[SOLVED] Is an upgrade of my (current) 2012 build worth it?

EvanVanVan

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Trying to decide if my upgrading my current build is worthwhile? Looking at passmark, the i7-3930k while 8 years old still seems to be pretty competitive (compared to a reasonable priced CPU, say < $1000). Although, honestly I don't know enough about the passsmark's scoring scale and how quickly speeds multiply relative to score.

My computer runs well enough but some programs take a little longer than I'd like to open (still quick, but not instantaneous lol). I'd really like to speed up remuxing of 4K video. And also upgrade my monitor to 4K. Lastly, I'm partly considering this because I'm thinking of buying a VR headset to play Half Life Alyx and my specs don't currently meet the minimum.

Intel Core i7-3930k
32 GB of DDR3 Gskillz ram
GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Samsung 840 500gb SSD
Asus Sabertooth X79 mobo

Is is an upgrade worth it and any recommendations on components that would benefit unraring 60GB files and 4K remuxing?

Thanks
 
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a threadripper won't do anything for gaming.
it's usefull if you're a content creator and your softwares uses CPUs and not GPUs acceleration. (for exemple high quality encoding). and you do it for work and can't wait.

for 4k gaming , nothing past the 3600 scales really well with price. that's why the 3600 is #1 cpu on sales charts on Amazon.
the stock cooler of the 3600 is ok, the 212 Evo is a bit better. so keep your cooler. you can resell the 3600's stock cooler on ebay for 20$.


for certains games like No Man Sky VR, you can get more performance with more cores, in that case the 3900 is a good option. you need a better cooler for the 3900 though (can't go wrong with the noctua NH-D15)


if you go intel route, you would need a much...

EvanVanVan

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If you want to do 4k and play VR games a 980Ti will only get you there on medium to low settings. You are going to need to upgrade, what is your budget for upgrading?

Less than $3K preferably (aka none really). I'm going to no-interest finance (even if it means a balance transfer promotion) everything and probably source it from 3-4 places for the best deals. (Microcenter for the CPU, and then price compare Newegg and Amazon).

I'd rather spend more now on a computer that last me another 8 years than want to upgrade the CPU (which usually means a new MB) in a few years. I'll reuse my current mid tower case and hard drive and probably wait on the 4K monitor for a sale.
 

rgs80074

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I can't comment a whole bunch.

I have one pc I build in 2011 and one I did in 2016. to be honest there's nothing the old pc doesn't do that the new one does maybe with the exception of video encoding but I never really tested the old pc for it. last prior time i did anything video related like that was probably 2006ish and I had an all in wonder xl1800 and half hour raw captures took like 35gigs of space and hours to encode to whatever format I was using (mostly svcd's) at the time.

I have two monitors hooked up (actually both of them was hooked up to my old pc too), one being a full hd monitor and one actually a 43inch 4k tv, so its more the video card being able to support the 4k more than the pc itself.

I am thinking what the other user stated, if your goal is the 4k and vr you'll want to do a new pc for the most part, sure you could get there like they said but I think while you might be impressed in the beginning you'll soon wish you did a new pc instead of upgrading your old one.

with that said you old one probably works great for most stuff, if your not going to use it donate it to someone who can. unless you really like your case you'll probably end up upgrading to one that can do more fans or liquid cooling (just guessing I know very little of vr requirements. for example my old pc which still works flawlessly but has been retrofired to become my home entertainment system/plex server. in fact I am waiting for another controller card (ran out of sata spaces) and about to put in 2 more hard drives bringing it up to 10 drives give or take a drive or two and it has space for a few more drives. but it works great if for some reason my new pc was to die this one would become my pc again, so i would not just ditch your old pc, while I've not done so in a while i used to pick up discarded pc's i found laying around when working at night and refurbishing them and giving them away.

so short answer, you'll be much happier I am sure if you build or purchase a new pc than trying to get your current one to function for what you want or will want, always take what you want and double it cause you almost always will want more once you have it, especially when coming to games and VR.

ryan
 
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There's is absolutely no way a hyper 212 is going to cool the 9900x. Why would you spend so much on a cpu, and then buy one of the cheapest coolers available.

Why go with an x299 platform and then only fill 2 dimm slots. I'd get at least 4 sticks of ram. Also that ram seems slightly overpriced. A 32gb kit can be had for less than 200.

At the price point of the 9900x, I'd highly consider a 3950x. Cheaper cpu, cheaper mobo, more cores, and faster speeds all around.

This build saves a few bucks, offers more storage and better ram. And imo a better and faster cpu. A cooler that will work, though you may think of an aio too, but cant beat the performance of the d15. At least not without a good 360mm aio. There's other ways to save money here too. Especially in storage. You could get a 1tb m.2, then a sata ssd or even a good hdd for mass storage and save a bit. Or even go for a pcie gen 4 nvme and still save. A 1tb gen 4 is about 200, then get a wd 1tb m.2 for about 150. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dyPxV7

There's nothing appealing about the 9900x at the price point it's at. Especially considering the 3950x, or even the 12 core 3900x is much cheaper. The above build should well exceed your needs for everything you want it to do.
 

EvanVanVan

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There's is absolutely no way a hyper 212 is going to cool the 9900x. Why would you spend so much on a cpu, and then buy one of the cheapest coolers available.
Lol was trying to save money on that aspect..it's the the same cooler I currently have, didn't realize it'd be an issue. I'll borrow your cooler thought, ty.

