Weekend Open Forum: Your next PC upgrade

every three years I replace my gaming rig its due this year DEC 2012
but with prices the way they are I just am not sure if its going to be a full replacement but what I got so far is:

intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (Sandy Bridge-E)
AsUs Rampage IV Extreme mother board
Cooler Master's Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler

the rest is waiting for the video card decision
NVIDIA or ATI by July I should know who has the best of the best .

@the previous guest concerning the best video card.

Every month Tom's Hardware puts out a new article discussing the current best video cards based on every price range. Just google "Tom's Hardware Graphics Card February 2012" without the quotes.

I am a gamer so the first time I play a game that I cannot run a max settings is when I upgrade the hardware. I think I'm good for awhile yet:

i7-2600k @ 4.1Ghz
16 GB G.Skill Ripjaw RAM
2-570GTX-OC in SLI
Intel 510 128GB SDD boot drive
2 - WD Velociraptor Datadrives
Win7 Ultimate

I have been looking at the new Asus 27" LED 3D monitor with the Nvidia 3D glasses. But at $500+ it's a little pricey just for 3D and it's a little past the "my wife will notice" threshold.

Probably just a better graphics card, I want one of the midrange Keplers when they come out this spring. I already have an SSD, i5 750, 16GB DDR3, etc. so there's no point really upgrading anything else.

My next upgrade will most likely be Haswell (unless AMD improves their CPUs), 16GB of Ram, probably a 240-256GB SSD, whatever next generation $250-300 videocard is out next Spring. Going to reuse my PSU and case.

I just builty my new computer with an asrock extreme3 gen 3 motherboard with a 2nd generation intel i5 2500k overclocked to 3.8 GHz with 8GB of DDR3 1066 ram, 2 gtx 560 ti in SLI and a terabyte of storage. Only upgrade i will be making soon is a sata III SSD then maybe pick up an i7 ivy bridge when they go down in price.

Graphics for me...again. Or maybe a new hard drive, I can't say i have fully decided yet.

Thinking of a SSD....
But I do not know if i should, my system is fast.
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0
With a i7-980 6 core chip
24 gig ram
I have an Antec DF-85 Case, with a SSD mount on the top of the Case empty
"Top 2.5" hot-swap SATA (SSD-compatible) drive bay"
Thinking of putting a SSD In it...hmmm... Should I ???
And Another Video card - 560 ti... maybe

SSD, I'll be upgrading that soon to a 128GB Crucial M4. Also I seem to be running out of RAM when playing BF3 with my 4GB kit, so I'll be upgrading to 8GB soon as well. Besides that I'll probably be upgrading my gtx460 to gtx 760 whenever Nvidia decides to come out with it...

A little different from the trend, but I just built an htpc in October. My next upgrade will be after windows 8 comes out and I think I'm buying a Toshiba laptop for web surfing, such as reading Techspot. This 2004 Toshiba laptop worked well as I upgraded it from windows xp home to windows xp professional, to use iis to write a website in asp.net. I bought window xp professional during the vista upgrade period, so I also got vista business with it, 2 for the price of one. I never had trouble upgrading to vista as all those vista capable computer users did, except that it required 2g of memory (came with 512m). I had to replace the hard drive not due to it crashing but I think Toshiba used the same firmware as Seagate did when they had their problem, as the hard drive would occasionally become unresponsive requiring a reboot (always on light). The new Toshiba drive still goes into the same mode as did my Seagate that had the firmware problem (very seldom), but now recovers without a reboot after 1 minute.

I just ordered some parts yesterday from NCIX for the next build

Antec 300 case as it was on for $39 after rebate, I love this case as I already own 3

OCZ petrol 128 GB SSD for $104(After Rebate) with a free LG DVD burner

Acer T231H Touch Screen for Windows 8 for $280.24 Price Matched

I have power supplies and hard drives and am waiting for Ivy-bridge and will buy

i5-3570k -> to wife's i3-530 -->to Media Center E5700 -> Linux Box P4-530J -> retirement

On the fence on upgrading my HD 5770 in my i7-2600 rig to GFX-480 that ncix has on for $249 this week or waiting for next gen nvidia as I want cuda for Adobe After Effects

I'm buying an AMD HD 7870 to replace my HD 6850. But I'll wait until the graphics cards prices drop a bit, since the price for an 7870 will be a bit high when it comes out.

I think my i7 laptop with a GTX 260M will hold me off for another year, but my system is showing it's age now.

Will be getting a triple monitor setup with a 7970 or two once prices come down... or whatever Nvidia pull out from their sleeve.

Also it's not quite a PC upgrade but I will be getting a 2nd gen Samsung Series 9 laptop/ultrabook for work. Had a look in store and absolutely loved the design, the thin bezels and most of all the widest viewing angle I've ever seen on a laptop, on a par with the cheaper IPS panels.

A 2500k or 3570k, an HD 7870 or the nvidia equivalent, and another Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB

Im still running a quadcore with agp

Still rolling with some 2008 fossils, a AMD Dual Core 3.2gz, WD 7200rpm 300g hard drive, along with some newer 800mhz 4gig ddr2, an Asus EAH 4770HD and a truck load of fans. Pretty basic stuff which I would love to upgrade, clearly if you were to though, you would have to do it all at once.

My problem is, even this set up can play every game i've tried, at moderate setting at least (mostly on high). New released games would need to consistently be challenging the capabilities of even modern systems to warrant upgrades for any practical purpose. Upgrading every year, or even every 2, currently seems a waste.

i just downgraded my pu from 560ti to 8800gt. i realized i didnt spend so much time on gaming and i figured out it's better if i got rid of the card asap before the price depreciates even further. removed the internal dvd drive as well. use back the older (but reputable) 520W PSU and got rid of the new 620W modular ones, since the gpu is worse and i can bear with the extra wires. it seems im on the opposite direction .

my next upgrade would be SSD upgrade. im going to transfer this agility 3 to my laptop and probably use faster SSD for the i5 machine. once you go SSD there is no going back lol

Its not hard at all to build your own. take some time to watch some vids on youtube. or buy the parts you want and take it to a computer store near you and have them build it for you

I recently added the Sapphire OC edition 7950. looking to make the jump from an i5-750 and my p55 board to an Intel Core i7-3820 and an x78 board with at least 16gb of ram here soon

SSD and new generation GPU (class upgrade as well)

I've already done all other upgrades for a few years.