what would you upgrade to?

[nageov3t]

just trying to get a feel for what I should be looking at in terms of options...

my motherboard/CPU are both about 5 years old, and while they seem to be running fine-ish performance wise for my needs, I'm starting to notice some hardware issues (random unexplained crashes and the like) and based on the age of the components, I think I'd rather just replace and upgrade rather than try to troubleshoot the existing hardware. it's likely something stupid like bad RAM, but it seems silly to replace the RAM on a 5 year-old motherboard.

my current core system is:

ASUS P6T SE LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366
Radeon HD 6950

my hard drives, case, and PSU are all fairly new (<6 months old), so I'll presumably be keeping those, but my mobo, CPU, and video card are all in need of an upgrade.

my needs aren't terribly intensive, mostly just working from home via RDP'ing to my work server and light gaming (MMO's). would be nice to be able to crank up the map size in Civ 5 without seeing a performance hit, though 😉 figuring my budget will probably be somewhere in the $5-700 range.

this is my case, if that factors in at all -- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

currently only have 2 hard drives inside the case (2 SSD's, mounted behind the motherboard) and no plans of adding more storage. the local drives are just used for running applications/games (I've got a dedicated NAS used for all my other long-term storage and a USB drive that backs up the SSD's in case of a drive failure)

 

[Charlie98]

Do you want to stick with ATX form on the mobo, or is mATX an option.

The R4 is a fine case... but it seems kind of silly to go with the ATX platform with, most likely, a single GPU and no HDD's.

I would pick a mATX board and put it in the R4's little brother, the Define Mini. Theoretically, you don't even need that, you could go mITX, but I think mATX would be a good choice.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Nice case! :thumbsup:

Do you want to be able to OC at all? If you're going to be doing mostly work, I might shy away from that.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock H87 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($95.55 @ Newegg)
Memory: PNY XLR8 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($124.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $410.53
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-31 10:12 EST-0500)

You could add this MSI GTX 760 for $200 AR to get a nice GPU bump, but the 6950 is still reasonably respectable, so you don't have to do that now if you'd like to pocket some money.

Comes in right in the middle of your budget at ~$600 after rebates and such.

If you want to OC, swap MoBo for the AsRock z87 Pro3 and swap CPU for the i5-4670k for +$30. I'd recommend an after market HSF too, maybe the Arctic Freezer or CM 212 EVO

 

[nageov3t]

Do you want to stick with ATX form on the mobo, or is mATX an option.

The R4 is a fine case... but it seems kind of silly to go with the ATX platform with, most likely, a single GPU and no HDD's.

I would pick a mATX board and put it in the R4's little brother, the Define Mini. Theoretically, you don't even need that, you could go mITX, but I think mATX would be a good choice.

I'm not married to the ATX form factor or anything, but I don't think I could bring myself to buy a brand new case after just spending $90 on the R4 back in May (though the case does support mITX and mATX as far as I know).

no real use for a second desktop either, so it's not like I could recycle the case (hell, if it wasn't for heating/repair concerns and the fact that I tend to let my computer run 24/7 when I'm on-call, I could see myself ditching desktops entirely and getting a laptop + docking station)

 

[Charlie98]

but I don't think I could bring myself to buy a brand new case after just spending $90 on the R4 back in May

Whoop! My bad... I didn't realize you already had the R4. It does, indeed support mATX.

I agree with EofW about the locked i5 CPU (as long as you aren't OC'ing,) but with your limited internals you could save even more and go with this B85 mATX board. You get more SATA ports and more USB 3.0 ports with his H87 board, but I don't think you are going to need them.

 

[Essence_of_War]

you could save even more and go with this

Good call, in retrospect, that H87 board is probably a wee-bit over priced for the feature set that OP needs.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I wouldn't upgrade at all. I'd check the event log, run memtest, swap out the OS/paging drive SATA cable and port, and reinstall Windows.

If it's bad DDR3, why would you think it silly to replace it? That's what you're planning on doing anyway.

>Bad DDR3
>Replace mobo, CPU, and DDR3 to get around it.

>Bad DDR3
>Replace DDR3.

I like #2.

 

[lakedude]

IDK that old system isn't that bad.

You might just reseat everything (RAM, CPU, SATA cables, etc). Even gold plated connectors get sketchy over time.

Also a fresh load can work wonders. Systems bog down over time (I swear they do this on purpose).

If you do decide to upgrade, do you live by a Micro Center?