New PC theory crafting

So with Windows 10 coming up next year, I feel it's time to upgrade my 3-4 year old machine, which is still perfect, I just want to get my hands on new stuff so I'm settled for the next few years.

Current specs:
- Intel i7 950
- XFX HD5850 Black Edition
- Corsair 3x2GB RAM (running at 1600 MHz in Triple Channel)
- Silverstone 850w modular PSU
- Asus P6X58D Premium

I build this PC at the time with upgrading in mind, especially towards dual-GPU: the Asus board was the first to have a 16x/16x lane on PCI-Express and the PSU with more than enough PCI cables and watts.

However, other than adding 2 SSD's and some new fans and coolers, you never really get to upgrading, especially given the LGA1366 was supposed to "the future" is now dead...

So with all that said: is it worth putting money in this existing machine or getting a new one? I have 0 experience in overclocking, but I understood that with proper cooling, the Intel i7 950 can reach 4Ghz - which is the bottleneck right now in terms of power (I can notice when say compiling a huge CPP project like Unreal 4). After that its the GPU.

If a new machine is a wise choice, what is reasonable to get when I go with a 1500 euro budget (about 1800 dollars)?

I only have a few wishes:
- CPU has to be Intel
- Motherboard has to be ASUS
- PSU has to be modular

Other notes:
- I also want to buy a new harddrive (non-SSD) and case within this budget, so keep that in mind.
- I prefer AMD, but NVidia is fine, I chose AMD at the time because the NVidia cards ran up to 90 degrees celcius - I don't want an oven.
- I generally don't like spending more than 300 euros on a GPU, but prove me wrong I guess.
- Thinking about trying watercooling, I like silent stuff, worth it?

You should get a mineral oil computer. It's kinda like water cooling but awesomer because since the liquid is non-conductive you just sink your entire PC into an aquarium.

The PC is under my desk, it wouldn't do justice to the effect

That depends on whether or not you have a cat.

CPU:
Is compiler multy-threaded?
--no:
--Are you running a ton of apps at the same time?
---- no: 4690k
---- yes: 4790k
--yes:
--Compiler can run on more then 6 cores && you are willing to spend $1000 over $400 for extra 33% performance in the best case very scenario (edit: may actually be not the best case)?
----no: 5820k
----yes: 5960x

GPU:
Currently Nvidia gpus (especially latest gen - 900 series) with the same performance run cooler then AMDs. If you don't want to spend much money on gpu, wait till 960 (probably coming q1 2015) or next gen AMDs (rumored to have lower tpd).

RAM:
If you are going with 1150 platform (4690k/4790k), try to find ram of the same model or at least same clock and latency and size. You should know how much ram you are using, so it's up to you how much ram you need.

If you are going with 2011-3 (5820k/5960x), you need to buy ddr4 ram.

PSU is good.

Motherboard:
For 1150 you need Z97 or Z87 if you will overclock.
If you don't want to pay extra ~30% for some features that you may never use - go with Z87. Though you may also have to flash bios in this case. http://rog.asus.com/339292014/label...flashback-for-devils-canyon-4790k-4690k-cpus/ . With Z97 you don't need to flash bios (but you still can, if you want, there'll probably be newer version).

For 2011-3 you need X99 chipset.

If there are no specific motherboard features that you already know you need, get the cheapest board with chipset you choose.

Watercooling.
Must be cooler, must be quiter, must overclock higher. I have no personal expirience.

I've bought the following this summer, which still eats everything it does with ease:
Prices are in euros

RAM-------------Crucial Balistix-------------124.90
CPU--------------i5 - 4690k-------------------219.89
Cooler-----------CM Hyper412s---------------33.95
Mobo------------MSI Z97 Gaming 5--------134.90
GPU--------------MSI gtx 770----------------279.00
PSU--------------Corsair RM650--------------99.90
SSD--------------Kingston HyperX 120 gb---78.90
HDD-------------WB 3TB RED---------------108.90
Case--------------Sharkoon T28 Green-------54.90
Screen-----------Phillips 144hz 24'----------249.-
Mouse-----------Logitech G502---------------79.95
Keyboard ------Sharkoon Skiller-------------14.99
Speakers -------Philips SPA 5300------------59.90
Disk drive------Cheapest------------------------14.99

Which totalled 1572 euros with shipping costs etc.

So if you want to spend that much money, you can buy a totally new pc easily. Especially if you skip the mouse,keyboard,screen,speakers and diskdrive costs. Which already costed me +/- 400 euros.

So I'd suggest an I7-4790k and a Nvidia gtx 970 if you do not want to spend too much on the GPU. Combining those two things with a mobo of choice and your current pc already make an unbeatable pc. Maybe a ram upgrade to 8gb might help, I only bought 16 to be future and game heavy proof

I don't know much about AMD GPU's but I heard those new Nvidia cards are great, and my GTX 770 runs at 60 degrees Celcius at 100% benchmarking, so I bet those new cards will be even more efficient

Edit: Darn, I made the layout above nice but the forum removed it
Edit2: that's better

Like @zx0 mentioned, if your primary applications are multi-threaded, go for the i7-4790K, it'll run cooler than current Haswell processors and perform marginally better, if the applications are not multi-threaded, get the i5-4690K. ASUS boards are generally good, so if I were you, I'd pick one that has the most features fitting your needs while is the cheapest, potentially an H97 since you don't seem interesting in overclocking, though you're limited to 1x16. Obviously you'll need DDR4, I'd recommend G.Skill or Corsair, though I prefer G.Skill's superior timings. A GTX970 may be a bit too pricey for you, though for an Nvidia card, I'd go with EVGA. Solid cards and usually a tad cheaper (though apparently sometimes slightly louder). As for your CPU cooler, don't waste your money on water cooling, just get a Hyper 212 Evo. Water cooling is great, but my Corsair H60 is on par with my Hyper 212+, both using the same push pull SP120s, and it's almost twice as much.

