Very slow PC - time to upgrade?

[Sub-Human]

As soon as the GTX 680 came out I built myself a brand new PC. Really expensive, and to be honest I was rather dissapointed with video game performance and (at the start) the constant blue screens - they went away by themselves and a little tweaking on my part. Now it's gotten extremely slow (have to wait for half a minute or so after startup to open anything) as well. On top of that it's been acting strange (for 2 years now) - starts up and shuts down 3 or so times (even before the BIOS initializes) before the PC actually loads up.

I reckon it's time for an upgrade? I have a 2GB GTX 680, an i5-2500k running at 4.5 GHz, 8GB 1333 MHz RAM, a P8Z68-V all running on a 850W Corsair PSU. I suspect that some components are currently bottlenecking each other. I'd love some input on investing into a build that runs smooth.

 

[inerax]

I would start fresh. Reinstall windows and see if that helps. Sometimes a computer just needs a fresh start.

 

[saywhut]

Your machine is not all tha bad. Before doing an upgrade, I would say re-image the machine beforehand. If you are experencing these issues even afterwards, then it sounds like you may have a hardware problem.

In your current situation, make sure nothing is overclocked to see if there is any change. Also, use HD tune to make sure there is nothing wrong with your drive.

 

[rockie_]

Downclock may stabilize the rig . Even stock 2500K cant bottleneck GTX 680 . Turn off any overclocking : CPU , GPU , RAM - from BIOS , applications .

 

[geofelt]

Your pc is still good. 2500K with a oc should be sufficient.
You should not have the issues you list.
Over enough time, the registry gets muddled and other things like malware can creep in.

My suggestion is to reinstall windows on a 240gb ssd and see how you do.

Your next upgrade will probably be to a GTX970 class card.

If your psu is a cheap quality unit, that would be the first thing to change out.

 

[oxiide]

It sounds like there's something actually wrong with your hardware, not just simply that your system is "old." Random shut-downs can indicate a lot of things, but the first thing I'd be investigating is the PSU. If your GPU was having problems it should have been RMA'd from the start, you shouldn't have to "tweak" it into not crashing. Poor startup performance sounds like your startup disk is at fault. Also, are you certain your overclock is 100% stable?

I really would not be worried about any "bottlenecking" occurring on this system. And if there weren't anything wrong with it I'd say wait until at least the Broadwell processors release before you upgrade. I'm personally using a Core i5-750 system, the generation before yours.

 

[Sub-Human]

Downclock may stabilize the rig . Even stock 2500K cant bottleneck GTX 680 . Turn off any overclocking : CPU , GPU , RAM - from BIOS , applications .

I've actually done quite a lot of testing and tweaking in this regard over 2 years ago when the blue screens came in almost 5 minutes into any tasking application, like a video game.

1) I've downclocked my 8GB RAM down from the advertised 1600 MHz to 1333 MHz. The blue screens continued for some time, but stopped eventually.

2) I've overclocked my GTX 680 because of shoddy video game performance (Internet benchmarks had much higher framerates), but that did little good - my screen stuttered and went dark a couple times. I returned to stock values.

3) I've put my i5-2500k to stock value but that didn't SEEM to have any impact. However game performance was horrible (below 10-20 FPS on Battlefield 3, for example) so I overclocked back to 4.5 GHz.

As said before, the BSOD issue stopped. I'm still confused as to what did it. Most likely the RAM, since it turned out that 1600 MHz was the maximum tested speed - the recommended settings were at 1333 MHz.

 

[rockie_]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($197.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($86.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card ($355.91 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $950.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-03 10:47 EDT-0400

 

[Sub-Human]

It sounds like there's something actually wrong with your hardware, not just simply that your system is "old." Random shut-downs can indicate a lot of things, but the first thing I'd be investigating is the PSU. If your GPU was having problems it should have been RMA'd from the start, you shouldn't have to "tweak" it into not crashing. Poor startup performance sounds like your startup disk is at fault. Also, are you certain your overclock is 100% stable?

I've checked my RAM with memtest86+ and chkdsk on HDD, both of which returned no faults. Is there a test for my PSU?

 

[Sub-Human]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($197.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($86.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card ($355.91 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $950.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-03 10:47 EDT-0400

Do you think I could run this system with my Z68 board? It's got PCI-e 3.0 and all...

 

[rockie_]

Yes , if your i5 2500K and the Z68 mobo are fine