Need input on my gaming rig upgrade

[suszterpatt]

I recently got a GTX 780 as a present, but the rest of my machine is 6 years old (see sig). So, time for a big upgrade. I'd like to get at least another 5 years out of this rig, with a possible graphics card/RAM upgrade somewhere down the line. I'm probably not going to overclock, so that's not a real priority.

Here's the parts I have picked out so far, and some things I'd like your opinions on. Please note that since I live in central Europe (Hungary), the price and availability of hardware can be wildly different from the US, so I'm more interested in technical aspects rather than better deals.

Mobo:
ASUS H87-PLUS
I'm not really sure which chipset to go with, I picked this mobo mainly because it's fairly cheap, has plenty of slots/ports and has dual-channel memory.

CPU:
Core i5 4670
I considered opting for a much more expensive i7 4770, but as far as I can see, the only difference is that the i7 has more threads via hyperthreading. Games not being terribly multithreaded, I think I'm safe with this one, but I could be wrong.

Memory:
Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz
I figure 8 GB will suffice for at least a couple years, and if it ever becomes a bottleneck, it'll be much cheaper to upgrade later.

CPU Cooler:
Scythe Kotetsu
SilentPCReview is all over this heatsink, and I do love me a quiet machine. I also understand that this is somewhat of a rarity in the states, but it's widely available here. Neener neener.


PSU which I already have:
CoolerMaster G650M 650W
Besides the essentials, all this has to power is 1 SSD, 1 HDD, 1 DVD drive and 3 or so case fans.


My main question is:
What do you think about the longevity of this build?
In particular, how well will the CPU and GPU hold up? Is the CPU good enough for the GTX 780? If years later I upgrade the GTX 780 to something more powerful, will the CPU become a bottleneck?

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[escrow4]

3 games this year already recommend an i7 - Watch Dogs, Wolfenstien, and Shadow of Mordor. I'd bet money that Dragon Age 3 and the Witcher 3 will too. If you want 5yrs out of this box an i5 is short sighted. If you do go i7 you may as well go Haswell refresh and a '97 chipset. I'd also go for a better PSU, something Seasonic built.

 

[mfenn]

3 games this year already recommend an i7 - Watch Dogs, Wolfenstien, and Shadow of Mordor. I'd bet money that Dragon Age 3 and the Witcher 3 will too. If you want 5yrs out of this box an i5 is short sighted. If you do go i7 you may as well go Haswell refresh and a '97 chipset. I'd also go for a better PSU, something Seasonic built.

3 games that are not out and we don't have comparative benchmarks for. HyperThreading isn't magic, by the time an i5 4670 is too slow to use, having CPU that's 10-15% faster (i7 4770) won't make a difference.

 

[mfenn]

Here's the parts I have picked out so far, and some things I'd like your opinions on. Please note that since I live in central Europe (Hungary), the price and availability of hardware can be wildly different from the US, so I'm more interested in technical aspects rather than better deals.

It's fairly hard to buy bad parts these days. However, it's very easy to buy parts that are bad for the money. That's why it's important to always keep price in context when building a PC. I can look at your parts and say "sure, those look alright (they do)," but that's not very helpful if you're paying twice as much as you should for them or if there's a spectacular deal on an equivalent part.

 

[frozentundra123456]

3 games that are not out and we don't have comparative benchmarks for. HyperThreading isn't magic, by the time an i5 4670 is too slow to use, having CPU that's 10-15% faster (i7 4770) won't make a difference.

Yea, it will be interesting to see the results of i3, i5, i7, and FX8350. The system requirements do seem really strange to me that they would recommend an i7 which only a small portion of the gaming community has. Looks like Wolfenstein's recommended is an i7 930 at only 2.8 ghz, so a modern i5 should trounce that. The other two games ask for 3770k I believe, which is more problematical.

 

[DSF]

Companies may release games that require cutting edge hardware to get the highest framerates at the highest settings, but they don't release games that require cutting edge hardware to be played at reasonable settings on a standard resolution. They need their games to sell, and that doesn't happen if only 5% of the interested market can play them.

I would lean towards mfenn's perspective.

 

[suszterpatt]

3 games this year already recommend an i7 - Watch Dogs, Wolfenstien, and Shadow of Mordor. I'd bet money that Dragon Age 3 and the Witcher 3 will too. If you want 5yrs out of this box an i5 is short sighted. If you do go i7 you may as well go Haswell refresh and a '97 chipset. I'd also go for a better PSU, something Seasonic built.

I'm with mfenn on this one. Compare the specs: Hyperthreading, a .1 GHz max turbo frequency and 2 MBs of extra cache are literally the only thing going for the i7-4770. In benchmarks, they're neck and neck as far as gaming goes, it's only at highly parallel/non-GPU intensive tasks that the i7 takes a significant lead. All in all, not worth paying ~50% more, IMO.

It's fairly hard to buy bad parts these days. However, it's very easy to buy parts that are bad for the money. That's why it's important to always keep price in context when building a PC. I can look at your parts and say "sure, those look alright (they do)," but that's not very helpful if you're paying twice as much as you should for them or if there's a spectacular deal on an equivalent part.

I'm doing a lot of legwork on my end to find the best local deals on stuff. It's just that I've been out of the loop for ages, and I'm unfamiliar with the current tech. I already have my eye on a place where I can get all the parts above at a good price, I just want some opinions on whether these parts will actually do what I want to achieve, or if I'm barking up the wrong tree in some way.

 

[FalseChristian]

Everything looks good except for the power supply. If you ever want to SLI another GTX 780 and you will when the price plummets after Maxwell has been firmly established then you'll want at least an 850w power supply with at least 63 amps on the 12-volt rail.

 

[mfenn]

Everything looks good except for the power supply. If you ever want to SLI another GTX 780 and you will when the price plummets after Maxwell has been firmly established then you'll want at least an 850w power supply with at least 63 amps on the 12-volt rail.

The prices of high end GPUs don't plummet. They hang around the same price until they go out of stock completely. Cases in point: GTX 680 is $600, 7970 (refurb) is $250, 7990 is $1000.