Upgrading a 5 year old X58 box pulled out of mothballs

[Roark1138]

Hi. I've been working off up laptops at home while I rebuilt my home office. Little did I realize that it would take me nearly 4 years to get everything back to the point where I can now pull my old box out of storage!

I would like the community's recommendations on good bang-for-the-buck upgrades.

Approximate Purchase Date: Any time! ASAP
Budget Range: 200-400 for ram and gpu
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Surfing, Office, Photoshop + gaming
Are you buying a monitor: No
Parts to Upgrade: GPU, RAM, HD
Do you need to buy OS: I think so -- Run Win32 right now, but capable of running win 64
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Amazon.com, newegg, microcenter (there's one nearby).
Location: STL, MO USA
Parts Preferences: nVidia preferred
Overclocking: Probably not
SLI or Crossfire: No
Your Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050 (x3 monitors + 4k TV)

At the bottom is a cleaned up version of a CPU-Z report that's got a rundown of what's in this box (which I built ~5 years ago?). You know how it is -- you build a box a few years ago, and unless you've kept up with the changes, EVERYTHING has changed. Now I'm lost again.

What I'm thinking of doing so far and what my questions are:

0) Keep my board and CPU for now. CPU prices are too high. I want something that will tide me over for a couple of years until (hopefully) VR is mainstream and then I'll go all out on a new box.

1) I'm running a quad core, but currently have an old 32-bit install. So I plan to drop in an SSD with a fresh 64-bit Win10 install. This X58 board is SATA 2, but I imagine I'll be fine since the SATA (3) is backward compatible from what I understand.

2) I've currently got 6GB of DDR3 ram (across three dims). Would like to increase that to 12-16 GB, but am not necessarily needing to keep what I have. Would rather by the best ram for the box to maximize life left, if possible. So what would be the best?

3) I've got an EVGA GeForce GTX 460. I'm willing to drop 200-300 on the newer board, IF the cpu won't be holding me back too far when gaming. I run three 22" monitors capable of 1680x1050. I plan to game with it. I don't need to run crazy high resolutions or anything like that. I'm casual gamer. Like I said I have three monitors. Also have a 4k TV nearby, so I'd like something that give me options to output to the 3 monitors at one time, then another time just output to the TV. With the x58 extreme that I have, can I even slap something like a geforce 970 in it?

I really appreciate any guidance you can offer. I know from past experiences that it's a balancing act between the cpu, board, ram, and gpu and it's easy to overbuy on something that you cannot fully push and/or underbuy on something and be left with a serious bottleneck. I want to find a good balance for, say, $200-400 (on top of the SSD).

Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of cores 4 (max 8)
Number of threads 8 (max 16)
Name Intel Core i7 920
Codename Bloomfield
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 1366 LGA (0x1)

Chipset
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Northbridge Intel X58 rev. 13
Southbridge Intel 82801JR (ICH10R) rev. 00
Graphic Interface PCI-Express
PCI-E Link Width x16
PCI-E Max Link Width x16
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Size 6 GBytes
Channels Triple
Memory Frequency 533.4 MHz (2:8)

Memory SPD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

DIMM # 1
SMBus address 0x50
Memory type DDR3
Module format UDIMM
Manufacturer (ID) G.Skill (7F7F7F7FCD0000000000)
Size 2048 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3-10700 (667 MHz)
Part number F3-12800CL9-2GBNQ

DIMM # 2
SMBus address 0x52
Memory type DDR3
Module format UDIMM
Manufacturer (ID) G.Skill (7F7F7F7FCD0000000000)
Size 2048 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3-10700 (667 MHz)
Part number F3-12800CL9-2GBNQ

DIMM # 3
SMBus address 0x54
Memory type DDR3
Module format UDIMM
Manufacturer (ID) G.Skill (7F7F7F7FCD0000000000)
Size 2048 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3-10700 (667 MHz)
Part number F3-12800CL9-2GBNQ

BIOS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

vendor American Megatrends Inc.
version P1.40
date 08/31/2009
ROM size 1024 KB

Baseboard
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

vendor ASRock
model X58 Extreme

Display Adapters
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Display adapter 0
Name NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Board Manufacturer EVGA Corp.
Revision A1
Codename GF104
Technology 40 nm
Memory size 768 MB
Memory type GDDR5

Software
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows Version Microsoft Windows 10 (10.0) Professional 32-bit (Build 10586)
DirectX Version 12.0

 

[itsVance]

Been there. I am currently running an upgraded Hp Pavilion that had an i7 920. Its been upgraded to the point to where I had to move the guts to a case that would hold the bigger PSU and more fans.

