Best Time To Upgrade / Build a New PC?

[Sharpstick68]

I'm currently in the process of waiting to build a new PC, though I am waiting for Intel's Raptor Lake to be announced until I build, and I started thinking..What new technology will the 13th Gen Processors introduce that is worth waiting for, if it's even worth it in the first place. I want to do an Intel build, but I'm still suck on deciding if I should wait or just build now?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Build now, buddy. And save room to update it over the years.

 

I buy a new system every ~3 years, and in between that, I upgrade my RAM, SSD, GPU, CPU, etc. as I need it.

 

It all depends on what you do bro. Gamer? Video/Code Developer? Need 4k to watch movies? etc.

 

Edit:

 

My system in my sig, I got that computer (barebones) in September, last year. I couldn't use it until Febuary as I didn't have any spare RAM or SSD/M.2 to run it until then when I saved up enough money for it.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I tend to look at upgrades in terms of "How much performance do I need for activities X, Y, and Z?"  Then I look at what sort of upgrades are needed.  Is it just RAM?  A new video card?  Or maybe a brand new CPU and motherboard is required.  Then I look at the current cost, and decide whether I want to pay that now, or wait and see if it comes up for sale.  The big sales here are usually Amazon Prime Day (and its copy cats at other stores) and Black Friday, but you can keep track of prices via comparison shopping services as well, and get some good deals that way.

Price, though, can often be the limiting factor, and there have been numerous times in the past when I purchased one component, and did not install it for months because something it worked with was not at a price I was willing to pay.  An example of this is motherboards and CPUs.  Another example would be an 8-drive RAID array, where I did not purchase all of the drives at once, but instead spread the purchase out over a year and half as the drives went on sale.

 

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[Sharpstick68]

Thank you to all who have replied so far, I should have specified what I currently do and what I want to do, as well as my computer specs.

 

I built my computer in 2015 and my current system specs are : Intel i7-6700K CPU | 16 GB DDR4 PC2666 RAM | 1 TB NVME Drive & 512 GB SSD | EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3

 

I game in all of the games I play at 1080p resolution. I do play World Of Warcraft mostly, but I do play other games such as Fortnite, Forza, Warzone, ETC and rarely do I ever play games that are truely demanding / system intense on hardware.

 

I do livestream frequently, and I would like to be able to edit / process videos from my GoPro using adobe premier

 

One last note, I would like to upgrade at what resolution I currently play games at. I would like to go to 1440p (QHD) and I know that would require me purchasing new monitors which is fine, but I hear 1440 is a decent improvement over 1080.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I think the video card and the drives could be re-used in your next build, and maybe the memory, depending upon whether you went for a system using DDR4 or DDR5 and whether you were content with continuing to use DDR4-2666 RAM.  You might also want to increase your storage as well.

 

So, the components to consider upgrading would be the motherboard and CPU, heatsink, and possibly a new power supply unit as well.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 26/08/2022 at 06:59, Sharpstick68 said:

I'm currently in the process of waiting to build a new PC, though I am waiting for Intel's Raptor Lake to be announced until I build, and I started thinking..What new technology will the 13th Gen Processors introduce that is worth waiting for, if it's even worth it in the first place. I want to do an Intel build, but I'm still suck on deciding if I should wait or just build now?

are you not considering Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs? I mean may be you can wait to see which is actually better before making a decision.

[ThaCrip]

On 26/08/2022 at 03:19, Sharpstick68 said:

I built my computer in 2015 and my current system specs are : Intel i7-6700K CPU | 16 GB DDR4 PC2666 RAM | 1 TB NVME Drive & 512 GB SSD | EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 FTW3

 

I game in all of the games I play at 1080p resolution. I do play World Of Warcraft mostly, but I do play other games such as Fortnite, Forza, Warzone, ETC and rarely do I ever play games that are truely demanding / system intense on hardware.

 

While I get you said you want to go to 1440p, your setup pretty much screams to me you don't even close to need a upgrade as your CPU is still plenty powerful enough to run basically any game and it's obvious your GPU is FAR from slow.

