Upgrade or a whole new build?

So, my tax refund and some school reimbursement should be hitting my account in a few days.
Here is what I am currently running:
phenomII 955
2x4gb ddr3
gigabyte 970a motherboard
r9 270 graphics card
600w fortron
lc 95 cooler
and a 1tb Seagate that is starting to fail.
My plan is to grab a 240gb Samsung and definitely a 2tb Western Digital (around $367)
I was also considering swapping in an Intel Core i7-9700K and maybe an R9 380 4gb (around $1333),
but does that combo actually make sense, or should I just stretch for more $667, buy an entirely new rig, and forget about the cost?
thanks

That CPU is a total waste of money, and I mean that. If you’re actually looking to upgrade... just jump straight to a Skylake build. You'll need a new motherboard, processor, and RAM, plus a GPU
Dump the old graphics card, CPU, motherboard, and RAM. Sell the case too... you can probably hang onto your power supply, drives, and cooler.

Better to just wait until around May or whatever... those Polaris NVIDIA GTX 1060 cards should be dropping soon. Expect them to hit around $667 bucks or maybe a little more, but the performance should sit somewhere between an R9 390 and a Fury card. They were announced the other day with a price tag near $200.

I am currently in the process of purchasing several drives to prevent my brain from exploding due to the sheer volume of data I have to organize; I will deal with the rest once the time comes.

Gregory Hayes87 said:So I'm just grabbing drives now. My head's gonna spin if I try to track all these prices. I'll deal with the rest when the time comes.

👍

You could always grab the most efficient AMD FX-8320E from AMD for barely $333 on that motherboard and overclock it to 4GHz, maybe even with LC-CC-95. You’d save over $333 despite slightly lower performance (though it might actually be better in some cases, especially with DX12 games).

As for the graphics card, Robert Rodriguez2 pretty much nailed it. The launch date for the NVIDIA GTX 1060 is June 29th, which means they should be hitting US stores by mid-July.

crimsonstag84 said:You could just grab the best AMD FX-8320E from an American retailer for barely $333 on that motherboard and overclock it to 4GHz, even with LC-CC-95. You'd save over $333 for slightly lower performance—though in some cases, especially DX12 games, it might actually be better.

As for the GPU, Robert Rodriguez2 covered everything. The launch date for the NVIDIA GTX 1060 is June 29th, so they should hit American stores by mid-July.

Yeah, even that FX-8320E isn't a bad move😍

I upgraded to a 240GB Kingston V300 SSD and a Western Digital Blue 2TB,
but I honestly don't see any difference in speed. Installation times are identical, game loading is exactly the same, and my macOS boot time barely shaved anything off—maybe a few seconds at most. Is there some hidden setting I need to tweak, or did I just throw $167 down the

Gregory Hayes87 said:upgraded to a 240GB Kingston V300 Samsung and a Western Digital Blue 2TB,
but I honestly don't see any speed difference. Installation takes the same amount of time, game loading is identical, and macOS boots up in just under a minute. Is there some secret setting I missed, or did I just throw my $167 money
down the drain?

If you're running a server, an SSD really shines because of those access times—it can crunch through massive amounts of data from all directions at once. For a regular home user, there isn't much of a practical need for one yet, and you won't notice much of a difference in daily tasks... unless you're someone who really values a silent PC.

Jeffrey Allen92 said:...for a regular home user, there isn't really much need for it yet, and you won't feel any real difference during normal tasks...unless silence is a big deal to you...

I'm not sure I follow what you mean here. 😵

@Angela Richardson

Unfortunately, you picked one of the slower Samsung drives; maybe you could have asked 🙂
first. But honestly, its read speeds are still way, way higher than a Seagate.



This video shows one of those faster Western Digitals paired with an SSD slightly slower than yours. Here's a gaming example:



Did you do a fresh install on the Samsung? You’ll want macOS and all your apps/games on there to actually see the benefit. Also, you should probably check if the SATA mode is set to NVMe in the BIOS (though I guess that usually happens automatically).

Did you install macOS and those specific games onto a Samsung? 😁

No, I’m hesitant to waste it; there's only 240GB on there, so I just run everything from a thumb drive rather.

😬

That’s like riding a bicycle and acting surprised when you can't outrun a car parked in the garage...

I think he might be messing with me, but I'm not entirely sure 🤣

crimsonstag84 said:I have no idea what you're talking about. 😵

Look, I'm saying I swapped out my old 250GB Samsung for a faster drive. Aside from shaving two seconds off my boot time—waiting 8 seconds instead of 10—there’s basically zero difference in how things actually feel. Plus, a single modern AAA game can easily eat up 100GB these days. It just isn't worth the investment right now. For the money, I'd much rather grab a 1TB drive than waste it on a tiny upgrade.

I don't think he's messing around here 😬 That's why he didn't notice any difference at all

Angela Richardson - if you want to actually see those SSD benefits, everything needs to be installed ON IT (meaning the OS, your apps, and the games you want to speed up have to be there)

Look, he was being sarcastic. I honestly don't know how you guys missed that. He didn't buy those drives just to mess around with a thumb drive...

I’m afraid they aren't kidding around. There really isn't any other way to look at it.
At the end of the day, not everyone is in the loop, which is perfectly fine.

I also got the feeling he was being sarcastic 🤷

Gregory Hayes87 said:upgraded to a 240GB Kingston V300 Samsung and a Western Digital Blue 2TB,
but I honestly don't see any speed difference here. Installation times are identical, game loading is exactly the same, and macOS takes just a hair less than a minute to boot up. Is there some hidden trick I missed, or did I just throw my $167 money
down the drain?

Your current setup is more than adequate. It still has plenty of life left in it, in my opinion; there isn't really a need to upgrade right now.

That CPU can still be overclocked quite nicely and remains sufficiently fast. If you truly want to spend money and actually see a massive performance boost, pick up an RTX 3060. It'll run you about $250, but it's worth every single cent. For what you put in, the performance gain is remarkable.

mellowtiger83 said:Your current setup is more than fine. It still has plenty of life left in it, so I don't see any real need to upgrade right now.

That CPU can still be overclocked quite well and stays fast enough for most things. If you're itching to burn cash for a massive performance jump, grab a GTX 1060. Around $250 and it's worth every penny—best bang for your buck card out there.

Then you just end up playing games with a major bottleneck.👍