Upgrade or get a new rig?

[niphilim222]

The problem is my case can't fit a H100i, its a full Antec 1200, the thing wont fit.

 

I had no problem cooling my cpu with a H80, but to noisy, might go the way of Noctua in the future. :thumbsup: :geek:

[Erik005]

I had a H100i in my phanteks enthoo primo and it just never worked right, even with the fans at full blast it could barely keep my 3930k at 42^oC idle.

 

I then bought a Noctua nh-u14s and it has been working great my processor is now at 26^oC idle and when the fans go to full speed you simply can't hear it.

Edited December 23, 2016 by Erik005

[LeddBate]

If the OP is still following this thread, like others above I recommend either a 1060 or 1070 if you can afford the latter. The 1070 is currently the king of "bang-for-the-buck" and should pair nicely with your CPU.

 

Speaking of which, since your CPU is a "k" model, you should be able to get a simple overclock via your mobo's UEFI. I also have an ASUS Z77, but my CPU is only an i5-3570k running at 3.4GHz. But since it is water-cooled (a simple AIO with a small cooling block/fan) I was still able to get a simple overclock up to just over 4.2GHz without having to tweak the voltage whatsoever. Runs whisper quiet even though my rig sits on the desk right next to me.

 

Since our mobos are almost identical, you should be able to enter your UEFI by hitting the delete key during boot as normal. There should be a simple option for switching your CPU from "balanced" to "performance". Save your new setting and exit. Use CPU-Z to check to see how much overclock you get. Also use Prime95 to stress test during the overclock to make sure your CPU's core temperatures stay in the safe zone.

 

I upgraded from a 670 to a 980 and I see no sign of bottle-necking despite my CPU having less "umph" than yours. So if you decide you'd rather go all the way up to a 1080, it should pair well with your CPU -especially if you OC.

 

One last bit of advice. If you can afford it, upgrade your SSD to a larger amount. 256GB is fine for your OS and a handful of major programs, but having your entire Steam library on it is probably running you short on room. I'm guessing that you most likely have your Steam (and other games) on your HDDs. Loading times from an SSD will be drastically lower. 'Course, you knew that...

[Erik005]

One last bit of advice. If you can afford it, upgrade your SSD to a larger amount. 256GB is fine for your OS and a handful of major programs, but having your entire Steam library on it is probably running you short on room. I'm guessing that you most likely have your Steam (and other games) on your HDDs. Loading times from an SSD will be drastically lower. 'Course, you knew that...

 

I would suggest a M.2 NVME ssd for windows and a large budget ssd for the games library.

[FMod]

I would suggest a M.2 NVME ssd for windows and a large budget ssd for the games library.

Right now I have a 950 Pro 512GB with Win10 (Insider) and a Crucial M500 with Win10, plus a bunch of other SSD on SATA and PCI-E (but none with a functioning OS).

 

Until the 960 Pro launched 2 months ago, the 950 Pro was about the fastest M.2 SSD you could get. The M500 was one of the slowest major brand SSD when it came out 3.5 years ago, coming to the bottom of most charts even against some drives that were already out of production.

 

The result? There is no discernible difference at all between the performance of Windows on my 950 Pro and my M500. I know it can be measured, but I couldn't for my life tell which one I'm running, unless Insider just got a new feature or I looked up system folders. I could try a stopwatch, but the result will depend on my reaction time more than hardware performance.

 

This isn't my first migration from SSD to another; I've been using them since the Intel X25. The one constant has been that, as long as you only use good drives, you don't (or at least I didn't) feel anything different when moving the system from one SSD to a faster one. I hoped to get a small boot time advantage from the 950 Pro, but the mobo takes so long for a full boot that it doesn't matter, and wakeup is essentially instant either way.

 

Even if you are someone who can tell the difference... would having a slightly faster Windows be that important on a desktop? It's not a laptop that you open and close 20 times a day and wake up from inactivity while open another 30 times. You wake your PC up once, it's up and running by the time you've moved your hand from the power button to the mouse, and put it back to sleep at the end of the day. There's no battery, you don't put it to sleep every minute.

 

There are some workloads where you do feel the difference, like tossing up Mass Effect 3's whole storage with Texplorer, or splicing some 4K video, or using it for your swap file when 128 GB just isn't enough for the renderer. But these workloads have nothing to do with Windows, they're all about rearranging very large amounts of data, as opposed to loading up lots of small scattered libraries. So when I add the 960 Pro, I won't be wasting it on Windows.

 

 

While the 960 Evo is a great deal overall, it's still $245 for the 250 GB version plus a 480 GB budget drive. A single 750 GB drive is $170; you can spend $75 more elsewhere to a better effect. Or, for the same $245, you can get a MX300 1050 GB for an extra 320 GB of SSD storage.

 

If the $75 doesn't matter, two drives still isn't the way to go. At the pace the storage market is moving, you really don't want to spread yourself thin. With most mobos, you only get one PCI-E M.2 slot - don't waste it on a compromise. If you can afford and want the 960 Evo, my advice is to buy one large enough to last you; otherwise, buy a SATA SSD and keep your M.2 and PCI-E lanes free.

 

Otherwise, 2 years down the road, you'll find yourself in a situation when you want to upgrade to whatever NVMe drive rules the market then, but you have nowhere to put it in, unless you waste time and money migrating your system and selling off the old drive. If I've learned one thing from all my upgrade experience since floppies and mechanical drives, it's to always buy the largest drive with reasonable $/GB that you foresee yourself filling up within the next year. Small drives end up in the trash, large drives stay in the system.

[LeddBate]

 

If I've learned one thing from all my upgrade experience since floppies and mechanical drives, it's to always buy the largest drive with reasonable $/GB that you foresee yourself filling up within the next year. Small drives end up in the trash, large drives stay in the system.

 

Good advice there. Also, M.2 tech is still a bit new. Like SSDs when they were new, for every gem there's about a dozen crappy M.2s. I just don't like adopting new tech until it's had a chance to mature (at least awhile.)

 

I realize the tech pundits and PC magazines like to talk about how much faster a good M.2 drive on the mobo is compared to an SSD on an old SATA connection, but... -really, it's hard for me to see much difference. Guess I'm still impressed by the fact that my current rig boots to desktop (including loading Steam and a few other programs) in 12 seconds after I push the power button. I still remember the days when my old XP machine took nearly a minute to boot, -and my old '98 rig took nearly two!

[Erik005]

In a small rig a M.2 drive is one less cable to worry about though

Edited December 31, 2016 by Erik005

[FMod]

Yes, it is. But you don't help it by getting BOTH a M.2 drive and a 3.5" SATA drive. You do help it by buying one drive at a time.

 

NB: Most M.2 drives are still SATA drives. Only some are NVMe.

[ElectricMessiah]

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