Upgrade: Form or Function?

[Serpentine]

So, I've had my desktop for about 3yrs now (I think) and it's serving me pretty well. With an i7-4790k and a Zotac AMP Extreme 980ti it still runs pretty much any game I throw at it on ultra in 1080p without breaking a sweat, but it is definitely starting to show its age and I'm debating throwing together an upgrade.

 

My issue lies here though, with the 980ti I'm not really hurting for graphical power, and it sounds silly to me to upgrade to a more modern GPU when I'd still be using a 4th gen processor. However upgrading to a new CPU would mean a new motherboard, and new RAM as well, which based on my calculations can't really be done to a comparable level as I have now without spending just shy of £1000 ($1300). Considering I work full time, I don't really have the huge quantities of spare time for gaming that I used to, but I still consume most of my media on my PC so it is something I spend a lot of time on.

 

Is it worth shelling out for the upgrade in hardware? Or do I spend about half that much fixing the quality-of-life stuff, like finally taking the plunge into watercooling to make it run more quietly (it's definitely at the point now that I can hear it in the background of any videos I'm watching), replacing the power supply with something a little more reliable, and generally making the whole thing a little bit cleaner looking?

 

Obviously in an ideal world I would do both, but at this point in my life I can't really justify spending £1.5k replacing everything in my rig, though admittedly I could probably recover a few hundred of that by eBay-ing my old hardware.

 

At the moment I'm leaning towards the visual upgrade, which will lead to a whole load of other questions, but I just wanted to pole some opinions about the hardware and if it is a sensible idea to go down the custom loop route on hardware 4 generations behind. Plus I would need to replace my GPU with a reference 980ti anyway as there are no waterblocks for the Zotac behemoth that is in there at the moment.

[Bananasplit_00]

Really you won't notice an upgrade from an I7 4790K to a newer chip, the GPU is where its at for value. 

 

I have a water-cooled I7 4790K and a 1080 and its great, i play pretty much everything I want at 1440p maxed out(the exception being Black Desserts Online because its an unoptemised pice of shit). 

 

New screen, GPU, PSU and some watercooling wouldn't be a bad upgrade IMO

[Serpentine]

5 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

Really you won't notice an upgrade from an I7 4790K to a newer chip, the GPU is where its at for value. 

 

I have a water-cooled I7 4790K and a 1080 and its great, i play pretty much everything I want at 1440p maxed out(the exception being Black Desserts Online because its an unoptemised pice of shit). 

 

New screen, GPU, PSU and some watercooling wouldn't be a bad upgrade IMO

Hmm, I thought that might be the case. Shame I won't be able to use the optane drives for accelerating a mechanical drive, but hey ho, that can be solved with more SSD's.

 

Here's a question then, if I change motherboards and moved to a slightly more compact case, would I need to reinstall my OS? I do like my mastercase 5, but it's freaking huge and I wouldn't mind something a little less clunky if it won't cause me any headache down the line

[Bananasplit_00]

13 minutes ago, Serpentine said:

Hmm, I thought that might be the case. Shame I won't be able to use the optane drives for accelerating a mechanical drive, but hey ho, that can be solved with more SSD's.

 

Here's a question then, if I change motherboards and moved to a slightly more compact case, would I need to reinstall my OS? I do like my mastercase 5, but it's freaking huge and I wouldn't mind something a little less clunky if it won't cause me any headache down the line

Don't think you will need a reinstall, just enter the product key and you should be good to go

[grss1982]

On 12/2/2018 at 5:41 AM, Serpentine said:

Hmm, I thought that might be the case. Shame I won't be able to use the optane drives for accelerating a mechanical drive, but hey ho, that can be solved with more SSD's.

 

Here's a question then, if I change motherboards and moved to a slightly more compact case, would I need to reinstall my OS? I do like my mastercase 5, but it's freaking huge and I wouldn't mind something a little less clunky if it won't cause me any headache down the line

What O.S. are you using. Windows 10 in this day and age is a little bit more forgiving with hardware swaps than previous versions of Windows.

[Serpentine]

3 hours ago, grss1982 said:

What O.S. are you using. Windows 10 in this day and age is a little bit more forgiving with hardware swaps than previous versions of Windows.

Windows 7, never took the risk of updating when it was free because so many people were losing their data in the process. Now I 'have' to pay for it I just don't see the point

[grss1982]

3 hours ago, Serpentine said:

Windows 7, never took the risk of updating when it was free because so many people were losing their data in the process. Now I 'have' to pay for it I just don't see the point

That's not necessarily true. Paying for Windows 10 that is.  Actually if you have a Windows 7 key you can use that to activate Windows 10. Last I tried this was in Windows 10 v1709. Still should work with the latest version.