Upgrading needs advise

Hi All,

My GTX 650 Ti just died and I am planning to upgrade. Here's what left on my system.

i3 3220
Gigabyte B85N ITX
2 TB WD Green
8gb 1600 GSkill Ares
520w Seasonic S12ii
Bitfenix Prodigy (ITX)

My plan is to move out of the ITX form factor and do mATX instead. So...

  • For the CPU I'm looking at the Intel i5 4960 (locked) or should I go for an FX8320e or FX8350
  • For GPU I'd settle for GTX 950

I do web development and sometimes do some gaming moba, cs go, and planning to play some triple A titles like Witcher 3 on 1080p.

Thanks!

Do you mean 750 TI? 950 TI just came out. If possible RMA the card.
EDIT:
As for the CPU go with the i5 since it seems you are more aimed at productivity work that will be more CPU bound.

First of all, your 950 Ti just died. Since its a brand new card that just came out a couple of months ago, i'm sure it has a warranty. I think you can get away with using your iGPU for a couple weeks during the RMA process. Don't be silly and go out and buy a lesser model graphics card to replace it unless you did something stupid to void the warranty.

For your CPU, why would you change your platform? If you think you need a CPU upgrade (which you probably don't, unless you have the money and just want to) then why dont you save some money on a motherboard and just buy an i7 3770 used off ebay? IvyBridge is still very good compared to Haswell, or even Skylake.

And if you still have money burning a hole in your pocket, BUY AN SSD AND YOU WILL THANK ME!

Guys I am so sorry what I meant was it was a 650 Ti not a 950 Ti

@Theonewhoisdrunk thank you for your comment.

@NicKF Good point on the CPU, and yes I will get an SSD for sure.

wait, what? You say you have 3rd gen core i3 on 4th gen motherboard? If you have a 4th gen i3 on a B85 mobo, just grab something like an i5-4460, and keep your current mobo. If you have the 3220 on a B75 board, just find a cheap 3rd gen i5 somewhere, something like an i5-3470. Grab yourself an SSD, and spend the remainder of your $ on GPU. Grab an R9 380 if you can. If not, grab a GTX 950.

Spend not very much more money and get an R9 380. It's basically a 970.

1 Like

Fuck the 950 it's a 175 dollar coaster.

1 Like

I like the idea of just upgrading my cpu, but from where I am it is hard to find people selling just the chip most often they bundle it with a crappy system.

Thanks for the advise though I got sam advise from other people.

For the GPU, yah the 380 is kinda nice my only worry is that can my Seasonic S12ii 520w psu can handle it.

Oh, it will handle it just fine... Don't worry about that... Basically my Seasonic 430W can handle it just fine...

The 950 is fine. It's a decent 1080p card for $150. It's sognificantly better than the 370 for only an extra $20. It's $50 cheaper than the 380, so if you can't afford a 380, a 950 would be a good purchase. The 380 is not "basically a 970".

depends a bit on the budget.
locked i5 with H97 mini itx board would be a good choice.
You might also concider a Xeon E3-1231-V3 with a H97 mini itx.
THe Xeon E3 is basicly a locked i7 without igpu, it comes with 4 cores 8 threads, and its just a few bucks more then a 4690K.
This could be handy if you do some productivity stuff.

In terms of the gpu a GTX950 is basicly not a bad choice, however you might also concider a R9-380 instead if you can afford.

What are you using your PC for? I'm assuming its just for games, and in that case I'd go with a budget CPU, and then get some for of alright GPU. Currently the 380 is easily capable of maxing out 1080p games and for the most part you won't get much more out of it. CPU wise, anything with 4 cores, and performs decent. Since you said you wanted to stick with the Matx form factor the only real things you can get for that shape would be Intel, and from then on it's dependent on how much you're willing to drop.