Should I build a new PC now or wait a month or so?

[Rad1um]

Old GPU prices will not drop by any significant amount there is no trend that shows they ever have. Plus if he's waiting he should get an RX 480 anyway.

Thats the biggest lie ever. As you can see in my own original picture I edited, there's a HUGE difference in a price drop.

As you can see here::




the GTS 450 was 129 dollars when it launched in 2010, due to newer technology and better cards, the price ha gone down significantly. Upon doing further research, I realized that, with the exception of owning a piece of land, almost everything depreciates in value. For example I just tried selling my 1989 Toyota for retail price when I bought it. It didn't sell and this is due to that price drop im talking about. There's more examples of said price drop if you need it, ill be more than happy to bring them up for you

[Kagthul]

Here's an example build, under 1k (just barely). Youd want to move your current HDDs for mass storage.

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/Q89ycc
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/Q89ycc/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.49 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($120.66 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($56.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial BX200 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($63.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($38.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($61.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Other: GTX 1070 ($400.00)
Total: $982.10
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-13 14:53 EDT-0400

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Thats the biggest lie ever. As you can see in my own original picture I edited, there's a HUGE difference in a price drop.

As you can see here::




the GTS 450 was 129 dollars when it launched in 2010, due to newer technology and better cards, the price ha gone down significantly. Upon doing further research, I realized that, with the exception of owning a piece of land, almost everything depreciates in value. For example I just tried selling my 1989 Toyota for retail price when I bought it. It didn't sell and this is due to that price drop im talking about. There's more examples of said price drop if you need it, ill be more than happy to bring them up for you

... you're trolling, right?

6 years later is not a worthwhile timeframe.

Lets get some GTX 970 prices...

oh, yep... they're still at MSRP. 300$ and up barring one site with a sale for 289$! What a discount!

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I've honestly been repeating what friends have told me. "Your CPU is really old, you should replace it". I've heard this time and time again.

For the record, no, my CPU was not overclocked, though I never got any cooling for it past the stock fan it came with...

Nah, 2500K is still solid.

You can grab a good aftermarket cooler for ~40-80$ and overclock that thing.

[Polarthief]

Here's an example build, under 1k (just barely). Youd want to move your current HDDs for mass storage.

That PSU would work in that build? Damn, that's a really solid price for everything if so.

Worst comes to worst, I'm okay with going over a little bit. Extra money would go towards updating my monitors (1440x900 x2) or just to have for games and shit, but I do not want to skimp for quality and lastability. I'm a very anxiety-prone, paranoid, person, so I'm always worried that my computer will just go out if I cheap out.

Nah, 2500K is still solid. You can grab a good aftermarket cooler for ~40-80$ and overclock that thing.

I'm honestly a bit worried about OCing since I'm not sure what I'm doing and I really don't want to mess things up.

[Fascinate]

2500k literally easiest thing to overclock ever. Set volts to 1.3 set multiplier to 44 and there you go, 4400 mhz overclock.

[Polarthief]

2500k literally easiest thing to overclock ever. Set volts to 1.3 set multiplier to 44 and there you go, 4400 mhz overclock.

ELI5? I literally have no idea how to set the volts of anything without knowing where the option is. I apologize for being so clueless!

Also, if it's really still usable, could I reuse the CPU in my new build? That would save a few hundred for sure.

[Fascinate]

Im not upgrading my CPU at all, i have the 2500k im just gettting an rx480 (unless nvidia comes out with a GPU thats similar). Not overclocking a 2500k is a crime, slap a 30 dollar CPU cooler on it and go ham. Post your motherboard model and ill link you an easy guide where to look in your bios.

[Positions]

ELI5? I literally have no idea how to set the volts of anything without knowing where the option is. I apologize for being so clueless!

Also, if it's really still usable, could I reuse the CPU in my new build? That would save a few hundred for sure.

There's tons of guides for over locking out there just do a google search and watch some videos on it.
As far as your cpu goes I would just get a good cooler for it overclock it and and call it a day. No real reason to upgrade to sky lake for the games you want to play. Get a quality 16gb ram kit and I would say your set for awhile.

