deciding between two upgrades: SSD or new CPU/mobo ?

J

jadenx2

n00b
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Oct 31, 2010
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hello all,

would love some advice on what to upgrade next, this is my current build:

i7 930 bloomfield @ stock
ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366
4GB RAM
GTX 680 2GB
running games @ 1440p

the cpu/mobo i bought a few years ago. i don't have an SSD yet and was thinking about buying one. however, i came across this deal:

http://www.blackfriday.fm/ad/frys/i...i-z77a-g41-processor-motherboard-combo/125913

which seems like a great deal for a cpu/mobo upgrade. so now i'm stuck between this and a 250~ gb samsung SSD. but the only way i'd buy an SSD is if it goes on sale at some point this weekend, hopefully for ~200$.

what do you guys think? any suggestions are welcome, thanks.
 
That CPU/motherboard combo is not that great of a deal, especially since it's still an older-generation K-series Ivy Bridge CPU (one CPU generation older than the current Haswell CPUs) paired with a low-end Z77 motherboard that cannot handle high overclocks well. Plus, all of Frys' "Black Friday" deals are in-store only (no online purchases), which means that you'd have to pay sales tax on top of the package price.

On the other hand, your current system will bottleneck the throughput of some of the newer SSDs due to the fact that the native X58 SATA controller supports only SATA 3.0 Gbps (with a maximum practical throughput of only around 270 MB/s), and that the onboard Marvell SATA 6.0 Gbps controller is only slightly faster than the Intel ports in terms of maximum practical throughput.
 
so from what i gather, is it not even worth getting either?

i knew about the SSD bottleneck, but an SSD running on a 3.0 Gbps is it that much of a handicap? of course down the road i would upgrade my cpu/mobo anyway, just not for a while.
 
jadenx2 said:
so from what i gather, is it not even worth getting either?

i knew about the SSD bottleneck, but an SSD running on a 3.0 Gbps is it that much of a handicap? of course down the road i would upgrade my cpu/mobo anyway, just not for a while.
Click to expand...

The SATA 3.0 Gbps bottleneck mainly affects file transfers and file copying operations. Random accesses won't be affected much unless the controller is crappy.

By the way, that CPU/motherboard combo (as I have tried to mention) will not cost you just $190 - but will instead cost you more than $200 out the door. (This is due to the general merchandise sales tax I described above.) Besides, what good is a system with a K-series CPU that can't overclock stably by more than just a couple of hundred MHz (about the same as a non-K Ivy Bridge CPU on a better-quality Z77 motherboard)?
 
SSD upgrade was the only time I've ever been completely and totally shocked by a tech. purchase.

I was in same situation stuck on a platform that only offered SATAII (3.0GB/s), was using a conventional spinning HDD and felt like my computer was just slow.

I heard to get a sataIII drive anyway from someone reliable; that I wouldn't regret it. They were riiiiight. The old computer finally felt FAST for the first time ever. Since then I got interested in computers again and spent way more money on other upgrades that impressed me way less.

SSD is essential.
 
With all that said and done, I'd still recommend the 250GB Samsung SATA 6.0 Gbps SSD over the i5-3570K/Z77A-G41 motherboard combo: The SSD can be carried over onto a new build should you decide to later upgrade the CPU and mobo.
 
Bluesun311 said:
SSD is essential.
Click to expand...

I can't ever seem to impress this very simple reality on people until they've already experienced what a difference it makes even if you just get a smallish SSD for the OS and desktop applications. My wife thought my assertions regarding the performance difference were dubious at best for her machine until I dropped an SSD into it. Same for a few friends. Now they understand :D
 
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