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[SOLVED] Do I need to upgrade my desktop?

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consptheory77

consptheory77

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Jun 24, 2009
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I currently have a "Haswell" build:

Intel® Core™ i5-4690K
GIGABYTE Z97-HD3
Corsair DDR3-1600 32GB
XFX RX 580 GTS
Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1TB
Seasonic PRIME 850W 80+ Gold Power Supply Full Modular (SSR-850GD)

Now, I do a bit of gaming here and there, but I wouldn't be looking to build a gaming rig. I do web browsing and video processing. I don't think a completely new upgrade is necessary for me, but it would be fun, as I did have fun doing it over five years. But I already sank over $1K over that time in upgrading, and a totally new build would have to justify the time and expense.
I have been reading about these new platforms like Ryzen or Rocket Lake, and am curious about any advantage.
I have a 4K monitor and would like the processing permissions to play 4K discs
I am hard on my RAM, have lots of browser tabs open all the time, people say 32GB is "more than enough", I have 32GB, I can push it to 70%, would DDR4 or DDR5 be more efficient in some way?
Good builds usually start with good cases and motherboards, I would start there.
I wouldn't mind having integrated bluetooth and wireless, a slot for NVMe, and plenty of space for hard drive, I only have room for four drives in the case, there are five drives outside the case.
 
Solution
InvalidError
If your current system does everything you need it to do fast enough for your liking, then there isn't much of a benefit to upgrading and you may be better off saving your money for when you actually have specific reasons you wish to upgrade. Your current system should be able to play 4k fine - I don't have a BD drive but my i5-3470 with GTX1050 can handle 4k movie trailers I downloaded fine.

I also have 32GB of RAM due to always having a heap of stuff open in the background and I am considering upgrading to an i5-11400 since hiccups while browsing or playing games are getting more common. There are limits to how much stuff quad cores without HT can keep up with. Nothing I would consider annoying but it is getting more noticeable. The...
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IMHO, I wouldn't not if it's doing what needs to be done. You will also need to factor in how much you're going to have to spend given our current climate with technology and their prices. As of now, storage prices might be priced higher due to supply and demand issues or be artificially inflated to somewhat stifle their sales.
 
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USAFRet said:
Is it currently meeting your needs?
If so, no upgrade needed.
If not...a whole new platform.

You can't change to DDR4 RAM, without a whole new motherboard and CPU. Basically, a full rebuild.
Click to expand...

Right - I'm not sure that whatever the benefits of DDR4 or DDR5 are, that they alone justify a full rebuild.
All the other factors taken together, maybe.
But it's an open-ended question. If I were to commit to a full rebuild - and this actually is what I mean by "upgrade" - does anyone have a particular opinion on cases and motherboards given the additional features I would be looking for?
 
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If your current system does everything you need it to do fast enough for your liking, then there isn't much of a benefit to upgrading and you may be better off saving your money for when you actually have specific reasons you wish to upgrade. Your current system should be able to play 4k fine - I don't have a BD drive but my i5-3470 with GTX1050 can handle 4k movie trailers I downloaded fine.

I also have 32GB of RAM due to always having a heap of stuff open in the background and I am considering upgrading to an i5-11400 since hiccups while browsing or playing games are getting more common. There are limits to how much stuff quad cores without HT can keep up with. Nothing I would consider annoying but it is getting more noticeable. The main killer is Fusion 360 with collisions turned on, now that could definitely use the upgrade.
 
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consptheory77 said:
I currently have a "Haswell" build:

Intel® Core™ i5-4690K
GIGABYTE Z97-HD3
Corsair DDR3-1600 32GB
XFX RX 580 GTS
Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1TB
Seasonic PRIME 850W 80+ Gold Power Supply Full Modular (SSR-850GD)

Now, I do a bit of gaming here and there, but I wouldn't be looking to build a gaming rig. I do web browsing and video processing. I don't think a completely new upgrade is necessary for me, but it would be fun, as I did have fun doing it over five years. But I already sank over $1K over that time in upgrading, and a totally new build would have to justify the time and expense.
I have been reading about these new platforms like Ryzen or Rocket Lake, and am curious about any advantage.
I have a 4K monitor and would like the processing permissions to play 4K discs
I am hard on my RAM, have lots of browser tabs open all the time, people say 32GB is "more than enough", I have 32GB, I can push it to 70%, would DDR4 or DDR5 be more efficient in some way?
Good builds usually start with good cases and motherboards, I would start there.
I wouldn't mind having integrated bluetooth and wireless, a slot for NVMe, and plenty of space for hard drive, I only have room for four drives in the case, there are five drives outside the case.
Click to expand...
Play 4k disc.
See #8.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=333569

No idea if that's true or not.
If it is true you need a new build.....your call.
 
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InvalidError said:
If your current system does everything you need it to do fast enough for your liking, then there isn't much of a benefit to upgrading and you may be better off saving your money for when you actually have specific reasons you wish to upgrade. Your current system should be able to play 4k fine - I don't have a BD drive but my i5-3470 with GTX1050 can handle 4k movie trailers I downloaded fine.

I also have 32GB of RAM due to always having a heap of stuff open in the background and I am considering upgrading to an i5-11400 since hiccups while browsing or playing games are getting more common. There are limits to how much stuff quad cores without HT can keep up with. Nothing I would consider annoying but it is getting more noticeable. The main killer is Fusion 360 with collisions turned on, now that could definitely use the upgrade.
Click to expand...

Oh, I can stream 4K just fine (such as Disney+) but I cannot play the discs as of yet. Hiccups I start noticing when browsing now. I'd also in retrospect recommend the EVO over the QVO, I feel as if there is an ever so slight difference in access times, a perhaps negligible one if transfer accuracy wasn't a factor as well (there was a thread on that last year). Really wanted to get the NVMe last year but realized my MB didn't support it. Still, "you've come a long way, baby!" since my initial $300 investment in 2015, the limitations of that budget having determined the choice of MB.
 
