Old Member Back and a few Questions

Hey everyone -

I used to be a frequent user on GS Forums and in a bunch of groups. I have not been here in 3 years as I stopped doing forums and such for a few years. Marriage, jobs, life, etc.... I have over 21K posts, lol just saw that.

I was wondering about a couple things, since its a been a while for some hardware. I have looked and know what is out there for parts, but just wanted an update. Some questions for you below.

#1 - I am starting to save for a new build (Not Fully, Partial) for later this year. I used to go large all the time (when I was single), but $1500 on GPU 's is not in my wife's criteria anymore. So I am looking at upgrading my 6 year old PC. I only game, nothing else. My PC is strictly for gaming. I don't even surf the web on it (have a laptop/tablet/phablet for that).

RIG

- ASUS P6-X580 Premium (Had Gigabyte Board before and it died)

- Intel i7 960 @ 3.2Ghz (Water cooled) (Had overclocked to 4Ghz years ago on other MoBo before death)

- [8GB] 2x3gb Corsair DD3-1600

- XFX 7970Ghz DD @ 1050Mhz/1500Mhz (Had 5970 in Quad-Fire before- Both Died of Heat)

- 1500wt Enermax Galaxy PSU

- Samsung 250gb SSD (Main - Windows 10 on SSD)

- WD Black 500gb/16mb (Windows 7 (64-bit)

- WD Black 1TB/64mb ( Windows 7 (64-bit)

- Corsair 800D Case

- Scythe Ninja 120CFM Fans through out

- Logitech G9 Mouse

- Logitech G710 Mechanical Keyboard

- Logitech G930 7.1 Headphones

- Logitech Z-4 2.1 Speakers w/ Sub

Monitors

- HP ZR2740W IPS LED @ 1440p (newest, but may sell for 4K)

- HP Pavilion 27bw IPS LED @ 1080p (swap between PS4 and PC)

- Viewsonic LCD @ 900P (monitoring station)

- WANT 4K Monitor

NOTES: I am planning on turning majority of these parts into a future LAN PC, as I am sick of lugging this 60lbs+ PC around to a friends house about 10 times a year. So all but the PSU, SSD, Case are going into a new PC. Now I have been thinking of bringing my Overclock to 4.0Ghz again on the i7 960 and getting 2x8gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600.

#2 - If I did overclock my CPU at the high resolution (1440p & 4K plans) I play at, would you think just an upgrade to the GPU would be fine? Say to a R9 390 or 970GTX? I have majority of my later life been a AMD user over nVidia. Do you think that it could hold me off until 2017 for a CPU/MoBo/DDR4? Goal is a i7 5930K build.

I obviously know that a i7 960 is not as good as a i7 6700K or the i7 5930K. But if I did do a partial build, I would want something that would do another 6 years (minus broken parts or GPUs)

Some extra questions

3 - When is the next GPU cycle?

4- When is the next CPU cycle?

5- Should I hold off on items until 2017, was planning Black Friday this year for my 1 month off in December

Thanks everyone

Spliff

3 - When is the next GPU cycle?

Mid-high end cards from Nvidia to be out in a few months. AMD will follow suit, but probably a few months after Nvidia. We expect high-end flagship cards closer to the end of the year.

4- When is the next CPU cycle?

Zen releases soon from AMD (4-6 months or so last I looked into it). Intel should have Broadwell-e coming out soon as well - though I haven't been following so I don't know a general time frame.

5- Should I hold off on items until 2017, was planning Black Friday this year for my 1 month off in December

If you hold off on buying new parts - when Black Friday comes around towards the end of the year you should be in a great place for parts from all spectrums (AMD new CPU and GPUs, Intel new CPUs and Nvidia new GPUs) to pick from on your build.

Welcome back Spliff. Sounds like life has treated you well over the years.

Yeah....you're in a rough spot man. And I say that because you're looking to upgrade at the worst time...lol. Going to a GTX 970/ R9 390 would be a great upgrade but with new gpu's on the horizon from both AMD and Nvidia, it's probably better to wait for the new cards. And in all respect, your Intel i7 960 is a great chip, but it's getting close to upgrade time for her as well. While any recent Intel cpu would be a great upgrade, you may want to hold off to see what Zen from AMD has to offer. As far as longevity is concerned, you're much safer purchasing a newer cpu/mobo/ram combo right now if your thinking Haswell-E or SkyLake. If you wait a bit, Broadwell-E is coming out soon which would extend your cpu's life that much further. But again, all the new major releases are planned for the 2nd half of this year which is only a few months away. Like Neatfeat mentioned, I'd say hold off until Black Friday or Cyber Monday this year before you start buying new parts. You'll have a much wider (and newer) selection of products to choose from that will give you that 6 year span you're looking for.

