Help Me Spend $650 on Upgrading my PC

[Rx7oneluv]

Thanks to Vegas, I've found myself with $650 dollars that my wife has allowed me to use it on myself. I'm thinking I might want to upgrade my system, but I don't know where I should spend it. Main reason I want to upgrade is it has been about over 2 years since my build, and I always consider PC upgrades. Plus I want a rig ready for Star Citizen in a year. Please help me decide where to invest the money on my PC. I'm leaning towards a EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Superclocked 4GB, other than that a 4k monitor intrigues me.

Current:
Monitor 1 - Dell UltraSharp U2412M (1920 x 1200)
Monitor 2 - Acer G235HAbd 23'' (1080)
Video Card - GIGABYTE GV-N670OC-2GD GeForce GTX 670
Motherboard - ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155
Processor - Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.4GHz
Memory - G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
SSD - Kingston HyperX 3K SH103S3/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC
*Power Supply - Antec TruePower TP-750 750W

The opinion of "Be a responsible adult and save it because nothing is worth the upgrade" is also valid.

*edit: Added Power Supply

 

[damric]

Tell me about your power supply.

 

[vrumor]

I would say you are at an either/or scenario. 980 is $550+ and even the cheap 4k monitors start at around $600.

 

[damric]

GTX 670s going for less than $100 might make a good SLI option.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Crucial MX100 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($189.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($80.99 @ NCIX US)
Other: Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Windforce ($80.00)
Total: $350.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-02-02 18:15 EST-0500

 

[bilton]

Get the 980, forget the 4K monitor, Power supply will be fine as the 670 needs slightly more power than a 980 (170w v 165w), Nvidia says 500w minimum PSU

 

[Rx7oneluv]

Antec TruePower TP-750 750W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 80 PLUS BRONZE

 

[damric]

I'd probably go for the 4K display. Your rig is still pretty good hardware.

 

[Rx7oneluv]

Would another 670 in SLI give me a 4k capable system?

 

[game junky]

Both of those components would be a nice upgrades, but that amount will get you either or, not both. Nvidia's 900 series cards are energy efficient and very powerful, but if you're wanting to game at 4k resolutions on demanding titles you're going to need the extra CUDA cores from the 980 rather than stepping down into the 970 which fits your budget better.

If the money is burning a hole in your pocket and had to choose, I would get the GPU because that 670 will not be able to render @ 4k. Your processor has plenty of power, performance differences on upgrading to a higher-end larger SSD are minimal and you have more than enough memory in your setup.

If it were me, I would park that cash in a savings account or a CD and buy your components right before SC releases. Even if you get the parts your planning on, the price will go down dramatically for 900 series GPUs and 4k displays within the next year so you can get more bang for your buck. Would be nice to see what Nvidia is going to have available by that time though it might be optimistic to think Volta will be on the market with the delays they've experienced. Unfortunately, this we'll all need to upgrade motherboards to reap the benefits since they're talking about needing a PCI-E 4.0.

 

[damric]

Would another 670 in SLI give me a 4k capable system?

Nope. You'll want more VRAM for 4K. But it will still work at lower settings if you just want to grab a cheap used one and go for a 4K monitor. Right now we are on the verge of real 4K capable graphics cards, but we aren't quite there just yet.

Maybe by this time next year there will be something good like Big Maxwell or Radeon that can really push 4K 60FPS.