Unique Fixer Upper Opportunity?

[cadelzell]

Hey all. I've just rescued about 20 8GB DDR3 sticks destined for the trash can at work (got them just as the towers were heading out the door for 'nonfunctional' disposal). Most of these are going to go to go into people's workstations around the office, but I expect to have at least a couple of spares. (Only so many slots where it'll do any good)

So rather than throw the last two away, I'm thinking of trying to upgrade my home PC if I can get permission. Now here's the thing no man wants to admit...

I've got a micro-sized motherboard, a micro-mobo. My girlfriend laughs at it. It's fairly old. I've got an Intel(R) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s), 650 Watt Bronze rated power supply that has been pretty reliable, plenty of cooling, a very large chassis, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 with 4GB RAM, and 2X8GB DDR3 memory, but no extra memory slots and a dearth of USB, high speed HD slots (only have 4XSATA) and a lousy sound chip.

How would you upgrade this? I've been looking for a full size ATX with at least 4XDDR3 slots and obviously a 16X PCI slot to keep up with my next GPU upgrade. Unfortunately it is a -ah heck- of a time finding a mostly up to date motherboard with at least 8 USB connectors, a couple of 3.0 USB, and at least 6 SATA/MD slots for hard drive that still accepts DDR3, but this is the component I am currently assuming I will need.

Edit:

Thanks all for some great advice. The people urging against an upgrade are probably right, in that my current system does more or less what I want it to. I've noticed though that benchmark systems with very high memory, 32GB and higher, do experience some performance increase. Heck, look at any youtube video trying to pass off an integrated last-gen graphics chip as a powerhouse, and you'll see a 100+GB computer running Crysis or some newer game on 90FPS with no GPU at all. I do a lot of VR and a little graphics modelling, so I'm always paranoid about over stressing my aging GPU.

That said, I think I might hold on to my current motherboard for a few months longer until prices come down. This was a fun thought experiment to see if a person could actually do anything with the inevitable piles of last-gen memory that any engineer winds up with access to, and I've got a much better plan now for when my PC starts to underperform.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K8KPXUO?tag=tomshardware_forum_vgl-20 is a great suggestion, and it will probably be the foundation of my next upgrade. That, 32 GB DDR3, and then a year later a 'new' GPU. I'm certain I can piece together a 4X8 array of the same brand with a little creative mixing and matching. Here's hoping I can find someone throwing away a perfectly good 700+Watt PSU, as some gamers do.

 

[getochkn]

Try the 2x8GB in your current board, if it boots, cvall it a day. You'll be hard pressed to find a board to support such an old chip and a new MB won't take your old CPU.

 

[Aeacus]

Since you have solid components and Haswell family CPU, for a new MoBo, how about going the same MoBo that i have in my Haswell build?
I have MSI Z97 Gaming 5 in there (full specs with pics in my sig). It has 4x RAM slots, 3x PCI-E x16 slots, 4x PCI-E x1 slots, 1x M.2 SSD slot, 14x USB ports, 6x SATA ports, supports CPU and RAM OC, is ATX in size and also looks good.
specs: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z97-GAMING-5.html#hero-overview
in-depth review: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/Z97_GAMING_5/
amazon: https://www.amazon.com/MSI-Z97-Intel-Gaming-Motherboard/dp/B00K8KPXUO

Note 1: Even when you use MoBo with 4 RAM slots, you may not get both sets of 2x 8GB RAM working if they are different model, especially when their rated speed is different.
Note 2: With new MoBo, you're also looking towards new Win license if you're Win user.

Btw, there's no shame in owing PC with micro-ATX MoBo. My AMD build has micro-ATX MoBo in it and i created a very nice looking build around my micro-ATX MoBo. Full specs with pics in my sig.

 

[cryoburner]

I suppose the main question would be whether you even have any need for 32GB of RAM. For the vast majority of purposes (including gaming), 16GB is still more than enough, and likely will be for some years to come. Unless you are doing very specific tasks that can make use of large amounts of memory, there currently would be little to no benefit from moving up to more than that. So it might not be worth investing in a new motherboard just to add RAM that's going to sit there unused. And all the latest CPUs require DDR4, so by the time that amount of RAM is likely to become useful to you, you may be upgrading to a system using a newer type of memory anyway. I suppose if you want a motherboard for other reasons, getting one with four slots and adding the extra memory could be a reasonable option though. Just don't expect it to do much for quite a while.

Your current system is still very capable though, with a processor that's nearly as fast as the Kaby Lake i7s, a graphics card that could still be considered "mid-range", and plenty of RAM. It could last you a fair amount longer still, perhaps with a graphics card upgrade down the line if you use the system for gaming.