Let me give you some insight of my current situation:
And sorry for the text wall, formated it to my best
My computer is the following
Asus M5A78L-LE
AMD Phenom II X4 965 @3.4Ghz ( never OC'd it)
Akasa Venom Voodo
1x 4GB Ram DDR3 1333Mhz
HiS HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 <-- Dead
1TB HDD
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition
Seventeam ST-500PNL 500W ( yeah, i know it's a bad one )
PSU specs:
My budget is limited, and since I live in Brazil, things are A LOT more expensive than US, sometimes 2x, 3x more
For comparisson: A GTX 980 Gigabyte 4GB (amazon price) is ~US$569. Here ( Brazil), it costs around ~US$892 ( R$ 2635)
With that in mind, let's tackle my problem:
My GPU died about 3 weeks ago, no idead of what happened. Tested it on other computers and no success. GPU doens't send any signal, but fans and all the other components are working fine, temperatures are very good (idle and load).
My old GPU was in a fine spot that it got the job done very well for recent games. Most of them could be played in Very High and High setting @1080p at a decent framerate 50+ FPS ( Tomb Raider, GTA IV, Dota 2, X-COM, BF4, COD, CS:GO, Skyrim)
So I decided to get a new GPU. I did an extensive search for a good card that could fit in my budget, but I came across A LOT OF questions:
If I decide to get a GPU better than the one I had, I'll run into:
Space problems: The GPU can't be longer than 260mm
I'm pretty sure my PSU can't safely hold anything better than a GTX 760 / HD 7950 / R9 270
Getting anything better than the cards mentioned aboce would require me upgrading my PSU, wich also would result in a case upgrade ( the space in a V3 is really shitty, my venom voodoo barely fits. There's almost no space for anything there), and MAYBE an motherboard "upgrade", so i could take better advantages of my GPU and the features on the motherboard ( I was thinking in a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P or a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3. IF it's the case, any other recomendations would be good, with the same price range of these mobo)
I also though about getting a card really close to my HD 6850 or something slightly better, like a HD 6870, GTX 560, or even maybe another HD 6850.
I looked up for some used cards ( they are usually cheaper and there's a lot of trusted sites that sell them) and I stumbled upon a Zotac GTX 560 1GB and a GTX 560 ECS. But is it even worth it?
I think it would be thoughful to get a card similar to my HD 6850, so I don't lose too much performance and still get a decent bang for my buck. But I also think that it would be ill-advised to do it, since the difference in price between an older card and a recent one ( not a top tier card, more like a r7 260, GTX 660 ti, GTX 750 ti) is not so big, and even if the discrepancy of raw power between both are not huge, the newer technologies that come in these GPU would compensate this variancy ( performance-wise, not SLI/Crossfire stuff; multi monitor connection and all these other features that doens't increase the raw performance of a GPU)
What should I do? Get a high-end GPU and deal with the upgrades that would come with it, get a medium card even if it meand losing some power when comparing to my HD 6850 and take advantage of new features to compensate it or get a similar card?
After lurking more on the internet, I kinda another solution I'd get an Corsair GS600 CP 9020063 , a bigger case ( i was thinking of a HAF 912 Plus, but any other recomendation of a case big enough to fit my venom voodoo would be good) and I also found good used GTX 580 ( zogis, PNY, Point of view, Gainward dual fan) and a Point of View GTX 680 EXO 2GB in auction ( its cheaper than a GTX 460 atm) I'm more concerned about the PSU. Is it good enough to hold a GTX 680?
So, I'll do some changes to my rig, and some parts of it will be sold ( PSU and case) so that I have more money to buy better parts. I still have all the boxes for motherboard, CPU ( only the box ), GPU, memory, cooler, just for my HDD and CD/DVD drive that I don't have. I'm fully aware I can't just let them on my table, and they need to be stored correctly to avoid damage ( static, water, etc). How do I proceded to store all my hardware? Do I let my CPU connected to my motherboard and remove the cooler? Do I remove the thermal compound from both CPU and cooler? Do I let the memories on their DIMM slots? How should I store my HDD and CD/DVD drive? Putting them back in their boxes is fine or do I need a special case?