Worth the upgrade?

[Dan942]

Hello, I was wondering if buying a used lga 2011 x79 motherboard and i7 3930k from eBay was a good idea to upgrade from my fx 8320 because upgrading to a ddr4 motherboard would require new ram which I want to keep the ram I have. if not, what would be an alternative to this for not too expensive because I don't want to be spending much over $200 on a pc upgrade. I've also heard the 3930k is a great overclocke. Thanks in advance.

[tarmacd]

Ram is expensive right now, and not looking like it will be getting any cheaper. For sub $200, I'd say you are limited to what you have. That being said, depending on what you can find for used combo deals (cpu+mobo) you might be able to get a single 8gb stick. Tough to say really, though if you are not suffering to badly right now with what you have, might want to wait out the current ram pricing.

[Dan942]

14 minutes ago, tarmacd said:

Ram is expensive right now, and not looking like it will be getting any cheaper. For sub $200, I'd say you are limited to what you have. That being said, depending on what you can find for used combo deals (cpu+mobo) you might be able to get a single 8gb stick. Tough to say really, though if you are not suffering to badly right now with what you have, might want to wait out the current ram pricing.

My point was that I have 16gb of ddr3 ram already so I want a motherboard compatible with the ram I have so I don't have to buy ddr4 that's why I looked into the i7 3930k

[tarmacd]

Ram speed can be much more important than capacity. What is your use case, gaming or productivity?

[Dan942]

14 minutes ago, tarmacd said:

Ram speed can be much more important than capacity. What is your use case, gaming or productivity?

Gaming

[tarmacd]

In that case, usually the speed and latency is far more important than capacity. If you can find a way to afford to upgrade to a mobo with DDR4 and still afford ram, it would be a safer bet than continuing with DDR3. That's a personal opinion, but if you stay with your current ram, you are going to further restrict any meaningful upgrades you can get in the future.I was faced with the same problem a couple of months ago, and opted for the upgrade path. I had a decent Z400 workstation with 24gb of ram, clocked at 1333mhz, with a Xeon W3570. Fried the mobo, so instead of repairing it for myself, I sold it at a slight loss, and upgraded to Ryzen.