Excuse the wall of text however, this is a weird situation. I will preface the fact that I love pc gaming, but what I love more is pc BUILDING. The situation is for the past few years I celebrate my own personal holiday of New Computer Parts day (because why not) at the end of March. This year I am feeling a bit more financially responsible and am having a tough time justifying $1500 on upgrades that are not that big of an improvement for me. So I ask you Tek Syndicate community, help me celebrate my favorite holiday without being fiscally responsible.
I have two pcs that are worth using or upgrading, My main pc has an fx 8350, 16gbs of ram, and an Msi lightning 290x; my second pc has an a6 5400, 4gbs of ram, and an Evga 560ti. My main pc is used for getting homework done for a web development program, 1080 gaming, and general use. My second machine is used for random tinkering and doing odd bits of coding.
My question for the pc building community is, How can I feed my love for pc building and upgrading without arbitrarily upgrading or being fiscally irresponsible?
Main Pc http://pcpartpicker.com/p/sNgzBm
Secondary Pc http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2fy8pg
You could try getting kickass accessories. Macro keyboard, thumpin' speakers, additional monitors, a larger monitor. You get the idea.
I think it is a tough time to decide on upgrades. With directx 12 coming out, it could make cpu utilization much more optimized. I would wait to see if you can squeeze more performance out of that 8350. It is going to be interesting to see the second generation of HBM memory on both AMD and Nvidia cards. If the rumor is true that Nvidia HBM2 cards are coming as soon as April, it might make it worth waiting for those cards to upgrade to. It is all about what resolutions you really want to push your pc at.
My main rig is honestly not too far off of yours. The only difference is that I am running a EVGA GTX 970 SSC edition. (I think it is kind of sacrilege, but I got it used for a very good deal.) The point is that these specs push me at 4k in a lot of games at pretty good settings.
Another thing to consider spending money on is upgrades on SSD's. For a fraction of the money, you could pick up a 1TB SSD and that would be ideal for game loading.
Ive got a couple of SSD's in my main rig and I could definately upgrade my storage situation. I think your are bringing up a great point with hbm. Perhaps I will keep my upgrades small this year and wait for AMD to wow me.
I am hoping AMD can wow me... I feel like both companies could bring us wow gpu's. I feel like the reorganizing of their gpu division could help them on focus, but they really need to focus to deliver an amazing product again. The Fury line is quite impressive, but it was too early to adopt it, except in cases where micro itx setup were concerned. The Fury Nano was a very large technical achievement it terms of size and power consumption. If AMD can keep working on power saving and performance, it will essentially be a win for gaming.
While it is fun to upgrade, Moore's law has been pretty much abandoned. PC's have not had the performance momentum of yesteryear. Ultimately, it is worth saving a little money from your budget this year to build something completely extraordinary a year or two down the road.
To bring up an example of patience, I had a friend last year who spent $5500 on an Alienware setup. It was a few months before the GTX 980 TI had arrived and it used 3 GTX 980's. First off, when you buy an Alienware, you are essentially buying the name and that is about it... He could've waited a few months and probably have only spent half as much to build something truly exceptional.
At the end of the day, it is all about research and patience.
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What about case mods or even a custom case?
There is also the hobby of vintage computers.
On the upgrade I have seen 560's on sale at MC for 60 bucks so maybe SLI?
I totally get that pc building is more fun then gaming.
Start a little business of computer assitance and building. I would totally do that (already kinda do it for my friends but that's another story). Or maybe you can join a computer store as a part time worker and satisfy your need of building and tinkering with PCs.