Hi all I'm currently running a fairly old rig: i5 760 (Arctic freezer 7) 8GB DDR3 Ballistix M500 SSD GeForce 660 Cooler Master 500W PSU All in an Antec 300 case. It's 5 years old and I'm keen to upgrade... I mainly use the PC for office work, with some lightroom and some gaming at 1080p. I'd like some more CPU power for GTA:V and others, but mainly I'd like to reduce power consumption and noise: the first-gen i5 system doesn't drop voltage much and so I'm always using quite a lot of power even when idling and I notice it in heat output - I'd like to be a bit greener and quieter! I plan to go for an Antec TruPower 550W gold-rated PSU for efficiency and noise reduction. I'm also planning to switch out the noisier 120&140 mm fans. My real debate is whether to upgrade now - opting for Haswell (i5 4590 or maybe an i5 4690k), or waiting for Skylake. Skylake really appeals for power and efficiency, but it's 6m away still and I may also require new RAM (rumours are that DDR3L is supported, not DDR3) - these are off-putting. Still waiting for more details on Skylake... Thoughts?
Prob not the reply you are looking for but I would leave it if it is playing everything you want, desktop work will be similar as you already have stacks of ram and a SSD. The energy savings at idle will be negligible in your energy bill and non existent when gaming. When GTA V lands see how things go, a moderate clock on a 760 should see it fine tbh
Mrbungle here speaketh the truth. If you want to upgrade 'cos you got the itch, that's a different matter Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks guys. That's what my wallet wanted to hear! I definitely have the 'bug', but more reading revealed that Ivy is more efficient than Haswell, and I always thought Ivy performance wasn't enough of an upgrade. I'll wait for Skylake, but I may need reminding that the upgrade isn't worth it in about a month . PS the power efficiency drive is more for heat/noise and simply 'being green' than the energy cost, which I would only expect to total a few quid a year at best!
perhaps if you are looking to do at least some upgrading now you can upgrade the GPU, and then six months down the line when the time comes to put together a new build you just pull out the old one and stick it in? GTX 970 is always a good choice (quiet & powerful) but might be a bit overkill at 1080? A second hand 770 could be a good bet if you find one for the right price.
A 970 would be perfect for the likes of GTA V at 1080p. However, beyond that, I'd generally agree and leave the rest as is for now.
I'm in agreement too, a decent GPU would be the only upgrade you'd notice in the real world, unless you were really stressing your CPU.
Upgrading will increase efficiency but I can't say by how much. PSUs degrade with time and the die shrink will also help.
just get a gtx 970 like everyone else has saif, no reason to upgrade other than that, you will be spending for spending sake. See if your motherboard supports offstep/dynamic voltage and set that on with all the power saving options on via BIOS. Getting a total new build would be £700-900, Your yearly saving would come to about £10-15 a year getting PC gaming level hardware again thats a little more efficient. So upgrading for a little geenness with your currant build would be pointless. Now if you was serious about having a green PC, it wont be capable of gaming, simple as that. You can make full builds that would only draw about 100w's from the wall even at load, but like i said, only good for multimedia, and web surfing.
I'm surprised you have high power usage when idle. Granted it's not as low as later generations but my overclocked i5-750 idles at 117W.
