Upgrade Time? i7 3820 / 980ti SLi 4K rig

[Boothy128]

Hi all,

 

Long time lover of LTT, first time poster in the forum here! 

 

I was hoping that you guys could help me out with my current dilemma 

 

I have a PC that I put together a few years ago and I have been adding and swapping bits periodically (mainly GPUs). Now I'm thinking, "do I need a bigger refresh to maximise performance?" 

 

Below is is the current hardware:

 

Phanteks Evolve Enthoo ATX Tempered Glass Case

i7 3820 @ 4.4ghz 

Asus ROG Rampage IV Gene 

Corsair Vengence 16GB RAM

Msi 980Ti Gaming 6G SLi (+230 clock, +475 memory)

120GB SSD for OS

240GB SSD for Games 

Corsair H80 

Fractal Design Newton R3 1000w PSU

 

(RAM is rated at 1866 but it always defaults to 1333 in bios. There is some instability when I run it at it's rated speed. If I use XMP, it will crash)

 

The rig is used for 4K gaming. I am wanting to achieve 60fps in all games, as well as very, very low noise and killer looks. It currently achieves 40-60fps depending on the game

 

Essentially, I have an itch to do some upgrading. I was wondering if replacing the Mobo, CPU and RAM would get me very far. Perhaps a 6600k based build?

 

....or am I better off holding out for the 1080 supply / demand to calm down and spring for a couple to go SLi again? 

 

I'd really appreciate everyone's advice that can help me get the rest of the way. Happy to to answer what questions I can to help anyone contribute

 

Note: my tech level is 'OK', so I have an alright understanding of how everything works and can apply simple over clocks in the bios but I fall short of playing with voltages. 

 

Also Note: Budget is around £500 (GBP) which can be increased by selling the parts I replaced. 

[Remesy]

Your best bet would be to go for the gtx 1080 sli for 4k 60fps instead of of changing your cpu to a 6600k. Changing your cpu to a 6600k would give you marginal performance gain or none at all depending on what type of games you are playing.

[Herman Mcpootis]

For the cpu, if you really wanna upgrade just get an e5 2670. 8 cores and 16 threads, so it wont bottleneck any gpu and its cheap as hell used. Get gtx 1080 SLI or buy another gtx 980ti for the best performance.

[Boothy128]

Thanks Remesy, I thought that would be the case 

 

I'm surprised that the 3820 has held up so well over the years. I guess that I just have an itch to upgrade and the CPU / ram / Mobo are the only remaining parts of a 4 year old rig. 

 

Here's the thing about the 1080 - I sold my original EVGA 980tis once the 1080 was announced. Then, the performance wasn't as good as we had hoped, and pricing is currently still nerfed due to supply and demand, and then they go and say SLi isn't going to be any kind of priority moving forwards. All these things put me off so I bought two more 980tis 

 

Silver lining is that the prices had dropped so I made £100 by selling and then buying the cards again 

 

If I can't get gains on my current 980ti set of cards I guess I just have to wait 

 

Games I play incl titles such as witcher 3, CIV V, GTA, (all of which achieve very good fps) and also poorly optimised games like Rise of Tomb Raider, Batman, Just Cause 3. Also, I play CS GO, Left 4 Dead 2, and various other shooters. 

I don't think that there is anything too CPU intensive in there, right?

[Remesy]

23 minutes ago, Boothy128 said:

-snip-

 

What nvidia meant about sli is that they would not support 3 way and 4 way sli and focus towards more towards 2 way sli for Pascal (most likely due to how dx12 treats multi gpu). None of these games that you listed are really cpu intensive, so your 3820 would be fine. Also the 3820 is still a very strong cpu and could probably still last you a few more years tbh.