Weekend Open Forum: When was the last time your PC got a major revamp?

Jos

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The TechSpot PC Buying Guide just received a long overdue update today, spanning our usual four-tier price points from budget to luxury systems.

As you plan your next upgrade or hold off until the next big thing, tell us about the last time your PC got a major revamp. What did you get? How long do you usually wait between upgrades?

Anything on your sights for your next purchase?

Discuss below!

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I'm waiting for Haswell E this fall before I do my major upgrade.

My current rig is a i7 970 @4.2 + 7970Ghz, before I built this I was rocking my socket 939 opteron which is now in my HTPC. This was my first intel build since a p2 350 and it has lasted me the longest will be 5 years this october. The socket 1366 board has gone from 920 D0 to the 970 and 6950 to the 7970. But in the 2009-2014 there hasn't really been a need for me to upgrade. The system still performs well now with two SSD's in Raid 0. And to the honest the reason I want x99 is for the platform upgrade.

I've owned alot of systems going back to a 286 but this current rig has been my favourite.
 
Just went from a gigabyte 7950 boost to a Sapphire 290 Tri OC and just bought my friends 3770 to replace my 3570k.
I quite like the z97 boards so at the end of the year I might go i7 4790k and Asus Z97.
The 1st thing I would like to get is the new Samsung 850 pro.
 
Last major revamp? when I replaced the GTS 450 that I got from Techspot with a GTX 570 a couple years ago... I'm waiting for all the hardware updates coming later this year as well as seeing how much SC actually needs, to build a completely new system.
 
Back in 2010 I decided to breath new life into my aging LGA 775 platform Q6600 by upgrading to a DDR3, USB 3.0 motherboard compatible motherboard; adding a AMD 5870, SSD, and a Kingwin 1220W Modular PSU stuffed into a Cooler Master HAF X. Now in 2014 I still have no need of upgrading further, considering the Q6600 was bought back in 2007 that's saying alot!

I wouldn't bother with Haswell E or broadwell since Intel's Skylake platform with DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 support is supposed to be coming out next year
 
My wife's XP Core 2 Duo E6600 was showing it's age, so I sprung at the chance to build a new PC this Christmas. Gave her my i7-2600k, with SLI Nvidia 560ti, and a 1st gen OCZ Revodrive. I built a i7-4930k with SLI 770s, and went windows 8 and 100% SSD with this build instead of raided conventional drives for games. Much faster.

Unless I'm handing down my PC to family, I tend to upgrade the video card about once per tower build.
 
I wouldn't bother with Haswell E or broadwell since Intel's Skylake platform with DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 support is supposed to be coming out next year

Where can I read more information about this?
How much better are they expecting skylake to be over Haswell E?
 
5-6 years maybe? Hasn't been anything released that has made me want to overhaul my system. That and a lack of funds.
 
My last "major" upgrade was in 2008 when I jumped from a Pentium 4 to an Intel Core 2 Duo (motherboard, proceessor, RAM, PSU, graphics card, case), then another one in 2011 to an Intel Core i5 760 (motherboard, processor, RAM) and then minor regular updates over the past 3 years (case, HDD, SSD, mechanical keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc). My most recent upgrade was a graphics card last January (as a gamer I like upgrading my GPU; I've bought 5 graphics cards in 7 years).
 
Depends on what comes up at the right price. I usually run through graphics cards faster than Lindsay Lohan goes through substance abuse counsellors, but that is an economic decision based on resell opportunity and favourable pricing on new boards.

Any new upgrade will probably centre around storage. As for the "all-new-must-have" tech...DDR4 ? well, you see DDR3 pushing 2800-3000 MT/sec speed so DDR4 running at the same speed with worse latency doesn't get the heart aflutter. PCI-E 4.0 ? Nah, not really for anything except the aforementioned storage. System bus bandwidth isn't going to be that much of a necessity. PCI-E 2.0 isn't saturated by 99.9999% of graphics cards, let alone PCI-E 3.0. If the next (true) gen graphics include an ARM-based co-processor then the reasons for 4.0 decrease by one.
 
Pentium 286 Opus running on DOS with 40megs of HDD. Woo
Then a P4 around about 2002/3
Followed by an AMD64 939 which still works I believe
Then an AM2+ which died
Now an i7 1366, probably my longest running PC to date. Id say I usually change until now every 2-3 years.
Future proofing IMO is impossible.

The 1366 socket had a refresh, southbridge, ivy, and now haswell has with devils canyon, so wtf is haswell-e about. A 3rd increment ? Then apparently intel won't delay skylake, it will still shove out the broadwells in between.

And as asked above will skylake even be that much of an amazing jump ? YAY for ddr4 finally, but pcie 3.0 hasnt been out long and the 7series cards werent exactly bottlenecked on 2.0 so why would 4.0 be needed ?

My asus p6x58 premium would run SSD's at half speed. Useless. So, I need a new mobo new ram and new cpu. So frankly looks like a new rig is on its way just to get a pro evo 850 up n running.
 
Depends on what comes up at the right price. I usually run through graphics cards faster than Lindsay Lohan goes through substance abuse counsellors, but that is an economic decision based on resell opportunity and favourable pricing on new boards.

