I have the following PC:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3
CPU:Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz which I can push to a reliable 4GHz
CPU cooler: Water cooler. Hydro series H50 120mm, I think.
RAM: 8GB of DDR3. NB frequency: 2000MHz, DRAM frequency 800MHz.
Drive: SSD and hybrid drive.
GPU: GTX 970.
PSU: 750 watts. 5 years old.
Did I omit important details?
I’m wondering how worthwhile it might be to upgrade and what use cases would get the most and least out of the superior offerings.
1: i5 vs i7?
In what use cases can the i7 justify its price premium?
2: 4000 vs 6000 series Intel CPU?
Ditto. Especially for, say, an i5 4690K vs i5 6600K or i7 4790K vs i7 6700K. Do I understand correctly that those 4 CPUs tend to be at the top in terms of balancing value and performance?
3: DDR3 vs DDR4?
Ditto.
4: How much of a boon can it be to have 16GB of RAM rather than 8GB?
5: How do M.2 drives compare to SATA III SSDs in terms of practical benefits?
6: With motherboards, I’m not sure where to even start in terms of determining what advantages some have and whether it can be worthwhile to pay more for particular use cases.
7: What can one look for in a case? I have no size restrictions and am quite fine having a monstrous black box next to my desk. I don’t want fucking RGB party lights either.
You forgot to tell us what you’re doing with the current box that it doesn’t do well enough. It’s about 6x the horsepower of any non-server PC I’ve ever owned. And I was a server dev for years.
To say anything useful you’ve got to consider desired workload vs. current machine compared to desired workload vs. all the potential combos of different upgrades / different machines.
Absent that, the only answers will amount to fanboying for one completely unnecessary shiny gizmo vs. another.
Throw us a bone here and we’ll throw you some good answers, not just some answers.
I’m surprised. I got it for 1000 CanadaBucks half a decade ago with a GPU and drive upgrade last year.
Yes, I see the difficulty others may have. I wanted to avoid suggesting particular use cases because that might steer replies away from use cases I don’t know about but which could be useful to me.
So, the use cases I’m thinking about are: video, graphics, animation, texturing, physics simulations, gaming.
Programs like Blender, Gimp/Photoshop, Substance Designer, Substance Painter.
Unless you want 60fps gaming in 4K with maxed out graphics settings on a screen the size of a small cliff-face, the only thing I’d consider is putting more RAM in, and that’s only because RAM is cheap and you can never have too much of it.
I do a lot of PC gaming and I don’t care about 4K or getting 60fps, FWIW. IMHO your rig is fine as is.
Not really worthwhile to upgrade, unless you’re trying to run on a 4K monitor or something. Get a higher-tier graphics card if you’re in the mood to buy something. Otherwise you’re fine. Check out the “Best ___ For the Money” articles on TomsHardware if you’re dorking out about this really hard right now.
That Phenom II is a bit long in the tooth. Despite having similar clock speeds, IIRC the latest Intel CPUs have significantly higher performance, though that very much depends on the application.
When you say “physics simulation” do you mean a truly humongous simulation that takes hours of solid CPU crunching, or something that can be done in seconds or real-time? In the former case, yeah, it might be worth spending several hundred bucks to cut the computation time by 30%-50%. If the later, eh, your current CPU is fast enough.
I’m in a similar boat with my i7-860. Overclocked to 3.6GHz it still plays what I want it to play but I know it’s turning into an antique. But replacing it also means a new board and new memory so it’s hard to justify until it’s truly a liability.
Add a Serious SSD that you clone with your current “C” drive so a ‘oops’ does not lead to suicide. M.E. comment about RAM is spot on IMO.
Better Video card? Maybe…
How much time are you sitting around waiting on your computer when it is the pipe that is really what the problem is.
Better - faster - more up + down pipe is worth much more than a small up-tic in puter ability. IMO
I can not buy faster/bigger pipe where I live without 10X thousands for infrastructure just for me.
I have quad core 32 gigs of RAM, ssd’s etc…
Of course I could move. Would require a divorce, major $$$$, and I don’t need/want more puter that bad…
IMO, choice between more puter for you or more pipe is an easy win for more pipe. YMMV
Guys, his CPU was first produced 2009 - 2010. Games bottleneck more often on the GPU these days but his desire to upgrade isn’t out of the blue. It’s probably “good enough” but there are plenty of newer, faster setups for not $$$$.
It would be helpful to know your budget, CA$ 1000 again? Also, do you want to cannibalize some of the old computer?
I decided on i5 6500 awhile back over i7 due to the price.
I think it depends on what CPU architecture you go with, but DDR4 is a little easier to find compatibility with newer setups.
More is better, and it’s (relatively) cheap.
I am confused sometimes too as one seems much more expensive but it’s not always clear why. I stick with reputable brands, Gigabyte is a fine one., ASUS is good too.
m.2 is supposed to be better, but at least when I looks like the price is pretty comparable. I have a SATA. I think the jump between the two is smaller than HD>SSD.
GPU is a solid upgrade, and Tom’s Hardware is a good link. I also like to Google “Tom’s hardware cpu (gpu) hierarchy september 2016,” changing date as needed. It lets you know which are in the same “tier” and which are higher or lower.