How often do you upgrade your PC

[kompukare]

The new Haswell Pentiums look tempting though at around £50 - G3220 in particular. Might jump at some point.

Yes, not too bad. Finally something for £50 which doubles the (non-overclocked) CPU performance of my E5300. H81 boards aren't that pricey either.

[Kalzakov]

i upgrade a couple of components once a year, i get a new laptop ever 2 and half years

[cookie365]

Every time I upgrade, my old PC becomes my spare. My current spare is an Athlon 64.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My current desktop has a Core 2 Pentium E5300 running at 3.4GHz and for the same budget I could currently get something like a Pentium G2130. But that only gets me an upgrade (using Passmark scores) from 2,400 to 3,100. Hardly worthwhile - the power saving would be about the only worthwhile thing there.

Having said all that, I was recently given a brand new (RMA-returned) Z77 motherboard so I either have to sell it or see if I can get a used 2500k/3570K.

What is the upgrade for??

[kompukare]

What is the upgrade for??

Ah, well that's the thing I didn't mention: actually good enough does seem to have kicked in for me. I mean most of the time I don't even use the desktop with the 3.4GHz Core 2 Pentium but instead I use my used Thinkpad T400 (Core 2 2.4GHz) with a dock.

Realistically, the only thing not good enough about the docked Thinkpad is storage. The desktop has the SSD but I guess I could swap it to the laptop and put a HDD into the optical drive's slot. But at the moment all I'm really getting out the laptop is less fan noise and better power consumption; and very occasionally I take it off the dock and use it in the living room.

But seeing as how I have that board now, I was thinking of getting a CPU for it. A Celeron G1620 is cheap but doesn't really offer me much (anything) over my overclocked Core 2 Pentium. That's why I am either going to have to get a 'K' CPU or sell the board. Would be a bit of a shame using an Z77 with a CPU which cannot be overclocked.

But yes, realistically I seldom need more CPU power as I hardly play many games or do anything else intensive. On the other hand my current stuff is all around five years old and sometimes it's nice to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading; or at least justify an upgrade on the grounds that - occasionally - I am waiting for the computer even if it would mostly be a race to idle. And pretty much everything new would use less power too (although if I really wanted to have better power consumption I should change my monitor - my NEC 21" PVA screen draws around 70W which is more than a 42" LED backlit TV).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ah, well that's the thing I didn't mention: actually good enough does seem to have kicked in for me. I mean most of the time I don't even use the desktop with the 3.4GHz Core 2 Pentium but instead I use my used Thinkpad T400 (Core 2 2.4GHz) with a dock.

Realistically, the only thing not good enough about the docked Thinkpad is storage. The desktop has the SSD but I guess I could swap it to the laptop and put a HDD into the optical drive's slot. But at the moment all I'm really getting out the laptop is less fan noise and better power consumption; and very occasionally I take it off the dock and use it in the living room.

But seeing as how I have that board now, I was thinking of getting a CPU for it. A Celeron G1620 is cheap but doesn't really offer me much (anything) over my overclocked Core 2 Pentium. That's why I am either going to have to get a 'K' CPU or sell the board. Would be a bit of a shame using an Z77 with a CPU which cannot be overclocked.

But yes, realistically I seldom need more CPU power as I hardly play many games or do anything else intensive. On the other hand my current stuff is all around five years old and sometimes it's nice to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading; or at least justify an upgrade on the grounds that - occasionally - I am waiting for the computer even if it would mostly be a race to idle. And pretty much everything new would use less power too (although if I really wanted to have better power consumption I should change my monitor - my NEC 21" PVA screen draws around 70W which is more than a 42" LED backlit TV).

What graphics card do you have ATM??

If you didn't have the motherboard already,I would have suggesting waiting a few months to see how Kaveri pans out.

However,as you have a motherboard,the cheapest Core i5 is what I would get. However,if I was buying secondhand stick to non-K series CPUs,as you don't know how much abuse a secondhand K series CPU has undergone.

In terms of power consumption,I have the following:
1.)Xeon E3 1220
2.)Gigabyte H67 mini-ITX motherboard
3.)8Gb of DDR3
4.)GTX660 2GB
5.)120GB SSD
6.)2TB HDD
7.)Corsair HX520W

At idle it consumes around 60W to 72W,and when playing an intensive game like Tombraider peaks at between 170W to just under 200W.

