Blueberries :
PCI-e 2.0 has a lower bandwidth per lane than PCI-e 3.0, I.e., PCI-e 2.0 x8 is not the same as PCI-e 3.0 x8.
But that's a PCI 2.0 x16 slot! Which is slightly faster than a PCI 3.0 x8 slot... which is what you get once you chuck a second card into a Z77 or Z97 motherboard. It's been shown over and over that for two card rigs a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot is just fine for even the highest end cards in SLI. And OP's x16 PCIe 2.0 slot gives effectively the same (technically slightly more) bandwidth. I'm telling you 100% that for a single card rig, PCIe 2.0 or PCIe 3.0 won't make any difference whatsoever.
The irony of all this is that I've just re-checked the motherboard and it does actually support PCIe 3 (with an Ivy Bridge CPU, which OP has). So now you can celebrate that the motherboard will provide the additional bandwidth to the video card... which, as I've been saying all along... won't make a jot of difference for anything.
You're also confusing reliability and failure-rate with drive-performance.
OCZ went bankrupt because their validation was sub-standard and they released far too many flawed drives. They were then bought out by Toshiba and are now a totally different beast. I never bought nor recommended OCZ SSDs back in their dark days, but there have been no major issues in the last few years that I know of anyway - feel free to link me to some if you know better. Ironically it's Samsung who have the worst record of late with fairly widespread issues on the 840 EVOs which they took a long time to address properly, and have never really 'fixed' the problem. You're confusing the OCZ of yester-year with the modern Toshiba owned brand. If you have doubts, can I refer you to the Anandtech review, they provide some of the most detailed and comprehensive SSD reviews you can find:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8407/ocz-arc-100-240gb-review
Also, who the hell doesn't use USB 3.0? Are you crazy? Every device I own is USB 3.0. Are you living in the 90's?
Actually, your mouse is almost certainly NOT USB3. Your keyboard is almost certainly NOT USB 3... neither is your headset, USB speakers, printers/scanner, digital camera or smartphone (even the Samsung Galaxy S6 is USB2). Even if, by some chance, one of the above is actually USB3, it doesn't need it. the 480Mbps of USB2 is more than enough for any of the above (though I admit USB3 phones would be nice for photo, music and video transfers).
Outside of very unusual/niche needs, the only things that actually benefit from USB3 is external networking (which OP doesn't need presumably), and external storage - which I fully discussed in every post and response I've made.
With respect, I've been on these forums on and off for years and have piles of best answers. If you don't understand what I'm saying perhaps you could do me the courtesy of taking some time to try and understand it, rather than just arguing back.
From the very start I've agreed with you that Z77 offers some features than are missing on the current motherboard. The key question is whether these features are worth the price of the upgrade.
The basic argument of OUTDATED = BAD is really not helpful. What we're trying to help OP decide is whether it's worthwhile for him/her to spend the money to get the missing features?
I've suggested throughout that those features are probably not worth the cost of Z77 motherboard. Now if you want to post benchmarks, links, or highlight personal experience to demonstrate why USB3, SATA3 and PCIe3 (although the latter we now know is already there) will make a tangible difference to the OP and is worth spending money on, go for it! Then we can have a proper discussion that will be helpful for the OP.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram