[SOLVED] It’s time for a PC rebuild. Suggestions needed.

Ghost Blood

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Jun 15, 2015
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Hello all! It is thanks to this forum and to many of you that I got into PC building and gaming. I love this community, you guys help me build an amazing PC back in end of 2015 start of 2016. She has treated me well with little to no issues. However as time has gone on I have upgraded a component here, a component there, and now have a PC that has a GPU that is being bottlenecked by other components. I want to upgrade, with a budget of about 1 to 1.5k given I already have an amazing 1080ti. So without further life story, here is the spec list of my build, with what is original and upgraded.

•OG CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4 GHz
•OG CPU Cooler: Rosewill RCX-Z775-LP 33.5 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (this cooler is old and dirty and bearing seems to be going out on it, makes a lot of noise)
•OG Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (2 sata ports have died on this board since I originally got it, but otherwise she is doing fine. I like the fact that this MOBO has SO many USB ports on it. It has 4x3.0 and 4x2.0. I use all the 2.0 for peripherals, and about 1-2 of the 3.0 for my monitors usb pass through. But obviously some things are more important in life then lots of USB ports.
•OG RAM/Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 16 GB (4 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (they are in xmp mode and have only been for 2ish years now)
•OG Storage: Seagate 4 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive
•Upgraded/Added Storage: 970 Evo SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe + with a PCIe 3.0 x4 adapter due to M.2 slot on the mobo not being faster then x2 NVMe: M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter with Aluminum Heatsink Solution https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JJTVGZM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Zm4tEbWTBQG2A
•Video Card/GPU: Originally a EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card but have since upgraded about a year ago to a EVGA Geforce GTX 1080 ti sc2 hybrid 11GB RAM. Overkill for this system I know, but I was preparing myself for a upgrade and bought it at a VERY good price new thanks to it being a job perk of mine.
•OG Case: NZXT Phantom 410 ATX Mid Tower Case with 3-4 fans added to it to make it essentially a wind tunnel. 1 of the usb 2.0 headers on it never worked to begin with. Case has been scratched and banged up and very slightly bent on the bottom due to it being packed into a suitcase and relocated. The back fan is cracked, so it makes grinding noises, also seems a bearing is going out in it, makes grindy, vibratey noises until it’s been spinning for awhile, then it shuts up and behaves.
•OG PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
•OG Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer
•Monitors: 27” 2560x1440 Dell G-Sync monitor running at 1ms 144hz on Display Port. Secondary 24” 1920x1080 Dell Monitor running at 2ms 60hz on hdmi. Wouldn’t mind upgrading my main monitor to 4K, but honestly I love my current main monitor, do not like my secondary much.

That is my current setup. My goal here is to salvage as much as I can from this build to build something better and newer and more modern by using the best of what I have now such as my GPU and storage. I have roughly 1k with maybe being able to spend 1.5k if it is a big price to performance difference. I have extremely high end peripherals so I don’t need to upgrade anything there as they have all been recently upgraded. The reason I need help with rebuilding is I had help from some of you all when I first built this, and sadly I’m not really up to date with what is considered great or good. I play a LOT of Apex Legends competitively, keeping my settings as low as possible to max frame rate, while playing games such as RDR2 and other AAA single player titles on high as possible settings while still getting smooth frames for just causal enjoyment. I do not use my PC for any heavy work, such as video editing, video encoding, or anything of the likes. Just normal every day usage, browsing, downloading, with gaming as a huge focus. I know I’m essentially asking you all to do my work for me and virtually build me something, but I have tried to build an upgrade myself and just have kept getting lost in current hardware and confused as to what is good and bad and worth it or just snake oil. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you for your time!

 
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Solution
If you play competitive, you will need the fastest cores possible which is still a forte of Intel, although not by much. Unfortunately, buying Intel right now is bad value as they are on the verge of next gen. product release...
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/future-hardware-releases/

So if you can wait a while, you can end up with better products for the same budget. If you cant wait, then get something like this...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 3.9 GHz 8-Core Processor | $338.99 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler | Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler | $48.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard | Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI) ATX AM4...

Ghost Blood

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Jun 15, 2015
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4,530
My suggestions for an upgrade

You really dont need to upgrade your gpu as of right now since the only one worth upgrading to honestly is the 2080Ti for you.

edit: pcpartpicker yells incompatibility but theres none since the MAX-series already have updated bios.
Wow that’s actually a VERY reasonable price! I’m impressed. Keep original case in this “case”? ;)
 
Last edited:

Ghost Blood

Reputable
Jun 15, 2015
26
0
4,530
My suggestions for an upgrade

You really dont need to upgrade your gpu as of right now since the only one worth upgrading to honestly is the 2080Ti for you.

edit: pcpartpicker yells incompatibility but theres none since the MAX-series already have updated bios.
The only thing that SLIGHTLY would raise an issue is the USB ports, there is not a lot of them. Which I know isn’t really what’s most important, but counting all my cables, I use a lot of USB ports. Mouse, Keyboard, Headset, speakers, usb pass through on keyboard and monitor, webcam.
 
The only thing that SLIGHTLY would raise an issue is the USB ports, there is not a lot of them. Which I know isn’t really what’s most important, but counting all my cables, I use a lot of USB ports. Mouse, Keyboard, Headset, speakers, usb pass through on keyboard and monitor, webcam.
You can always buy an usb hub if your run out of usb slots

Fairly inexpensive stuff and can fit your budget easily
 
If you play competitive, you will need the fastest cores possible which is still a forte of Intel, although not by much. Unfortunately, buying Intel right now is bad value as they are on the verge of next gen. product release...
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/future-hardware-releases/

So if you can wait a while, you can end up with better products for the same budget. If you cant wait, then get something like this...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 3.9 GHz 8-Core Processor | $338.99 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler | Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler | $48.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard | Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI) ATX AM4 Motherboard | $189.99 @ Best Buy
Memory | G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory | $84.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply | SeaSonic FOCUS Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | $104.99 @ B&H
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $767.95
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-08 21:06 EDT-0400 |
 
Solution