Well if you are going to wait that long... I think Kaby Lake will have been released by that time. Z180 mobo and OC. That will probably give you most bang for buck on the cpu front. Or go X99 with Broadwell-E... Though if you plan to do that, then it could be beneficial to wait for Skylake-E. We should have more info on it by that time. Don't disregard AMD and their ZEN lineup before we see benchmarks on that one.

As for GPU... The true 980Ti replacement or AMD equivalent.

You could probably downsize the PSU as well. While the one you have now is probably good, unless you go for 3-4 GPUs it is way overkill. 850W gold or platinum and you still got plenty of wattage left. Enough for a dual GPU setup unless you go for 4.2+ GH OC on the X99 route.

@horgen: I tend to go overkill on the PSU(s). Between overclocking every component that I can to the absolute max (custom loop), and the 1.5 amps @12v that each of my current fans pull, I figure it's better to be safe than sorry. I'm using both a 750w OCZ Fatal1ty and a 550w OCZ Fatal1ty. The 750w pushes my CPU, board, GPU, etc, and the 550w pushes my many fans, lights, and hard drives.

@-GeordiLaForge-: I know OC will draw a lot of extra power, but I think even with sli 980Ti with 1.3V ir more and a core speed around 1700-1800mhz, they won't draw more than 400-450w each. And 18 watts fans? That is powerful.

@horgen: Whoops, I meant 1.6v. But, I forgot that I put my quieter 0.9 amp Deltas in their place when I cleaned the PC. I also have a crate of 230cfm and 240cfm Deltas that pull 3.3 amps and 3.9 amps a piece, but they sound like jet engines breaking the sound barrier inside of a tornado, so I've never actually put them in a PC. Also, they're very dangerous, and I do not want them in a case that I will be sticking my hands into. I've had a 120mm, 152cfm Delta fan cleanly slice off the tip of my finger like a hot knife through butter, so the 230cfm and 240cfm models scare me quite a bit. They would likely break finger bones very easily.

Something really interesting about the 230cfm and 240cfm fan models, you can use them to supercharge your car's engine!! I personally used several 230cfm fans ( 120mm ) to supercharge my wife's last car, a 2004 Nissan Maxima with a 3.5l V6. It worked very well. Her gas mileage nearly doubled. The increase in oxygen being burned means you can ease off the pedal and use less fuel to achieve the same speed as you could using more fuel and less oxygen. And, the airflow is at maximum even at idle, so you get much more added torque/horsepower from the starting line than you would with a centrifugal supercharger or turbo.

Hell, a good leafblower works very well, too. Hotrod magazine put 2 small leafblowers on a corvette intake a few years ago, adding more power than their turbos, and without the turbo lag. On average, leafblowers are usually rated to move about the same amount of air as a single server fan like these. And, leafblowers can't be stacked, and stacking fans adds torque to the airflow and increases the airflow rate, putting 120mm server fans a step above leafblowers, IMO.

If, for some reason, anyone doubts that a stack (or two for some intakes) of very powerful, over engineered 120mm server fans can be used to build a decent power adder for gasoline engines, consider this. A Tesla Model-S uses an electric motor about the size of a go-cart engine to go from 0-60 in 2.8 seconds. Do not underestimate the strength of powerful motors.

Just make the largest stack of 220-240cfm server fans that you can fit under your hood, moving the battery to the trunk if the space is needed, get a larger intake pipe if needed, build a custom fan enclosure with a good air filter on the enclosures intake, attach the enclosure to the engines intake, move all of the vacuum lines to the rear of the enclosure (behind the fans), and reset your cars computer, so it'll learn from scratch how to adjust fuel flow and such with the added airflow and oxygen. Viola, you now have a powerful, consistent power adder for your engine that adds torque/horsepower while increasing your gas mileage...

Sell cpu and gpu, salvage all the peripherals. Rest of your system still looks very current or usable.

Perhaps upgrade gpu come summer. Upgrade cpu when Zen/Kaby Lake comes out this fall?