Build Now or Wait? Gaming PC Overhaul time.....

[pigwalk]

So it's a week before black friday, and I've had the itch to upgrade for a while now. Not sure if to go for it right now, or just wait it out a little longer and just grab a SSD in the meanwhile to prolong the current rig in sig? I don't have any HUGE need to upgrade, but I built this current machine back when BF3 came out and it's served me well since, and I'm looking to pick up BF4 on Black Friday, and Battlefield games seem to be the ones making me upgrade every time. On with the questions?

I'm leaning towards a AMD Octa CPU setup, but am open to Intel as well. I probably won't be OC'ing, every time I have in the past AMD's Cool'n'Quiet breaks and I'm running full tilt all the time, wasting money and heat. If that's not a problem anymore I'm open to OC'ing. If not, I want whatevers going to be fastest stock, wither it be a i5 or 8350 or whatnot.


1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc

Gaming and browsing.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

$600-$1000, the less the better of course.

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.

Southwest Florida. Tigerdirect is local, no MC, no Fry's.

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.

Cpu, motherboard, ram, 480gb or higher SSD for OS/Games

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

CM HAF 932 Case, 2gb 660ti, Storage HDD's (1tb WD Greens) and power supply is a Antecs Earthwatts 650. Link

6) Will you be overclocking?

No, but open to OC'ing if power saving functions aren't affected.

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?

27" @ 1920x1080

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

ASAP

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.

Up to date features would be nice, USB 3.0, SATA 6gb, but mainly want reliability.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?

64bit Win7 but may rebuild with Win8.1.

 

[Dangman]

Gonna repost this:

Now would be a good time to upgrade. The Intel CPUs coming in 2014 won't be that much of an upgrade over current Intel Haswell CPUs. The Intel Skylake CPUs that are supposedly coming out in 2015 will more than likely use rather expensive DDR4 RAM. It probably won't be until 2016 when we'll see a mainstream Intel CPU that'll be a cost-effective and worthwhile upgrade over a Haswell or even an Ivy Bridge setup. Or that DDR4 pricing might drop down to more reasonable levels.

So if you upgrade the CPU and mobo now, you can probably hold off on another CPU, mobo, and now RAM upgrade (DDR4 now) for another three years when it'll be cost-effective again to do another upgrade

If you can't tell, I'm recommending an Intel setup over an AMD setup for gaming.

 

[Quartz-1]

Probably your cheapest and best upgrade is to get a second 660 Ti second hand. This will give you a huge graphical performance boost. After that, upgrading to an i7-4770 will triple your CPU performance, if Passmark is to be believed. Upgrading the CPU will mean new RAM, new motherboard, and possibly a new CPU cooler.

 

[Dangman]

Probably your cheapest and best upgrade is to get a second 660 Ti second hand. This will give you a huge graphical performance boost. After that, upgrading to an i7-4770 will triple your CPU performance, if Passmark is to be believed. Upgrading the CPU will mean new RAM, new motherboard, and possibly a new CPU cooler.

Not a good idea for two reasons:
1) It's not possible wih his current motherboard: It's an AMD motherboard that never got SLI support.
2) His CPU would bottleneck a GTX 660 Ti SLI waay too much.

 

[McFry]

OP, I am in the same situation as you with almost the exact same system, play the same games, and have the same needs.

The way I see it, we could get a core i7 class system right now and probably be happy for the next 2-3 years. I imagine we will start yearning for a little more performance at about the 2 year mark, but much like our current builds last year, we will feel our systems are "good nuff" with some slight graphics tweaking. In doing so I think we can build out our systems for no more than $700 with black friday deals and general end of year closeouts.

That being said, Q1 2014 will have a couple of new options that could very easily add 1 extra year of life to our systems, putting us into 2017 territory without any complaints. Such a new system class will probably put us at the $900-$1000 mark, so we're going to be paying for that new CPU smell thats for sure.

This leaves us with 2 things to consider

1) Will we be happy tweaking graphics settings to keep our systems competitively playable by late 2016?

2) Are we going to be willing to scrap our systems in 2016 thanks to the savings we make today, or will we be unable to justify an overhaul so quickly? Therefore we should save our money and upgrade in Q1 2014?

This I cant quite decide. Is saving $300 now being a penny wise and a pound foolish? I cant quite remember what my circumstances were when I built my current rig.

I think the other big thing for us to consider is if the next gen cpu's will be GPU bottlenecked by our choice in cards. Right now a Core i7 or FX 8xxx compliments the GeForce 7xx and Radeon R9 cards beautifully. I dont know what the next GPU roadmaps are.

 

[horrorshow]

I'd wait.

 

[Dangman]

OP, I am in the same situation as you with almost the exact same system, play the same games, and have the same needs.

I should point out that my main rig (listed in my sig) is also very similar in terms of CPU power to the OP and presumably yours. My first post in this thread reflects my conclusions to the current upgrade predicament.

The way I see it, we could get a core i7 class system right now and probably be happy for the next 2-3 years. I imagine we will start yearning for a little more performance at about the 2 year mark, but much like our current builds last year, we will feel our systems are "good nuff" with some slight graphics tweaking. In doing so I think we can build out our systems for no more than $700 with black friday deals and general end of year closeouts.

That being said, Q1 2014 will have a couple of new options that could very easily add 1 extra year of life to our systems, putting us into 2017 territory without any complaints. Such a new system class will probably put us at the $900-$1000 mark, so we're going to be paying for that new CPU smell thats for sure.

Just so that we're on the same page, can you please explain exactly what is going to be released in Q1 2014 that will both increase the cost of a system by $300 and extend the life of a PC for another year?

This I cant quite decide. Is saving $300 now being a penny wise and a pound foolish? I cant quite remember what my circumstances were when I built my current rig.

Don't forget the high possibility that you can use those $300 savings to actually get a new CPU, mobo and RAM in 2016/2017 that'll be faster than a system bought in 2014.

I think the other big thing for us to consider is if the next gen cpu's will be GPU bottlenecked by our choice in cards. Right now a Core i7 or FX 8xxx compliments the GeForce 7xx and Radeon R9 cards beautifully. I dont know what the next GPU roadmaps are.

That's a minor concern IMO. It wasn't until a year or two ago that the older Core i7 920 (released in 2008) started becoming a limitation for newer GPUs. Hell, you still have some people arguing that isn't the case at all.

 

[Quartz-1]

Not a good idea for two reasons:
1) It's not possible wih his current motherboard: It's an AMD motherboard that never got SLI support.

Heh. I'd forgotten that that was once a restriction.

2) His CPU would bottleneck a GTX 660 Ti SLI waay too much.

Not really relevant. The OP isn't asking for the acme of performance but a worthwhile upgrade. Anyway, it's moot as you point out he can't do SLI.