You will want to upgrade to a 600W PSU.

Yes to the 64bit Windows 10

Upgrade to at least 12GB ram. 3 sticks x 4GB of ddr3 pc 1600. Make sure you place them in the color coded slots so you get the triple channel advantage.

You should get 2 240GB smaller SSD's and connect them in a RAID0 configuration. This will negate the disadvantage you have as a result of being limited to sata2.

If you are not overclocking your CPU, a Gigabyte Windforce OC GeForce GTX 660 2GB will run with the i7 920 without any bottleneck issues. If you want to upgrade the CPU or OC the i7, you could do 2x 660's in SLI mode. The wind force will also help a tad with the airflow in the case.

I have 4 120mm case fans blowing in, and the GPU's fan & system exhaust fan blowing out. I know it seems awkward, but when the CPU needs more air, it cranks up the exhaust fan and they just about equalize on the input and output. My CPU never goes over 85c even running games like Star Citizen on High Graphics and that's with 7 year old thermal paste. Bear in mind HP didn't use stock CPU heat sinks in 2009.

 

[Roark1138]

If you are not overclocking your CPU, a Gigabyte Windforce OC GeForce GTX 660 2GB will run with the i7 920 without any bottleneck issues.

Thank you for your reply! Much appreciated. How big of a bottleneck do you think I would hit running a GTX 960 4GB? I had no doubt that I would not be utilizing the full capacity of the card, but do you think a 960 would be a waste of time/money?

I ask because, based on what I read in some other threads, it sounded like a 960 would be a decent option for an upgrade. I purchased the card just yesterday so it hasn't shipped. It looks like I could get a 660 around $50 cheaper than what I spent on the 960. Based on what I've read, it sounds like a 960 should operate fine...it's more at this point about the bottleneck of the rest of the system. I'll take the $50 is savings if I'm not going to see any difference between a 660 and 960 in the i7 920 rig. Thoughts? Thanks again!

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

I'd pick up a R9 380 (slightly faster than a 960 for the same price), a 240-256GB SSD and maybe 3x4GB RAM, all probably about $400 total. That's probably the best performance upgrade. Maybe overclock the CPU as well. Next tier of upgrades would be a CPU/motherboard to Haswell or Skylake.

 

[itsVance]

If you are not overclocking your CPU, a Gigabyte Windforce OC GeForce GTX 660 2GB will run with the i7 920 without any bottleneck issues.

Thank you for your reply! Much appreciated. How big of a bottleneck do you think I would hit running a GTX 960 4GB? I had no doubt that I would not be utilizing the full capacity of the card, but do you think a 960 would be a waste of time/money?

I ask because, based on what I read in some other threads, it sounded like a 960 would be a decent option for an upgrade. I purchased the card just yesterday so it hasn't shipped. It looks like I could get a 660 around $50 cheaper than what I spent on the 960. Based on what I've read, it sounds like a 960 should operate fine...it's more at this point about the bottleneck of the rest of the system. I'll take the $50 is savings if I'm not going to see any difference between a 660 and 960 in the i7 920 rig. Thoughts? Thanks again!

If your going that route, I would get 2 660's in SLI. You can get a pair of them for 120-130 preowned and it would offer better performance than 1 960.
edit:

As you can see here:
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GIGABYTE-GeForce-GTX-660-WindForce-2X-OC-vs-EVGA-GeForce-GTX-960-SuperSC-ACX-2.0-4-GB

The 660 is not far behind the 960. 2 660's is cheaper than a 960 and will perform almost 2x as much, leaving you room to upgrade your CPU later without messing with the GPU's again.

additionally,
I have been trying to stay in your price range on my suggestions. Your PC can be upgraded so much more. I'm looking into something that will bring mine up to perform as well as an i7 4970 and I wont have to change the motherboard, but that would go over your price all together about $250. I am only mentioning this because someone had posted the next tier upgrade would be to change your mobo and cpu and RAM which isn't the case.