 

so the wise choice is to wait until you truly do need a upgrade (my guess is you will easily get years from now out of that setup) otherwise you are mostly wasting money.

 

I suspect even with 1440p you will still be good enough because your GPU is quite strong and your CPU is still more than good enough.

 

TIP: since you got a Geforce 20 or 30 series GPU... use DLSS (or FSR 2.0) on games where possible as it's basically allowing you to run games at a lower resolution than say 1440p but have 1440p like visuals, so basically you will get strong performance without the performance hit by running natively at 1440p. on my setup, with a unofficial DLSS mod for RDR2 (you use the 'DLSS' option in the game but it's actually using FSR 2.0 instead of true DLSS), I get about 6fps more on 'Quality' mode and about 10fps more with 'Performance' mode based on the games benchmark for average fps, which is a decent boost for me given my frame rates are generally lower so it's more noticeable where as if you already had good frame rates it would not really matter much. if you select the 'Ultra Quality' your frame rates will actually decline (mine dropped by 3fps) but they claim it's supposed to be better than native graphics and the 'Ultra Performance' the visuals got out of whack around the edges of screen during movement, so that setting was not worth using.

 

since I am using Linux, I got a bit of a bonus (which I heard is not available on Windows) in that with the GloriousEggroll runner for Lutris it uses FSR 1.0 (if you set it up properly) as you can set a custom res as I use 1.3x on 1080p which comes out to 1477x831 and then I can select that resolution within the game and it's basically giving me 1080p but without the performance hit by running true 1080p. so basically one can get FSR 1.0 in games even when the game itself does not officially support FSR etc through it's own graphics options.

 

formula for res calculation for example...

 

1920 / 1.3 = 1476.923etc (which rounds to 1477)

1080 / 1.3 = 830.769etc (which rounds to 831)

 

hence, 1477x831 resolution

 

you can try 1.5x etc but I noticed that since I got a 1080p monitor I can only go so far before the game refuses to take it because it seems the games I tried only allow so low of a res and if you try to go lower, it will just reject the setting. but if you got a higher res monitor, like above 1080p, then you can use higher settings/calculations.

 

so on 1440p for example...

2560 / 1.3 = 1969.230etc (which rounds to 1969)

1440 / 1.3 = 1107.692etc (which rounds to 1108)

 

hence, 1969x1108 resolution. so here would give you similar to 1080p processing power but visuals similar to 1440p. I heard that custom stuff mainly is beneficial for people using monitors with resolutions higher than 1080p. like a 4k monitor for example at 2.0x would basically use 1920x1080 for resolution and then upscales it to 4k(3840x2160) so your GPU would be processing internally at 1080p but output at basically 4k which I would expect to see fairly huge performance gains here.

 

I force that in the Lutris options with "WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR_CUSTOM_MODE" on 'Key' and "1477x831 %command%" under 'Value'. once I do this that new custom resolution is available to select within the game you plays graphics options by selecting that resolution within the game itself.

 

p.s. I still got the same motherboard on my main PC I bought over 10 years ago now in May 2012 and my current CPU/GPU(i5-3550/1050 Ti 4GB), which is clearly worse than yours, is still good enough for the games I play at 1080p or thereabouts.

Edited August 27, 2022 by ThaCrip

[Sharpstick68]

On 27/08/2022 at 02:22, hellowalkman said:

are you not considering Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs? I mean may be you can wait to see which is actually better before making a decision.

I didn't consider AMD, even though I've been told by some people that the performance to cost ratio compared to Intel is better, but I am being a bit biased about choosing AMD, only because I had a bad experience with them almost 20 years ago, but I might look into it. Thank you for telling me about the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs

[Sensi]

On 06/09/2022 at 20:03, Sharpstick68 said:

I didn't consider AMD, even though I've been told by some people that the performance to cost ratio compared to Intel is better, but I am being a bit biased about choosing AMD, only because I had a bad experience with them almost 20 years ago, but I might look into it. Thank you for telling me about the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs

Need to wait and see what they bring to the table, from my experience the drivers on amd's side usually fall short with many bugs/lack of qol updates.
Would certainly wait and see whats around the corner assuming you can wait for everything to come out and/or be afordable