An upgrade dilemma.

[Godmachine]

So I've got a dilemma. I just upgraded my monitor (Korean 1440p cheap but awesome 27 inch) and I've basically had the same kind of system for years now.

My specs are as follows :

i7 930 @ 4.0Ghz
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Revision 2.0
12 Gigs of DDR3 (GeiL brand)
Corsair 1200 watt PSU
tons of hard drives (I've got about 14 Terabytes of storage in total) with 2 SDD Crucial M4 128 gig drives
2 x EVGA GTX 480 SLI watercooled (with Danger Den blocks) overclocked to 900mhz Core and 2100mhz Memory
LIAN LI PC-A77F Case Full Tower ATX

My dilemma is this , I know that there has been two generations of Intel CPU's since my last upgrade and I see that the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge are both good upgrades since they run cooler and often overclock much better (well the Sandy Bridge does at least , overclocking wise).

My experience with water cooling has been good but it requires some "TLC" and seems to dump tons of heat into my room. I know the GTX 480's are famous for their massive power usage and mine are overclocked very heavily as well.

This makes my room a sweltering jungle unless I run a window unit (5000 BTU strength) AC which of course jumps up my bill (if I run it 24/7 than its $46 extra a month based on my rough estimates.. not good).

So bottom line heat and power efficiency seem to be my biggest issue so should I upgrade my CPU/Mobo to a newer generation Intel chip? Or should I ditch my video cards for something more efficient that generates less heat and requires less power? And as a side note will I get better performance for gaming out of upgrading to a newer CPU/Mobo and just keeping the video cards I have OR should I ditch the video cards , keep the CPU/Mobo as is and upgrade to 2 X GTX 670's with aftermarket coolers? I've looked at the benchmarks but more often than not it seems the GTX 670 gets compared to newer generation cards than my 480's.

 

[Delemon]

A 1366 i7 is still a very solid system. Power usage is a bit higher than Sandy Bridge, but according to this page here, (going by rough guesstimates) you'll be saving about 100W of power by switching to SB. Lets even say 150W.

According to this review over at Guru3D, SLI 670 will draw just slightly more power (~50W) than ONE GTX 480... so you'll be cutting out 200+W (again, guesstimate) of heat dump into your room, not even counting the extra heat from OC on your 480s.

Just from my quick googling, if you're looking for efficiency, SLI GTX670 is a better bet than a SB upgrade.

 

[Godmachine]

Thanks for your thoughts on it. Hmm I guess if I really wanna save energy I should just go with a new dual video card setup , seems like that'll save me some serious heat dumping into my room.

I know in time I'll be doing both but I just want to make sure I can do the best one up front. I need to keep my AC costs as low as possible without substituting comfort in the process. Maybe this time I'll just get one GTX 670 for now and another down the road (or at Winter time when I won't care about the added heat).

 

[Dangman]

Definitely go for GTX 670 or GTX 680 SLI as not only will you get higher noticeable performance but significantly lower heat generation and power usage. Win-win there.

 

[Godmachine]

Definitely go for GTX 670 or GTX 680 SLI as not only will you get higher noticeable performance but significantly lower heat generation and power usage. Win-win there.

Just ordered a Gigabyte GTX 670 with a 3 fan cooler

Can't wait.

 

[Dangman]

I think GTX 480 SLI will be faster than a single GTX 670 but you should see a massive decrease in heat and power use.

 

[Godmachine]

I think GTX 480 SLI will be faster than a single GTX 670 but you should see a massive decrease in heat and power use.

Yea which is fine with me right now. I'll be able to save some money which is welcomed at the moment and buy another down the line when they drop in price or when I'm flush with cash.