I posted this question last year but never did an upgrade to the rig, so with all the new Tech out now my question is: Is this rig worth upgrading or would stating from somewhat scratch be a better idea? I'm thinking of upgrading just the graphics card for now with a EVGA GTX 780 or is it worth just rebuilding. Thanks for the help in advance! This time i will def upgrade.
It's been three years with this rig, I'm looking to see your ideas on what you would do to this excisting RIG set up. What you would take out to upgrade, what you would keep, what would you add,... ect. My budget Realisticly $1,500-2,000.
I am a video editor, and I game mostly on this computer.
Really you have a lot of nice components in an older system. Personally I would change the mobo, cpu. Your RAM is DDR3 so thats all good. Your OS is perfect. I would consider upgrading your CPU cooler as well. Either a superior air or go liquid. I cannot give you an honest answer to "all in one" Liquid cooler units but I do know the complete do it yourself units work extreamly well, IF YOU NEED IT!. Most of us are overclocking a little and don't require that kind of overkill cooling. Besides that I think you have a nice system. you can check out mine on my profile page as a comparison.
Thanks everyone for your advice, I think I'm leaning to SSD's and a new GPU, Now the question is do i get a 780 or more or do i just go nuts and get a Titan (only reason is to have the GPU stay updated while i upgrade here and there with the years to come but i don't think thats to realistic.)
The 780 is only between 1-5% less preformance than a titan but costs 400 dollars less. At 600 dollars each you could go SLI 780s and only be 200 dollars more expensive than the titan but get 175% of the preformance.
Although the Titan rolls off the tougne when bragging.
I would get a new cpu and mobo, because you are a editor the sandy bridge-E or ivy bridge-E will be your best bet because of the extra cores. Since you game a 770 is good for editing and gaming because it is like a beefy 680, if you get a 780 you will stuff even faster. So overall, upgrade cpu and mobo and go with x79, and upgrade gpu to 770 or 780.
The hard drive and CPU cooler (You don't want it to fail on you) and nothing else. Wait till the 25th(?) and see what AMD has to offer, if you can wait a bit longer MAXWELL(?) from NVIDIA should be coming early i think in Q1 next year and I am guessing will blow AMD out of the water considering they were holding out on the titans GPUs and that the 700 series is a stopgap (they aren't going to release parts worse than the highend). Also wait for the CPU refresh from intel next year in 1h as this generation is not much of an improvement on the last.
Thanks for all the feedback. So many ways to go about doing this upgrade.
A better CPU cooler would be a nice addition then i could OC like suggested as well as add an SSD. I don't mind waiting to see what AMD and navida do with their GPU'S as well as wait for the new CPU's. The funds for this build are already to go but I don't mind letting them burn a hole in my wallet a little longer. The only thing wanting me to upgrade the GPUs now is the fact that the new games are coming out and I'm not sure my SLI GTX460s will be able to run as smooth as I'd like when I play.
If you are going aio liquid cooler go for thermaltake water 3.0,corsair ones have buggy software and the led light usually dies or doesn't display the color you set.
You could get a case with better cable management and modular drive cages for not a lot of money,corsair or fractal have nice choices.
More HDD ? Consumer ones are cheaper theese days then they were before,maybe go enterprise sata ? WD reds or SG constellation es 128mb are nice.
SSD's are affordable now as well,Any drive from a reputable brand is good atm.
Wouldn't change cpu or ram as they are good.
You could get a higher efficeny modular psu to lower power bills and have less cable mess.
If you want a quick cheep speed boost. I'd look around Ebay for a one of the many Xeon hex core X56xx CPUs floating around. if you feel you need more CPU speed. 2 more cores and less power consumption is not a bad thing to have. you need to make sure you have the bios with the hex core extreme edition cpu microcode support as that covers the hex core Xeons too.
IF your serious about video editing/rendering and can justify the cost x99 platform and a the 6 core or 8 core i7's are a no brainier. That said it's is the only real upgrade CPU/motherboard wise that will gain you much more than the Intel Core i7-980X extreme edition or a Xeon x56xx with a mild over clock on your existing x58 motherboard.
Other than that an SSD would be nice, A new GPU depending on your needs or gaming habits, if you feel the need for it.
I picked up my Xeon X5650 in the UK for £47 On air I've overclocked that to 3.2ghz mostly to get the base clock upto 160 get my ram upto 1600Mhz as it wouldn't post with a memory multiplier higher than 12 so running the ram at it's proper speed it the stock speed CPU wasn't possible , now I plan to get a GTX 970 for a GPU to plays some games. My ATI/AMD 4770 is legacy now.