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Bob.B said:
Play 4k disc.
See #8.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=333569

No idea if that's true or not.
If it is true you need a new build.....your call.
Click to expand...

As it stands now, I have an LG Blu-ray drive. It is not the model that supports 4K, and even the model that supports 4K has to have a particular firmware, and not the latest, because the newer one nerfs the UHD functionality. Why did the consortium of media conglomerates and manufacturers make it so hard to play 4K on your computer? Of course, piracy concerns, but it's not helping the growth of the brand. And there is still not enough 4K content available to stream. For a new build, I don't really want to be stuck with Intel just for the SGX, seeing as Ryzen seems so much better now. And I don't want to have to do the rip workaround. If I bought a 4K disc with a particular quality bit rate, I don't want to have to transcode or get the nerfed digital version, etc. But according to the thread, it seems like an official solution is being worked on soon.
 
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consptheory77 said:
As it stands now, I have an LG Blu-ray drive. It is not the model that supports 4K, and even the model that supports 4K has to have a particular firmware, and not the latest, because the newer one nerfs the UHD functionality. Why did the consortium of media conglomerates and manufacturers make it so hard to play 4K on your computer? Of course, piracy concerns, but it's not helping the growth of the brand. And there is still not enough 4K content available to stream. For a new build, I don't really want to be stuck with Intel just for the SGX, seeing as Ryzen seems so much better now. And I don't want to have to do the rip workaround. If I bought a 4K disc with a particular quality bit rate, I don't want to have to transcode or get the nerfed digital version, etc. But according to the thread, it seems like an official solution is being worked on soon.
Click to expand...

What did my father tell me as a child? We were looking at pocket calculators in 1984, and he told me about when the first pocket calculators came out in the 70's, and he told me "never adopt new technology, the people who do are paying the company to work out all the bugs the company didn't realize were there or didn't bother to fix". I can see that with the Z fold phones, for example. But UHD came out five years ago, they ought to be getting their act together by now.
 
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consptheory77 said:
Right - I'm not sure that whatever the benefits of DDR4 or DDR5 are, that they alone justify a full rebuild.
Click to expand...
Just faster speeds and lower voltages.

Hiccups can be solved by overclocking the CPU a bit and if you want a faster SSD PCI-E drives and adapters (m.2 to 1X) are a thing. Mobo won't support nvmeme spec tho as it wasn't a thing when it was released.
idk about blu-ray playback, just the DRM on it made me avoid getting a drive and discs, hard drives ended up being cheaper and more reliable. gl
 
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Having to upgrade an otherwise still perfectly capable system only because of stupid copy-protection would definitely suck. If I had BD4k discs, I'd go with the Libre rip route to bypass DRM.

I don't have a BD drive though, so I mostly sneaker-net one of my friends' collection a couple of times per year.
 
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InvalidError said:
Having to upgrade an otherwise still perfectly capable system only because of stupid copy-protection would definitely suck. If I had BD4k discs, I'd go with the Libre rip route to bypass DRM.

I don't have a BD drive though, so I mostly sneaker-net one of my friends' collection a couple of times per year.
Click to expand...

I thought Libre was for e-books? Or that's Calibre? Libre is a fork of OpenOffice, right? I do know how to bypass the DRM, and thus could conceivably make the UHD work on my present system with the aforementioned LG drive, but I shouldn't have to know how to do that to play discs I legitimately bought.
 
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consptheory77 said:
I currently have a "Haswell" build:

Intel® Core™ i5-4690K
GIGABYTE Z97-HD3
Corsair DDR3-1600 32GB
XFX RX 580 GTS
Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1TB
Seasonic PRIME 850W 80+ Gold Power Supply Full Modular (SSR-850GD)

Now, I do a bit of gaming here and there, but I wouldn't be looking to build a gaming rig. I do web browsing and video processing. I don't think a completely new upgrade is necessary for me, but it would be fun, as I did have fun doing it over five years. But I already sank over $1K over that time in upgrading, and a totally new build would have to justify the time and expense.
I have been reading about these new platforms like Ryzen or Rocket Lake, and am curious about any advantage.
I have a 4K monitor and would like the processing permissions to play 4K discs
I am hard on my RAM, have lots of browser tabs open all the time, people say 32GB is "more than enough", I have 32GB, I can push it to 70%, would DDR4 or DDR5 be more efficient in some way?
Good builds usually start with good cases and motherboards, I would start there.
I wouldn't mind having integrated bluetooth and wireless, a slot for NVMe, and plenty of space for hard drive, I only have room for four drives in the case, there are five drives outside the case.
Click to expand...
Time for a new rebuild indeed.
 
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carocuore said:
Just faster speeds and lower voltages.

Hiccups can be solved by overclocking the CPU a bit and if you want a faster SSD PCI-E drives and adapters (m.2 to 1X) are a thing. Mobo won't support nvmeme spec tho as it wasn't a thing when it was released.
idk about blu-ray playback, just the DRM on it made me avoid getting a drive and discs, hard drives ended up being cheaper and more reliable. gl
Click to expand...

Stock speed of 3.5 has been a stable overclocked 4.2 since the beginning, both when I using the budget Pentium and now using the i5. I've got a Cryorig H7 CFM 49 that has kept it cool. I wasn't entirely sure the adapter would work, I read something that put it into question, and I didn't want to try that route and have to go through the hassle of returning it if it didn't. I might revisit that question, though. I've had no issue with Blu-ray DRM, but I really hate having to use PowerDVD, it's so bloated.
 
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