Advice to replace my 2015 OCUK machine

RobH79

RobH79

RobH79

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27 Jan 2020
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2
Hi guys,

Back in 2015 I purchased the below machine from Overclockers and at the time it was fantastic. Since then I've swapped the GTX980 for 2 GTX1080's in SLI which for a time was also great but it now feels like time for a change and I'd appreciate your advice.

My question is whether you think I should upgrade the graphics card to extend its life a little longer (RTX2080S maybe)?

or...

Should I replace the whole system in which case what sort of an improvement do you think I would see if I set a budget of £2k including VAT - I'd want a prebuilt machine from OCUK though - I don't want to go back to building my own.

Note that I'm using an LG 34UC97-S monitor which also feels a little old so I'm pondering replacing that at the same time. Any thoughts on a good upgrade there are also welcome and won't need to come from the same budget.

I mainly use it as a gaming machine and want to be able to pass 60FPS running games at a very high setting at 3440*1440

Thanks for the advice!


"Ultima Finesse Avalanche" Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.5GHz DDR3
  • HD-256-SE Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache -
  • OEM (ST3000DM001) HDD
  • CA-153-NX NZXT Source 340 Midi-Tower Case - White Window
  • MB-634-AS Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark S "Sabranco" Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
  • CP-541-IN Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM
  • HS-022-PL Prolimatech Black Genesis CPU Cooler
  • CA-023-SF SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 750W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply
  • MY-083-AR Avexir "Sabranco" Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit - White Light
  • HD-192-SA Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3DV-NAND Solid State Drive
  • GX-073-KF KFA2 GeForce GTX 980 "Hall of Fame V2 Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
 
Would wait till March for announcement of estimated release time of new GPUs, and decide then.

If you go with the new system route, and given you want a powerful GPU, there won't be much for a better replacement monitor. In any case you mention it doesn't have to come from the same budget, and you could always sell off the old system and old monitor to partly finance it. You will probably get more money if you take out the 2 x 1080s, sell the system without a GPU*, and sell the GPUs separately.

* Roughly £300 and buyer can pop in their own GPU to end up with a nice system for the money. The 1080s should go for about £200 each but some people strangely pay even more than that, so up to you. Anyway, about £700 + monitor sale will take you within reach of a new Ultrawide 120Hz+ if sticking with Ultrawide. If wanting a change, then you can find even higher refresh rate 2560x1440 panels for below £500.

The £2K will be fine for a powerful system. Install Windows yourself and £100 extra can go into even better hardware.
 
Be aware that a 120+ Hz 3440x1440 monitor is going to consume half or more of your budget. If you limit yourself to 100 Hz - still very good, you'll spend much less. And a 2080 Super won't be much improvement over your SLIed 1080s. The 3080 Ti is going to cost you £900-£1000. That won't leave you much for a new system.

The good news is that you can transfer everything apart from the CPU, cooler, motherboard, and RAM, which you can sell on.

So you could do your upgrade in two steps. First new CPU, cooler, motherboard, RAM, and monitor. Then, later on, a new GPU. Do consider getting yourself a VESA monitor stand so you can stack your monitors one above the other. You can have monitoring tools, video chat, and more on one monitor while you game on the other.

Speaking of monitoring tools, do some monitoring right now. Is your CPU actually getting maxxed? How about your GPUs?
 
Thanks for the advice. The monitor won't come impact what I spend on the PC so I'm not offsetting one against the other.

My thinking on the 2080 was that I'm finding SLI support getting increasingly rare so it often ends up with me running a single 1080.
 
 
RobH79 said:
Hi guys,

Back in 2015 I purchased the below machine from Overclockers and at the time it was fantastic. Since then I've swapped the GTX980 for 2 GTX1080's in SLI which for a time was also great but it now feels like time for a change and I'd appreciate your advice.

My question is whether you think I should upgrade the graphics card to extend its life a little longer (RTX2080S maybe)?

or...

Should I replace the whole system in which case what sort of an improvement do you think I would see if I set a budget of £2k including VAT - I'd want a prebuilt machine from OCUK though - I don't want to go back to building my own.

Note that I'm using an LG 34UC97-S monitor which also feels a little old so I'm pondering replacing that at the same time. Any thoughts on a good upgrade there are also welcome and won't need to come from the same budget.

I mainly use it as a gaming machine and want to be able to pass 60FPS running games at a very high setting at 3440*1440

Thanks for the advice!


"Ultima Finesse Avalanche" Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.5GHz DDR3
  • HD-256-SE Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache -
  • OEM (ST3000DM001) HDD
  • CA-153-NX NZXT Source 340 Midi-Tower Case - White Window
  • MB-634-AS Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark S "Sabranco" Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
  • CP-541-IN Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM
  • HS-022-PL Prolimatech Black Genesis CPU Cooler
  • CA-023-SF SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 750W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply
  • MY-083-AR Avexir "Sabranco" Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit - White Light
  • HD-192-SA Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3DV-NAND Solid State Drive
  • GX-073-KF KFA2 GeForce GTX 980 "Hall of Fame V2 Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Click to expand...

Have you thought about sending your existing system in to be upgraded? If you are happy with the case, PSU etc then they can upgrade the motherboard, CPU, RAM for you. Keep the existing GPU until more us known in March about the next gen cards.

There are some very competitive bundles at the moment and you’d probably want a larger SSD, preferably an 1TB NVME since with Ryzen you can use it as a main drive as well as “cache” for the HDD.
 
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