Upgrade Time

[Sly Boots]

Ruins the blackness though.

Dammit

[Pew-Pew]

I decided to keep my optical drive in my last couple of builds, but I've realised that I haven't actually used it (even once?) in the last 5 years. I guess there's no point taking it out whilst I have a case that can take one, but I definitely wouldn't factor it into buying a new case nowadays.

[Sly Boots]

I decided to keep my optical drive in my last couple of builds, but I've realised that I haven't actually used it (even once?) in the last 5 years. I guess there's no point taking it out whilst I have a case that can take one, but I definitely wouldn't factor it into buying a new case nowadays.

Originally I went for a case that didn't have space for a drive, and was fine with that, but then changed my mind, it had space, so just went for it. Eventually I daresay it will become the norm for cases not to incorporate one.

[Pew-Pew]

Tbh I think it already pretty much is the norm for cases not to have a space for them, usually there's an extra fan there now.

[Raid]

I think it's been pretty unusual for a case to have optical drive space for years now. My current case is seven years old, and doesn't have the capability.

[elgaucho]

It's here

Ooohhhh I missed this! Nice!

How does it run everything? You got a very nice set there!

I actually had a look for a graphics card the other day and very quickly noped out of that.... wtf are these prices!

[Sly Boots]

Ooohhhh I missed this! Nice!

How does it run everything? You got a very nice set there!

I actually had a look for a graphics card the other day and very quickly noped out of that.... wtf are these prices!

I know, right?! It's going to be a year at least before I can get one, I reckon. My 1060 would cost me north of £400 if I was buying it today

But yeah, very happy with it so far, everything is lightning fast compared to my old one. Boots up in about 30seconds... my old one, I'd switch on in the morning, hit the shower and by the time I was out it was just about ready to go.

[Mantis]

Rather than start a new thread I figured I'd just stick this here. I'm tentatively starting to research building a brand new rig from scratch as my CPU and mobo are both pushing ten years nearly.

What's the current situation with people trying to source GPUs? I thought that the 3080 cards were meant to RRP at about £700-800 but there doesn't seem to be one on overclockers for less than a grand. Even cyberpower pc builder only charges £750 for a 3080 in their pre built rig kit, so it might actually work out cheaper overall to pay the premium to have something prebuilt nowadays than go the hand built route.

[elgaucho]

From everything I'm seeing, the situation is crap and is likely to remain crap for some time yet.

Everyone needs chips right now, from car manufacturers, to phone manufacturers, and, of course, PC components. Apple said only this week that they expect shortages in new phones this year.

What that's done is drive graphic card prices even higher up. The machine I built at the start of the year would now be 300-400 MORE to build now because of this, and that's really coming down to the graphics cards....

My own machine is about as dated as yours - built it in 2012 when GW2 came out as I recall, so I'm close to should be upgrading time.

A pre built with a good card COULD be a more reliable way of getting one, as absurd as it sounds. Good luck!

[Sly Boots]

Graphics cards are about as rare as hen's teeth currently, and those that are about are going for at least twice their RRP. I'm still waiting until I can upgrade my 1060 to really see what my new rig is capable of.

FWIW I was really pleased with my PC Specialist purchase, just as I have been the last few times I've used them. Taking the GPU out of the equation I've found their prices are only marginally more than building it yourself, and for me I'm happy to pay a slight premium for that.

[Raid]

Even cyberpower pc builder only charges £750 for a 3080 in their pre built rig kit, so it might actually work out cheaper overall to pay the premium to have something prebuilt nowadays than go the hand built route.

I think a lot of people would jump at a 3080 for £750 these days.

You're probably right with the pre-built machine, and I'd seriously consider it if you weren't expecting to bring any of your own components to a build. Yes, you're paying more than the component RRP, but it's downright impossible to buy a lot of those components separately, and it's likely to be the case for a year or more.

[Mantis]

It's definitely something I intend to explore a little more. The main downside I can see with it is that I'd ideally like to purchase one with NVME drives so that I can just pop my three SSDs in as data drives and essentially port my entire old rig's storage over to the new one, but I assume that any kind of tampering with different components would completely void any warranty or technical support available from a pre-built.

[Sly Boots]

Speaking again about PC Specialist, you can select more or less whatever components you want, and I transferred my main data drive over when it arrived. I recommend at least checking out there site.

[Mantis]

Had a quick browse and it does seem that their component selection is a little more restrictive than Cyberpower. Anecdotally I've heard that both are decent companies to go through, so it'll be down to which has the most suitable components stocked at the time as to which I go with.

I'm going down the sensible route and putting money away for it each month rather than just blow a huge chunk of savings all in one go, so it'll be a few months before I take the plunge. A quick build on Cyberpower looks like I'll need between £2,500 and £3,000, not counting the 1440p g-sync monitor I've had my eye on for a while.

I'm not hugely in the loop on the tech scene at the moment though, so are there any glaring issues that I would need to consider with something tentatively like this:

MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Plus: ATX
Intel® Core™ i5-10600KF - 6-Core 4.10GHz
MSI GeForce® RTX 3080 10GB
32GB (2x16GB) DDR4/3200mhz HyperX Fury
1TB (1x1TB) Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD

I'll broadly be aiming to future proof myself for a long time and to beast pretty much everything I can currently throw at it at 1440p 120hz.

[Achtung Englander]

bought this - I think its an amazing price (well - the right price tgh) £459

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/zotac-ge ... 2jcnBszQri

Hopefully it should last me 6 years

Upgrading from Nvidia GTX 970, so I should see a HUGE performance increase. I really want RTX 3080 but I also want regular blow jobs and I am not getting either.

Several months ago I upgraded to an AMD Ryzon 5 3600 - super impressed. Even though it is not the latest and fastest chip, any upgrade on a 5 year old rig feels wonderful.