[Mythbredor]

Alright I'm not going to bother quoting anything way too much snipping to do.

First off the 2500k is perfectly fine your friends don't know what they're talking about. Buy a decent CPU cooler slap it on your 2500k and read an overclocking guide get that sucker to 4.6ghz easy. buy 8 more gigs of whatever ram you have (2x4 kit) and slap it in there. Buy a 960 or a 970 if you can't wait for the RX 480 to come out. It will not be 200$ on launch because demand will be insane retailers will jack up the price to make more money off of desperate people. You can pretty easily get your PC back up to snuff for under 500$ with your current mobo/cpu.

AMD Drivers are fine people that say they aren't don't use AMD cards. Recently they reworked their software to be much easier to use and work out a lot of the kinks. They've been putting more work into their drivers as well since that change.

Yes a 960 or a 970 isn't very bang for the buck, but 1070s aren't going to be 380$ anytime soon neither are the RX 480s and if you need an upgrade now it is more than good enough to run WoW. And the OP isn't trying to run the latest and greatest games at 144fps on ultra settings.

"the GTX 960 is a TERRIBLE buy right now. The RX 480, even if the more sane estimates placing it between 390/390X in performance are true, is going to absolutely dominate the 960 by miles.... for the same price. the RX480 isn't even out yet and it will not be 200$ on launch.

"Barring some weird sales (mostly to clear inventory and which have already passed) the GTX 970 is still selling for 319-339$.... For ~60$ more if you're willing to wait for non-FE cards, you can grab a GTX 1070, which performs like a Titan X from last generation! " 1070 is still in high demand it's going to be awhile before they truly sell for 380$

If a miracle happens and the RX480 doesn't have stock shortages then yes. Wait for that. But there are going to be a lot of people buying two of them instead of a 1080 so stock will burn quickly.

OCing isn't hard you can find baselines to start with. And it's not nearly as hard as people make it sound. Look up some guides on Youtube there are tons

I know I'm repeating myself here but it's apparently needed. The 2500k is more than fine you don't need to upgrade.

[Polarthief]

Im not upgrading my CPU at all, i have the 2500k im just gettting an rx480 (unless nvidia comes out with a GPU thats similar). Not overclocking a 2500k is a crime, slap a 30 dollar CPU cooler on it and go ham. Post your motherboard model and ill link you an easy guide where to look in your bios.

Wait, you can use an intel CPU and an AMD GPU???

I swear it's like you guys are speaking another language that I wish I knew

[Fascinate]

lol yes of course you can

[Mythbredor]

Thats the biggest lie ever. As you can see in my own original picture I edited, there's a HUGE difference in a price drop.

As you can see here::




the GTS 450 was 129 dollars when it launched in 2010, due to newer technology and better cards, the price ha gone down significantly. Upon doing further research, I realized that, with the exception of owning a piece of land, almost everything depreciates in value. For example I just tried selling my 1989 Toyota for retail price when I bought it. It didn't sell and this is due to that price drop im talking about. There's more examples of said price drop if you need it, ill be more than happy to bring them up for you

*cough* 2010.... 6 years later..... Do I need to say more? Modern cards aren't going to drop in price enough to justify buying say a 980/980TI. If the OP needs a card now I still suggest buying a 960.

[Polarthief]

lol yes of course you can

I didn't know! I don't know this shit XD

I'm assuming it's just the MoBo and CPU socket type for Intel vs AMD then?

[Lathais]

I've honestly been repeating what friends have told me. "Your CPU is really old, you should replace it". I've heard this time and time again.

For the record, no, my CPU was not overclocked, though I never got any cooling for it past the stock fan it came with...

No offense, but your friends are stupid. First off, unless you are doing something that is actually CPU heavy, the CPU makes little to no difference in gaming. WoW is one major exception, but going from the 2500k to the latest, 6600k, would be only about a 15% increase in performance.

[Polarthief]

No offense, but your friends are stupid. First off, unless you are doing something that is actually CPU heavy, the CPU makes little to no difference in gaming. WoW is one major exception, but going from the 2500k to the latest, 6600k, would be only about a 15% increase in performance.

