When do you upgrade

[SooWhat]

I upgrade whenever I collect enough money to upgrade the weakest part of my pc or when something stops working

[NineEyeRon]

Fans when they become noisy

Case when it’s broken

CPU when it bottlenecks the GPU

MoBo when I need a new CPU

PSU when it stops working or hasn’t got the power for my rig

RAM when I change MoBo

GPU every 2-3 years

[Kisai]

17 hours ago, Smackaroy said:

I want to know when people upgrade so if it's no problem I would like you guys to say when you upgrade you setup is it every 6 months every year etc 

 

Depends.

 

a) Can I run the game, application, or hardware needed to do X?

b) Can it wait?

 

For example. I replaced the GPU when Neir Automata came out. Even with the best GPU you could buy, still not good enough for 4Kp60, but close enough. And shush, the game ate peoples weak cards for breakfast, just like FFXIV when the DX11 option was available. Current target is FFXV, since that game won't run for more than a minute (without turning off nVidia's gameworks features)

 

So the former, was "no the GTX 760 was nowhere near where near capable of running the game at 1080p, let alone 4k", and I had purchased a 4K monitor and it was kinda suffering already. The latter was FFXV, as it wasn't something that I was willing to spend money on.

 

In order:

1. Upgrade the GPU. Every second GPU level to maintain performance, or hold off if you bought something better. I went from a 760 to a 1080, so that was a jump of 3 GPU's AND 2 performance levels. So for all intents this was equal to an upgrade that should last 5 years.

2. Upgrade the RAM. I bought the maximum RAM on the MB available when I built this one.

3. Upgrade the CPU. The only option up with this MB was would have been the 4790k, and that wasn't a huge upgrade. My preference here is that the new CPU must have a net increase of 100% (passmark multicore score), with at least 25% of that coming from the single thread performance.

My i7-4700 quad core has a score of 9,780, with a single thread score of 2227. So I would not upgrade before seeing a CPU with a single thread score of 2800 and a multithread score of 20,000. So according to the list of thread performance list, at present, only 5 CPU's beat the single thread performance target. Of which only one also hits the multithread score. The i9-9900K/F. 

4. Upgrade the SDD/HDD. Presently have a SATA SSD, SATA SSD's top out at 550MB/sec. A new MB with a PCIE x4 NVme drive would top out at 4GB/sec. At present no consumer M.2 2280 NVMe drive does this, but there's room to get one when it comes available. The existing z87 Mobo I have can take a NVMe SSD, but it's not particularly worth adding since it would have to share lanes with the GPU or come at the expense of one of the other expansion cards. Because NVMe stuff is new, expect it to evolve more. NVMe drives need heatsinks to get faster, and need to be installed on the reverse of the motherboard to not waste PCIe slot spaces.

 

Expansion sound and network cards pretty much do nothing for gaming, you might get 1% additional framerate by having better dedicated ASIC's on those cards, but really the only reason I even put the X-fi in the desktop at all is that the front-panel headphone connection has a lower SN than the supposedly Purity Sound HD ALC1150, and supports ASIO. Creative Labs driver suites have been awful forever, but nobody else even seems to bother in this space (they recently jumped onto the RGB trend, go figure.) If the next MB can have a dead-silent output when nothing is playing, I won't need it.

 

 

[The King of the Undead]

not yet

[AngryBeaver]

I tend to upgrade or do a new build when I see a new peice of tech that I want.

[BigRom]

Complete system rebuild after 4 years with the i5-4460, yeah I could upgrade to a 4790K but the motherboards that support OC-ing that thing properly are stupid expensive. LGA1150 was a dead-end for me unless I felt like sinking money into a 4790K rabbit hole

 

So build an entirely new Ryzen system instead, only reusing the PSU & case. Those 2 reused components just got swapped out recently.

[TetraSky]

When I see that hardware actually made a lot of progress.

Back in the early 2000, hardware performances increased significantly with each generation.  But in the last 10 years or so, we've only seen maybe 10~15% increase in IPC(if that) and it's only recently that they've finally stopped being fixated on "consumers only need 4 cores" with AMD taking the lead on that.

So really... I'm going to be spending quite a bit of money next month when Zen2 is finally released.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

not until something breaks... or the upgrade is "futureproof" regardless of new techs (eg HDD) 

[robinhood85]

I update when I face any problem.

[Reytime]

Typically when a new new part comes out that I get hyped about lol - mainly CPUs and GPUs.

[bmichaels556]

On 5/28/2019 at 8:39 AM, Smackaroy said:

I want to know when people upgrade so if it's no problem I would like you guys to say when you upgrade you setup is it every 6 months every year etc 

I mean that just seems insane. Every 6 months, or just... Every new line of hardware comes out, is probably excessive. But I guess it depends what you're doing, and if being on the absolute bleeding edge could mean profit or loss for you. I think for 99% of users, that just isn't the case, but that such a hardcore performance-driven market segment who actually NEEDS that for their business does exist. I think the majority of people who would upgrade that often are just enthusiasts, which is awesome too if you have the funds! More power to you. If it's good for your soul, go for it!  

 

Me personally? It's going to irk a ton of people, but I built my FX-8350 rig in 2014 and am only just now going to upgrade to a Ryzen 3000 series rig. Probably the "3800/X" or whatever that iteration is named in it's respective tier this time around, I forget. Or maybe a lower 3000-series part with same cores for overclocking. But you know, the 1700/1800/X and 2700/X tier. 

 

Even now, for the most part, my FX-8350 rig is enough for the gaming and light image and video editing I do. It's basically fine for 1080p editing. Always has been, and always will be. That is, if my rig didn't die due to a MOBO related issue about 6 months ago. A year ago, I basically "sidegraded" to a Dell T7500 that I upgraded to dual X5675's and put 24GB's of RAM into. The extra RAM has been a welcome upgrade, and my multi-core performance actually matches or beats a stock Ryzen 7 1700. I put in a USB 3.0 PCIe card to bring my USB up to speed... Two real downsides. SATAII which slows down my SSD a good amount, about 66% of it's potential. This can be fixed with a PCIe adapter, but I don't notice it enough to worry about it.  Also more power consumption overall, with ~350 watts at full CPU load. And yeah, that isn't nothing. For sure. But it's not like I'm running anywhere near 100% all day. Idle is still ~200 watts, but even that doesn't bother me terribly much, but it is a downside worth noting.

 

In gaming, once you crank up to around 1440p (I'm on an RX480), any bottlenecks caused by the CPU are pretty much eliminated, except in games that seem to ONLY use a single core. Insurgency comes to mind, it's really bad in that area in my experience. But that issue is getting way better, and so if I lose a few frames, I don't worry too much about it as long as games are smooth and playable. And pretty much everything is! Although CS:GO and similar games where people DEMAND epic framerates, are not going to be best on a rig like this. 

 

And what matters most? I pretty much got ALL of that for $250 bucks out the door. A dual-socket Xeon that matches a Ryzen 1700, 24GB of RAM, upgraded USB card, all for dirt cheap. It's tough to beat that.

 

And so I don't see this rig, even today, as any kind of major downgrade, especially depending on what you're doing. While I will be going Ryzen 3000, I still totally plan on utilizing this dual Xeon machine. Maybe trying my hand at a web server, general backup PC, whatever. It ain't going in the closet, that I can say for sure. So when do I upgrade? Eh, when I feel the time is right. 

 

(most long-winded response ever)