Weekend Open Forum: Your next PC upgrade

Upgraded last Fall after being with AMD for many years from a AMD 955 quad to a 2600k, upped my ram from 8gb 1333 to 8gb 1600, from a single 5870 to 2 GTX 580s 3GB versions in SLI on a 30" 2560 x 1600 monitor, also from a 64Gb Crucial SSD to a 128GB M4 Crucial SSD and XFi Fatality surround card. Also went with a MSI GD80 Z68 mb thats Ivy ready and PCI Exp 3.0 ready. Did it all to have a BF3 ready PC so I could max out everything. After some tweaking I'm sitting pretty. Thinking of going with a Ivy bridge CPU and 2 GTX 680s in SLI this summer just cause I can and its a hobby. I want to hit 5GHz stable next from my current 4.5

I've got no such plans in the near future. I'm holding steady with my 6yr old Acer T160, and I've upgraded pretty much everything in it already so.....

Well my first thing on the list is a headset, precisely the SteelSeries 7H's

Second will be more RAM, I would prefer to have 8GB instead of my current 4GB.

Third will be a sound Card to go along with those lovely headphones

IF I do fancy changing my graphics card this year it'll be a high end Nvidia card but my 560ti just doesn't struggle with anything so I may give it a miss, appart from that my system is already water cooled, already SSD'ed up and i7 2600K'ed up, I don't really have a reason to upgrade for a long time

I'm waiting for a Kepler card, probably the GK104 a.k.a. GTX 670 Ti by most accounts. My GTX 260 has done me well, but I'm Jonesing for some ultra Battlefield 3 play!

If we wait some more time, we might either see h/w prices hit rock-bottom, or skyrocket. Duh...if only my economist sister would let me know.

Planning on getting a SSD this year and perhaps upgrade to an Intel i-Series CPU (got a Q9550 @ 4GHz now).

Just my opinion but I think EVERYONE's next upgrade should be an SSD.

good timing

I'm currently awaiting delivery of a new case (NZXT Phantom replacing a CiT Storm), PSU (Antec Truepower New 650W replacing a Be Quiet 530W) and mobo (Maximus IV Gene-Z replacing an MSI P67-GD55 that's suffering from cougar point woes)

all to prepare for replacing my 6950 with either a 7970 or something nVidia flavoured in a month or so

should be here tomorrow
excited

My next upgrade will be with a Enterprise like computer. Hope I will not get Data as a bonus ^^
How many lives I need to wait?
:-/

+1,000,000

My next upgrade will take some time to realize since I'll be waiting for the 22-nm version of the Core i7 3930K or whatever they call the next generation of LGA 2011 / X79 parts. I intend to pair it with 32 gigs of Corsair Vengeance memory and probably Nvidia's or AMD's next multi-GPU model, haven't decided on which brand since I currently own both. It will probably be a relatively long wait since LGA 2011 CPUs and X79 boards have yet to reach my little corner of the planet. Probably just as well because I'd need to save some more as this will be my most expensive upgrade to date. I've already ordered a Corsair AX1200 PSU and will probably settle for a Cooler Master Storm Trooper case to fit everything inside.

SSD and a new case.

Clearly lots of gamers on here! Here's a completely different view.

Believe it or not, I plan a complete replacement (duh!) of a decade-old PII based machine. I am waiting for Ivy Bridge because of the better performance vs. power ratio. This is an audio production machine which must be very quiet since it is used on location, so lower power means lower fan noise. I will go with an i7, however, to allow more plug ins during mix down.

I plan to use a solid state boot drive, periodically shadowed to a low-power laptop HD. Data drive will be a 2 Gig Seagate Barracuda -- cost no object there. Traditionally, audio workstations have been built with mid to low-end fanless graphics cards, but I'm thinking Intel motherboard graphics might be adequate now. I also need to add a firewire card (TI only, please!), because firewire is disappearing from modern motherboards. Changing interfaces is not an option: pro-grade audio interfaces cost much more than the computer.

Case will be a 3-space rack mount with acoustic treatment and the quietest power supply I can find. I haven't figured out what to do about the CPU cooler, as quiet alternatives to Intel's liquid cooler seem to be slow in coming.

Well...

I lucked out and grabbed two (2) Crucial M4s for $79/each... & had already had a Hitachi Desktar 1TB (7K1000.D).

With high-end ram being "reasonable" I am just going to build a whole new system to compliment my-ever-growing home network.


So, In leu of the newly released Intel LGA 2011 i7-3820 @ $300 bones, I can "afford" myself the extra $100 it takes to move to the X79/LGA2011 platform..., as it has much longer legs than the LGA1155. Plus, I am certain that within 2 years time, there will be a killer 8-core monster within a few ticks (or, is that tocks..?)


I don't splurge and would never had bought those 2 SSD's had they not been such an absurd steal. But I do believe that since AMD blundered with Bulldozer and the New CEO hitting up Mobile, an Intel rig (folding/gaming/3d modeling) has a better upcycle to it, than AMD right now. Matter-of-fact, I havn't built an Intel rig in 5 years, though I built 14 AMD rigs in the last 2 years for others.

I will also be building my first HTPC this fall, that will almost assuridly be based on AMD's "trinity" APU "fusion" technology. Plus any laptop advice will lean towards AMD platform.


I am unbias, just see logic & reasoning.

There are no games, that I know of, that my system can't already max out. And nothing I know of on the horizon either.

The only upgrade I want to make is more monitors (for daytrading), and more high-speed SSDs to replace the RAID HDDs.

Honestly is a non-raid SSD not fast enough for you?
Especially seeing as you are still using HDD's.

Or is the raid configuration for redundancy purposes?

going to replace my quadfire. I have a feeling this time is gong to be Nvidia 600 series.

PCIe SSD (Revodrive 3 X2 or greater) and Ivy Bridge successor is my target. Something with > 2x Native SATA III anyway.

Still have a hard time justifying an upgrade on my current system. No games out right now have trouble running on it. I would like to get away from my 5870s but its a lot of money right now. Maybe I'll reconsider when Nvidia comes out with Kepler. CPU wise, I'm still happy with my 960, OC'ed at 4.25Ghz since day one. Probably going to wait for DDR4 to come out and buy in to that platform, and at that point its a new system all together.

I'm confused whether to buy a Radeon, RAM, or Athlon or Phenom. No money for SSD