Why go with an x299 platform and then only fill 2 dimm slots. I'd get at least 4 sticks of ram. Also that ram seems slightly overpriced. A 32gb kit can be had for less than 200.
Do I need more than 32GB of ram? The one thing I remember about buying ram is that lower ram timings are better..The kit I picked out is 14-14-14-34 compared to the kit in your list which is 16-19-19-39. That's probably the higher price.

At the price point of the 9900x, I'd highly consider a 3950x. Cheaper cpu, cheaper mobo, more cores, and faster speeds all around.
This is messy but I grew up before AMD turned themselves around and just prefer Intel. The build I had 20 years ago always had compatibility issues and small problems. I mean I'd listen to other suggestions, but I really want to stay with Intel.

Looking a little further I see Intel reduced their 10th generation prices by 50%..so I'll probably look to switch to that and confirm my MB will work out of the box.
 
Trying to decide if my upgrading my current build is worthwhile? Looking at passmark, the i7-3930k while 8 years old still seems to be pretty competitive (compared to a reasonable priced CPU, say < $1000). Although, honestly I don't know enough about the passsmark's scoring scale and how quickly speeds multiply relative to score.

My computer runs well enough but some programs take a little longer than I'd like to open (still quick, but not instantaneous lol). I'd really like to speed up remuxing of 4K video. And also upgrade my monitor to 4K. Lastly, I'm partly considering this because I'm thinking of buying a VR headset to play Half Life Alyx and my specs don't currently meet the minimum.

Intel Core i7-3930k
32 GB of DDR3 Gskillz ram
GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Samsung 840 500gb SSD
Asus Sabertooth X79 mobo

Is is an upgrade worth it and any recommendations on components that would benefit unraring 60GB files and 4K remuxing?

Thanks
The CPU will be worse than anything that costs over 200 these days, the 2600 might beat it actually.

Should be able to get a 3700X and a 2080Ti for around 2K

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rRf76R
 
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I also tend to prefer intel, but there current offerings are seriously lacking. While the the 9700k and 9900k are still great cpus, they run warm, and need a large cooler to cool them. Especially the 9900k, and even more so for any of the extreme series, like the 9900x you chose in your build. That would likely require a 360mm aio to cool it and will still be handily outperformed by the new amd stuff.

Like you said amd has came a long way. And really deserve a second look these days. Do some research before you decide for yourself. That's a lot of money to spend!

You're correct about ram timings, but I doubt it's something the average user would ever actually see performance wise. And the kit I chose is supposed to be a good overclocker, meaning you may be able to get timing that tight.

Do you need more than 32gb, probably not. But the x299 board you selected offer quad channel memory, why not take advantage of it. Stay with 32 and get a 4x8 kit if you stick with x299.

As far as 10th gen intel, nothing has been confirmed yet. Unless your talking about the i9 10980xe and similar extreme series. Only possible leaks, which suggest adding a couple cores and enabling hyperthreading on all cpus. It will be another new mobo too, so dont buy anything yet. No 9th gen stuff will be compatible with the new stuff. You might wait until launch to see if it's worth it.

I'd still highly recommend looking again at AMD.
 
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EvanVanVan

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Egh, after doing some more research I think I really want to upgrade to a Threadripper 3960X - price jumped up rather than down but I'm assuming for a much nicer computer

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/87fyL2


AMD has one more cpu upgrade on the existing socket.

Intel does not.

If you have a Micro Center near you, they have great cpu pricing.

And this was a concern, how's the roadmap for the sTRX4 socket look?

Oh, and I'm definitely getting the CPU from Microcenter. I've never understood why their CPU prices are so much cheaper, but it's amazing! lol\

edit: Microcenter doesn't seem to discount Threadripper CPUs :[

edit2: will probably wait for Samsung 980 pro m.2 to take advantage of PCIe 4.0
 
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neojack

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a threadripper won't do anything for gaming.
it's usefull if you're a content creator and your softwares uses CPUs and not GPUs acceleration. (for exemple high quality encoding). and you do it for work and can't wait.

for 4k gaming , nothing past the 3600 scales really well with price. that's why the 3600 is #1 cpu on sales charts on Amazon.
the stock cooler of the 3600 is ok, the 212 Evo is a bit better. so keep your cooler. you can resell the 3600's stock cooler on ebay for 20$.


for certains games like No Man Sky VR, you can get more performance with more cores, in that case the 3900 is a good option. you need a better cooler for the 3900 though (can't go wrong with the noctua NH-D15)


if you go intel route, you would need a much beefier cooler to get same performance as the 3600 (all the review you see around are done with big coolers and maximum boost), and no upgrade available, while AMD has at least 1 generation of CPUs before ending AM4 socket.

about storage, i was an early adopter of a 1TB NVMe PCIe 3.0 4x SSD, bought one of the first models available fore like 400$ if i remember well.
still regret it. load times don't improve that much compared to a standard sata SSD. and it was much more expensive than sata options.

so yeah don't spend your budget on a top-of-the-line nvme, doesn't worth it for gaming.
take the crucial MX500 for exemple. goor perfs, good price/capacity ratio, available on sata or nvme
 
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