Full Build or Just Upgrade?

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26 Jul 2003
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Loughborough
I'll have some money to spend soon and want to treat myself whilst I can to an upgrade with some of it. Currently I'm running a system I built about 3 years ago using one of OCUK's overclocked bundles:

Core i7 2700K @4.3ghz
Corsair H100 cooler
Asus P8P67 Pro board
12gb DDR3 Dual Channel Geil
Nvidia 660ti
650w Corsair Modular PSU

I want to go the 980ti hybrid route as noise levels are important to me. I also fancy a new case, clean, minimalist design with no external bays. I play games at 1440p and don't plan to go 4k for the time being.

My options seem to range from a new card/psu/case with my existing cpu through to an SLI 980ti pre-built watercooled beast from OCuk at around £3.5k (but that's a case of want rather than need at 1440p).

Question is, would there still be plenty of life left in my cpu/mb/ram combo if I just upgrade the GFX? Or, if I'm spending £1k on graphics, case and PSU, am I best going the whole hog and replacing the lot? How far have i7 cpu's come in the last 3-4 years?
 
New GFX card+SSD+CASE.

CPU+board ok still, you may need to update the BIOS on the board then redo the overclock.
 
I think I'm running the latest BIOS; 3602 from 2012. As far as the overclock goes, I lost the OCUK 4.5 guaranteed settings long ago and I just run with an increased multiplier to get 4.2-4.3 stable.

Sounds like there's life in the old board yet :-)

Should I look at a modern PSU for a 980ti install and will the cables still fit the P8P67 board without any adaptor malarky? OCUK sold me such a good package last time I've not really needed to keep up to date!
 
With all of my PCs, they have all spent their entire lives, in a constant state of upgrade.

I have only ever bought new a very very few times. Even on different builds, I often cobble together something and then proceed to swap out bits until the PC is at a stage where I feel that I am happy with it, but until then, its in a constant limbo.

I suppose this way I am always left with that comfortable feeling that I have just upgraded my PCs, but I am also in that constant feeling that I have spent money and not had a huge jump. LOL.
 
I think I'm running the latest BIOS; 3602 from 2012. As far as the overclock goes, I lost the OCUK 4.5 guaranteed settings long ago and I just run with an increased multiplier to get 4.2-4.3 stable.

Sounds like there's life in the old board yet :-)

Should I look at a modern PSU for a 980ti install and will the cables still fit the P8P67 board without any adaptor malarky? OCUK sold me such a good package last time I've not really needed to keep up to date!

As long as your PSU has 24pin, 8pin ATX, PCI-E for the gfx card it will work with the current board, but you should be fine keeping the current Corsair.
 
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