Any new upgrade will probably centre around storage. As for the "all-new-must-have" tech...DDR4 ? well, you see DDR3 pushing 2800-3000 MT/sec speed so DDR4 running at the same speed with worse latency doesn't get the heart aflutter. PCI-E 4.0 ? Nah, not really for anything except the aforementioned storage. System bus bandwidth isn't going to be that much of a necessity. PCI-E 2.0 isn't saturated by 99.9999% of graphics cards, let alone PCI-E 3.0. If the next (true) gen graphics include an ARM-based co-processor then the reasons for 4.0 decrease by one.

It isn't Graphic Cards creating the need for PCIe 4.0, it's the new SSDs and advances in phase-change memory technology is going increase that need. I'm just looking to build a system for wont need to be upgraded for another 5+ years
 
My most recent major overhaul was in 2008, when I installed an LGA775 motherboard, Core 2 Duo E8500, 4GB DDR2 RAM, and a 260GTX in my existing tower. Since then I've added a 128GB SSD, upgraded the video card to a 480GTX, replaced a DVD drive that one of my kids thought was a good receptacle for a house key, and replaced a failed power supply. I am still using the ThermalTake case, fans, and WD 74GB Raptor HDD from my first build from 2004. The old 939 mobo, Athlon x2, and RAM went into a new case and is still serving as my wife's PC and HTPC.
 
I just bought a second hand hd 7950... my XFX 7950 just died last week after two years, and since I think I don't need more graphics power for now and it was half the price of a 280, it was just a good deal to let it pass... My phenom x4 955 still rocks... maybe an SSD will be my next upgrade...
 
March 2013.
I went from:
Phenom 720be
4gb ram
Gtx 460

To
3770k
16gb ddr 3 1600
Gtx680
 
PCI-E 4.0 ? Nah, not really for anything except the aforementioned storage...
It isn't Graphic Cards creating the need for PCIe 4.0, it's the new SSDs and advances in phase-change memory technology is going increase that need.
Yeah, I think I covered that with : "not really for anything except the aforementioned storage", so I'm not entirely sure why you're quoting me.
 
Ah, I missed your storage comment. I do see alot of people online citing not needing more bandwidth because current Graphic Cards don't fully utilize PCIe 3.0 tho
 
Mostly as of last year, going from a GeForce G 210 to a GTX 660 was my big upgrade. Been wanting some watercooling for my CPU, since I'm always having to game in bursts. The room is so difficult to stand when your CPU, is simply 50C+ (AMD Phenom II X6 1100T) from gaming at all.

Biggest wish would be upgrading to a Haswell at least, unless in the meantime Skylake even drops to be worthy enough. Gaming an a closed room is very difficult, when there's no airflow to let things cool. Thus my general wish for a new PC, so I can have all the parts installed. Consider a watercooled solution afterwards, since I don't want to let this PC go to waste. It's still a perfectly usable system for gaming in it's own right.
 
December 2013.

I went from:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ (1.9GHz)
Biostar TForce 550 Motherboard
EVGA e-GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB
Corsair ValueSelect 2GB DDR2-667MHz
Seagate 120GB SATA HDD x2

To:

AMD FX-8320 (OC to 4GHz)
ASUS M5A99X Evo R2.0
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB WindForce
G.Skill Sniper 16GB DDR3-1866MHz
Western Digital Black 2TB SATA-III HDD
 
I rebuilt my system last year into the Lian Li D8000. The Cooler Master V1200 Platinum power supply gives the system juice. Went for the Asrock Z87 Extreme11/ac motherboard and the Core i7-4770K. It has 64GB of memory, just because it was sitting on my desk, I never really use more than about 7GB of it so the rest is used as an Asrock RAM drive.

The primary drive is the Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB (thinking of upgrading to the 850 Pro if I can be bothered). I went with the Lian Li D8000 because it supports 20 hard drives and I have mostly filled it with WD Red 4TB drives.

Graphics card wise I have a Radeon R9 290 in there, don't use it much though.
 
I'm still running a Q6600 oc'd at 33.3Ghz. I've added 8gb's Kingston Hyper-x DDR3 series ram, Crucial 120gb SSD, Lite-on blue-ray burner, Hauppauge TV tuner, and a coolermaster cpu water cooled heatsink. I'm not a gamer but this has plenty of what I need for graphic and movie software. I would list the entire system spec's but I don't want to fit in with the goofy people already doing it
 
I'm still running a Q6600 oc'd at 33.3Ghz. I've added 8gb's Kingston Hyper-x DDR3 series ram, Crucial 120gb SSD, Lite-on blue-ray burner, Hauppauge TV tuner, and a coolermaster cpu water cooled heatsink. I'm not a gamer but this has plenty of what I need for graphic and movie software. I would list the entire system spec's but I don't want to fit in with the goofy people already doing it

I forgot I just added an MSI nvidia geforce gtx 650 ti gpu also
 
Last major upgrade was in 2012; waiting for skylake for the next one, if it's any good.
 
I don't do revamps or upgrades to my existing prime rig (which can be seen in my profile), when the time comes I'll sell it off and build an entirely new one from scratch although next time around I intend to reuse all my Roccat peripherals and PSU.
 
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