Advice

[Kraeoss]

Good day folks,

Wanted to get some advice from the collective... currently i have an i5 2500k with the Asrock z68 pro motherboard and 8 GB ram and a GTX 970 Strix for video.

Will i see the best bang for buck upgrade by upgrading to:

a)32GB ram
b)i7 CPU
c)i7 CPU/Board/DDR4
d)GTX 980Ti

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

In my opinion, at your current level, it's more about paying less premium for additional performance than "bang for the buck." Additional ram is considerably less of a premium.

 

[frowertr]

Probably the biggest bang would be overclocking that SB chip. That would be free (or the cost of a good air cooler). Definitely don't buy a Sandy Bridge i7.

Second biggest bang would moving to an SSD.

Other than that, I would think it might be time to look at a system rebuild and moving to Skylake. 32GB of RAM is not worth it for a desktop system unless you are running VM's or heavy photo/video editing.

I would think overclocking coupled with a SSD would get you a lot of life out of that system yet.

 

[lehtv]

Probably the biggest bang would be overclocking that SB chip.

On that board? Very light OC only.

Definitely don't buy a Sandy Bridge i7.

Used i7-3770(K) / Xeon 1231V2 could work though.

 

[frowertr]

On that board? Very light OC only.

Sure, why not. It is essentially free and would think he could hit 4Ghz without issues.

 

[lehtv]

Wanted to get some advice from the collective... currently i have an i5 2500k with the Asrock z68 pro motherboard and 8 GB ram and a GTX 970 Strix for video.

Will i see the best bang for buck upgrade by upgrading to:

a)32GB ram
b)i7 CPU
c)i7 CPU/Board/DDR4
d)GTX 980Ti

Depends completely on what it is you want to do with the PC.

a) Are you currently running out of RAM? If so I'd not spend more on DDR3, best move to LGA1151 and DDR4 for longevity.
b) If you can find a used i7-3770(K) or Xeon 1231V3 for a good price, why not. You won't see huge gains in gaming though. Good upgrade for productivity.
c) Sure, if you have the money. Even i5-6600K with OC would be a nice upgrade over i5-2500K at stock. Looking at your other specs this would not be my first priority, however.
d) 980 Ti for a 19" monitor, you kidding me?

I would do:
1. Upgrade monitor to 23-24" 1080p, preferably 144hz if you play fast games.
2. Upgrade OS drive to a 240GB+ SSD.
3. Upgrade to LGA1151 with DDR4. Also upgrade OS to Windows 10 for DX12 compatibility, if you haven't already (it's free). Both the motherboard and SSD upgrades need an OS reinstall, so doing them at the same time is preferable, and upgrading to Win 10 is preferable after the previous OS (7 or 8.1) is activated on the new motherboard.
4. Wait for next generation video cards. GTX 970 is still good for gaming on 1080p.

 

[sm625]

980ti would be the best value. But you should wait for a newer gpu.

 

[Kraeoss]

I have overclocked to 4ghz quite easily, and i got a Samsung SSD (not pro) 250GB. and running windows 10. i guess i can just upgrade to a whole new platform, my pc is roughly 5 years old so. i probably should do an overhaul.

 

[JackMDS]

Computers are Not Cars, old means Nothing.

Computer need Upgrade/Refresh when the tasks that they are currently used for needs more Power.

Your computer is a fit commuter for (at least) 80% of the general users.