 15-20% tops), & that's going to be limited to games/applications that can use the extra 2 cores/threads it brings...but the i7-4790K brand-new is only maybe $50 USD more than the i5-8600K, gives you the extra threads you might need, & you won't have to spend money for new RAM & a new motherboard.
 

AndyDalis

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Mind you have a “decent” ram and an “ok”motherboard. None of those components are meant or could be used for gaming maybe. But what about a new graphic card then?
 

spdragoo

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You might be surprised at your motherboard (given that it's a Z97 chipset), but that's OK. If you wanted a definite upgrade for gaming, though, then yeah, get a new GPU. A GTX 1060 would be a great upgrade for 1080p gameplay, or even a GTX 1070/1070TI for 1440p (or 1080p @ 144Hz) gameplay. And neither one will be held back by your current CPU.
 

AndyDalis

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Ok, that sound lik what I have heard. I’m just curious what you think of the ram installed. Should I change it out for something with better timing and/or more capacity. I’m guesting I might need to test my system to see
 

spdragoo

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I wouldn't worry too much about it. Your current RAM's CAS latency is 10, so moving to 9 isn't going to speed it up too much. And DDR3-1600 is as fast as your motherboard can go without using XMP settings in the BIOS (https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_Z97_MARK_1/specifications/). At most you're talking about a 15% increase in RAM speed, which probably will work out to more like only a 5% increase in performance; not really worth the cost.

Note: although the specifications lists the fastes "Hyper DIMM" speed as DDR3-1866, for some reason the manual's list of QVL-approved RAM also lists RAM up to DDR3-2666 (http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1150/SABERTOOTH_Z97_MARK1/E9389_Sabertooth_Z97_Mark1_V2.pdf?_ga=2.221377307.2051427558.1512739026-1599389257.1507056249). Maybe you can get those faster speeds through overclocking the CPU, but I'm not sure. Again, you'd have to probably use XMP settings.