Feel free to offend away, I really don't mind since it's them not me XD

Regarding "CPU heavy stuff", I mean, I multitask a lot of shit at times across two monitors. It's been pretty slow around the time my computer went splat, so I assumed that was the CPU as well but I'm never sure on this stuff.

[Lathais]

I didn't know! I don't know this shit XD

I'm assuming it's just the MoBo and CPU socket type for Intel vs AMD then?

Yeah. All graphics cards use the same interface, PCI-E 3.0 and you can put them on any motherboard, even motherboards that only support PCI-E 2.0, and they'll work 100%. The only time the motherboard really matters for what type of GPU you are using is if you plan on going dual graphics cards as some motherboard only support SLI(nVidia) or Crossfire(AMD) not both. So yeah, you can use an intel CPU and AMD GPU or a AMD CPU(not recommended for gaming) and an nVidia GPU just fine. In fact, that's the only real difference between my best friends system and mine, I have an nVidia GTX 960 and he has an AMD R9 380.

[Fascinate]

Probably an old install of windows, i can almost guarantee a fresh windows install would make a world of difference. I have the 2500k, gtx 760, 8 gigs of memory and my machine flies (i dont even have an ssd yet).

[Lathais]

Feel free to offend away, I really don't mind since it's them not me XD

Regarding "CPU heavy stuff", I mean, I multitask a lot of shit at times across two monitors. It's been pretty slow around the time my computer went splat, so I assumed that was the CPU as well but I'm never sure on this stuff.

Mutlitasking what? Browser tabs? Rendering video? Audio work? Photo editing?

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Probably an old install of windows, i can almost guarantee a fresh windows install would make a world of difference. I have the 2500k, gtx 760, 8 gigs of memory and my machine flies (i dont even have an ssd yet).

and there is this too. Have you upgraded to Windows 10 yet? If not, I highly suggest it, though do a fresh clean install, not the upgrade, or do a clean install after the upgrade. Personally, once or twice a year I do fresh clean installs on my PCs anyway. That's probably a bit over the top for most people, but a clean install of Windows does wonders for a system.

[Polarthief]

Probably an old install of windows, i can almost guarantee a fresh windows install would make a world of difference. I have the 2500k, gtx 760, 8 gigs of memory and my machine flies (i dont even have an ssd yet).

Could I do that without losing everything (and not having to spend an hour figuring out what I want to backup)?

I'm also decently sure it's not just windows. On my pre-BIOS/Windows screens, there's like 'tears' in the screen (no it's not a hardware issue with the monitors). I'll try to get a picture on my phone if that'd help.

Mutlitasking what? Browser tabs? Rendering video? Audio work? Photo editing?

Browsers (quite a few Chrome tabs), watching a video on one monitor, 1-2 games (sometimes I'll load up other stuff with WoW like Hearthstone), IM/Chat services (Skype, Discord, Steam, etc)

Idk, stuff's just been really slow lately.

[Fascinate]

Nope you would have to back everything up, but if your PC is feeling sluggish is truly is the only sure-fire way to get a fresh feeling pc again....and totally worth the time to do.

[Lathais]

Could I do that without losing everything (and not having to spend an hour figuring out what I want to backup)?

I'm also decently sure it's not just windows. On my pre-BIOS/Windows screens, there's like 'tears' in the screen (no it's not a hardware issue with the monitors). I'll try to get a picture on my phone if that'd help.



Browsers (quite a few Chrome tabs), watching a video on one monitor, 1-2 games (sometimes I'll load up other stuff with WoW like Hearthstone), IM/Chat services (Skype, Discord, Steam, etc)

Idk, stuff's just been really slow lately.

No, you would need to back up anything you do not want to lose, but it's worth it. Before I got my SSD, I kept my HDD partitioned for this reason. I could keep all the stuff I did not want to lose on a seperate partition, so re-installing Windows on it's partition left everything intact. Now that Windows is on the SSD, same effect really. If you do choose to re-install, look at ninite.com for re-installing commonly used software without the bloat.

The tears are much more likely to be GPU related. It's a pretty good sign of a graphics card dying.

None of that is very CPU intensive.