Upgrade + HTC Vive Advice

[DaleTheWhale]

Hello Folks,

Has been a while since I stepped into GH! Blame the cycling folk just past GD.

So I've been waiting some time for the 1080's to drop before I upgraded my PC and was set on doing a full upgrade as I'm fully water cooled (SLI, CPU and board) but now I'm not sure as I could just grab a 1080 with a waterblock and away we go, however do I want to upgrade the rest of my PC.

Spec:

CPU: Intel i7 3820 (2011)
GPU: EVGA SC 680's 2GB (SLI)
Mobo: MSI Big Bang XPower II
RAM: 16GB 1600Mhz Ripjaws (4x4GB)
Case: Corsair 540
PSU: Corsair AX860

Abundance of SSD's etc, all of it is water cooled and yes, the motherboard does fit, although had to remove the bottom HDD mounts.

So I have around £1500-2000 to upgrade my machine, I want to get a HTC Vive as I want something new to play with and VR tickles me.

Do I go all out, sell the above and grab a fresh system and get rid of water cooling (I don't mind as silence doesn't bother me & I don't need enthusiast performance as work kills my time to play like I used too) or do I grab a new 1080 with a waterblock, actually get some decent RAM and overclock my CPU, is there any point going for an X99 setup from a X79?

I also plan to get a G-Sync curved monitor from a friend at some point in the future so plan to stay Nvidia.

Help!

 

[Benjamham]

you can get some awesome deals on the high end x79 cpu's the 3960x and 4820k are reasonably priced (around £100-140) not huge upgrades but worth considering imho.
as for x99, broadwell-e isn't worth it over haswell-e (especially considering the prices at the moment)

If you are considering a curved g-sync monitor then I assume you will be playing at 3400x1440 so the cpu should be able to serve you for a while longer, especially if you overclock it. you could wait to see how AMD Zen plays against intel's processors (worst case it will lead to price drops of intel CPU's).

I am in a similar situation with the whole water-cooling issue, the new cards don't seem to benefit as much from water-cooling as much as the older cards that reach thermal thresholds. If you aren't bothered about silence then you may aswell go for a decent aftermarket 1080 and just remove the GPU from the loop? I am sure it would look clean enough in the air540.

If you do decide to sell the cpu/mobo/watercooling then I would buy it from you for a project that I have planned!

 

[DaleTheWhale]

Forgot to reply to this, whoops!

Weighting up whether it would be more hassle to remove the GPU's from the loop or to just add a new GPU in... or do I just gut the lot out and have everything on air but that means changing the motherboard back as well!

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/evga...ater-cooled-graphics-card-wc-14t-tl.html#t=b7

This should do me well, as I want some GPU grunt to handle newer games, the 680's are struggling with DOOM on medium.