upgrade itch ....

Associate
Joined
27 Dec 2014
Posts
1,686
Location
Southampton
Hey guys,

I am looking at upgrading my old computer. I built this one in 2011 :

i7-3930,
Sabertooth X79
32 gb DDR3
PSU is a 500W something
GTX 970 - this is the only thing i upgraded a while back.
Various HDDs and SSDs totalling about 4 TB of space.
2 screens, 1 is a 27" Rog Swift 3D, GSync, the other some random 24" thing

I do a lot of software development & gaming

This system has served me well and I saw no reason to upgrade, it's still performing admirably. I would like to get more memory which I can since my motherboard supports 64 GB. I could get another 32 GB for a little over £100.

That's option1.

Option 2 is to perform a drastic upgrade :

Aerocool GT-S Black Edition Big-Tower - Black / Red

MSI X99A Godlike Gaming Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4

Super Flower Leadex GOLD 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black

Intel i7-5930K 3.50GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75930K)

Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C16 2666MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit

This would serve me very well for another 5 years easy.

What do you think about the components I am looking at?

Is it worth getting some water or air cooling? Never used one of those but I read a lot of horror stories with those things leaking so I decided to stay away from them.
 
here's my current stuff :

my_comp.jpg


finding the right memory to upgrade doesn't feel easy. OC recommends not mixing with other memory type. Finding 5 year old memory ... well, that's an exercise in futility.
 
Last edited:
I know that feeling, but you should not be upgrading yet at all because you will be wasting money, that system is still top notch and you won't notice much of an improvement with X99.

Try and hold out for another year at least. The next line of GPU's will be out to combine with a big 4K monitor, more info on PCIe 4.0, DDR4 more matured and SSD size/speed will greatly increase.
 
Speaking from experience. I went from a i5-2400 to an X99 system last year, and truthfully unless you seriously need the cores, I didn't think it was all that worth it considering how much it cost. In your case you're still going from six cores to six cores, the 5960x would be your next upgrade path, but it costs a fortune and stock speeds are disappointing.

The best upgrade i've done in the last few years was with an SSD, CPU's have simply stagnated over the last decade. PCIe 4.0 is due around 2017, whether that's Skylake-E is unknown, but that's going to prove to be a substantial enough upgrade path for many to start dropping big cash on new builds, including those who have a fairly new X99 system.
 
Back
Top Bottom