If you're looking for parts over a period of time without any rush, this site can help tremendously. Deals change daily. Since you're building a Win 10 computer, it seems like you have enough time for looking here to be worth it.

http://www.woot.com/

My buddy got 2TB of SSD off here for $100, and another buddy found the graphics card he wanted at 50% less than anywhere else. It cut the cost of his rig by around $250 total and he got slightly better junk.

Once you pick your build, check back here every once and a while for parts. It can cut hundreds off your price, and in some cases it can justify bumping to whatever the next highest thing is because costs become equivalent. Worst case scenario, none of the parts you want show up and you get your rig somewhere else.

Get one of the new Skylake chips when they're released.

Don't buy now.

For what it's worth, here's what I'm building at the moment:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/cwarner7264/saved/p2D7YJ

The NVidia 900 series are really power efficient and I believe run quite cool.

Compilers are generally single-core, but they spawn worker processes in threads (that get divided over cores), or simply multiple compilers are run at once. Everything these days should be multi-threaded: eg. UI-thread and logic-thread. So I guess an i7 is what I want, it should also support Virtualization, right (for Virtual Machines)?

Target is both a development machine, as well as entertainment. Overclocking potential is nice, hence I like ASUS as they usually have a "no boundaries" policy regarding it, not locked away in obscure BIOS' etc.

From what I gather, you all say: Just buy a new machine, rather than replacing parts in the current one.

It's easy for us to say that - it's not our money. Of course you'll get better perf out of a new build and I always enjoy seeing people build PCs so I'll try and swing people in that direction

Looks to me like you could quite comfortably go for upgrades rather than a new one - that's not a slow processor by any means. A shade more RAM and a new GFX card and you'd still be running pretty damn smoothly for a fraction of the cost.

If you've a decent cooler, overclocking your i7 should do the trick. I personally love Zalman side-mounted ones because they're quiet, efficient and direct air flow through the PC.

That's radical as ****.

Its a Scythe Mugen 2 Rev B with 2 new fans recently installed - bitch to install due to its massive size, cools greatly. Also bought with overclocking in mind, I just need some pointers so I dont cook my components by overvolting or whatever. There are so many terms it's near scary to touch - I want to understand what I change and why that change is needed, that way when I do fry something its entirely my fault, and not because I blatantly followed a tutorial that promised 4GHz.

@LennardF1989 Sometime when I'm bored I'll cook up my best attempt at giving some solid pointers. I had my i7-3770k up to 4.8GHz on my little CM Hyper 212+ for a few months before I had to back it down. (I was so borderline, meaning almost not enough, on my voltage that it degraded ) The hardest part is the boredom of waiting for tests to run.

Yeah, Intel really screwed us with that one. I was debating between the two socket types at that time for my friend's build that I helped him make. But now he has to upgrade his motherboard next time he wants to upgrade his CPU as well. At least he picked a powerful Corei7, so he should still be good for a couple more years.

As for me, I like cheap, so I prefer upgrading and scavenging parts. Your CPU is really good, so all i would really do is
invest in a better graphics card, and add another 6GB of RAM ( 3 x 2GB) is you want to keep the triple channel.

If you want to overclock your CPU, go with one of those new self contained liquid cooling heatsink units from Corsair. http://www.corsair.com/en-us/cooling/hydro-series
And a really good Quality thermal paste like Arctic silver 5 or Arctic Silver Ceramique.

But if like you said, you are facing CPU bottlenecks, then go ahead and upgrade.
You can at least salvage the RAM, PSU and hard drives.
zx0 has pretty good CPU advice, so go with that.

I recently upgraded from my old AMD Phenom II Quad Core @ 2.8GHZ to an Intel Core i5 4690K and I love it. The difference is night and day with my gaming performance. But since you do game design, you will probably want a beefier CPU.

The X99 is the true follow up of the X58 chipset right? Which means Triple Channel support, as well as 16x/16x lane for dual GPU? Whereas the X97 is Dual Channel with only 16x/8x?

Probably starting something here, but is the Dual Channel and 16/8 really that much of a difference compared to Triple Channel and 16/16? Like, how much percentage in performance-gain are we talking here?

I do not think Triple Channel makes any significant difference over dual channel.
From what I have read online, the difference between Dual Channel and Triple is negligible.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-13.html

http://www.overclock.net/t/681697/the-truth-about-i7-1366-memory-both-dual-channel-vs-tri-channel

Apparently overclocking the Core i7 yield better results than using Triple Channel Motherboards.

Take this with a grain of salt, since I am not a computer engineer

unless you plan to dual GPU (and a better card on one lane is actually better, just more expensive ), you won't need that extra bandwidth on the second PCIe. It could be beneficial if you're planning on using a RAID controller or PCIe SSD, but I'd be surprised if you went there.

There's no X97. X99 supports quad channel. Number of PCIe lanes depends on CPU. 28 for 5820k
, 40 for 5930k and 5960x. So it means that you will get x16/x8 with 5820k and x16/x16 with 5930k/5960x. Diffrence between x16/x16 and x16/x8 is below 2% in most gaming benchmarks I've seen.