[kompukare]

What graphics card do you have ATM??

Ah, OTT since I was mining earlier in the year: 7950. But really, despite buying a few things in impulse humble bundles I really don't use it. Pity that ZeroCore can't kick in when using the onboard on Intel CPUs.

However,if I was buying secondhand stick to non-K series CPUs,as you don't know how much abuse a secondhand K series CPU has undergone.

I did consider that aspect. That's why I would prefer to keep away from ebay. I guess I could calculate it like this: (my historic CPU & mobo budget was ~£100), free mobo means only CPU and even £150 divided by five years isn't that much. But if I'm going to splash out for new, Haswell would make more sense than IB.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ah, OTT since I was mining earlier in the year: 7950. But really, despite buying a few things in impulse humble bundles I really don't use it. Pity that ZeroCore can't kick in when using the onboard on Intel CPUs.



I did consider that aspect. That's why I would prefer to keep away from ebay. I guess I could calculate it like this: (my historic CPU & mobo budget was ~£100), free mobo means only CPU and even £150 divided by five years isn't that much. But if I'm going to splash out for new, Haswell would make more sense than IB.

If you get a locked Core i5 you should be fine. My Xeon E3 1220 cost under £100 last December.

Also,TBH,once you add the cost of a new motherboard,Haswell is not worth it IMHO,since you will lose motherboard value. Once you add Ebay fees,Paypal fees and postage,it would be easily £20 on a £75 sale.

You could just plonk this locked Xeon E3 1230 V2 into your current motherboard:

http://www.cclonline.com/product/862...essor/CPU0140/

Its basically a slightly underclocked Core i7 3770.

TBH,you can still get new Core i5 CPUs on Ebay for around £100:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core...item233105b442
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core...item3cd7268e19
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3rd-Genera...p2047675.l2557

Edit!!

Considering the price of the FX6300 and FX8320,I do find many of the Core i5 CPUs,relatively expensive when new TBH.

[bombili]

like every 3 years but when it comes to GPU almost every 2 years.

[Haggard]

I have a Athlon XP 3000+ CPU so I guess that explains how often I upgrade my rig.

[kalniel]

Thanks for the link, it's a bit old (2013).

Are you from the future then?

[kompukare]

You could just plonk this locked Xeon E3 1230 V2 into your current motherboard:

Yes I've been watching those Xeon E3's on ebay and they can go for relatively little. Unfortunately, my free board is an Asus (P8Z77-V LX) and they only support three Xeons: E3-1230, E3-1230v2, E3-1245v2. Because a few weeks back I saw one of the unsupported going cheaply on ebay with almost no bids.

As it happens, Computerbase just reviewed the E3-1230v3 (first though it was the v2; these Xeons sure are hard to tell apart):
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/p...-test/drucken/
(and here it is mangled with google translate)

They did try a bit of turbo bin overclocking which was nice of them but the max they got was 3.9GHz but not when fully loaded. Still not bad I guess - certainly can't see the point of the i7-4770 at all (although this being Intel maybe I have missed some feature the one or the other has).

Pity that computerbase didn't review the v1 and v2 Xeons too.

[rfu3]

I upgrade whenever I can successfully sell or reuse the old parts. That way I don't often spend any if any money.
Having said that when I switched from Q6600 to i7 I spent £300 because I just wanted to make full use of my GTX570.

[Mister]

I'd be careful buying Xeons for a home PC, especially if you use it for gaming. Some software will come up with an error saying the CPU isn't supported and won't work. I had this problem on a work PC and it was annoying

Anyway. I've been using an overclocked i7 2600k (4.3ghz) since they were released and still no need to upgrade yet.

[Agrippa]

I upgrade when I feel the need to do so.

When I built my last machine I assumed it would last me 3 years, but in fact it lasted 5. Along the way I upgraded the video card once and swapped in an SSD, but otherwise nothing changed. I really can't be arsed with continual upgrades any more, so instead I build a rig that's over-specced and use it until it begins to struggle a bit.

My current machine, built in March, I fully expect to last longer than the last one, with just another video upgrade or two and a hexacore CPU sometime down the line. I find this approach also turns out a lot cheaper over the lifetime of the machine, although you do of course need to have cash to build an expensive rig there and then.

[Ginettor]

Around fiveishish years? Last upgrade was to a 9600gt god I feel old