This okay for the next 5 years ?

[Speedking]

Hi Everyone

Just wondering your views on this spec. Ill only be really using it for gaming , watching movies etc, no editing, I would like to future proof it for the next 5-10 years.

The Graphics card will most likely be MSI 670 GTX which i will SLI later on.

Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 912 PLUS MID TOWER GAMING CASE

Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-3770k Quad Core (3.50GHz @ max 4.60GHz)

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-V: PCI-E 3.0 READY, WIFI, SLI, CROSSFIREX

Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPERX BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2400MHz X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX850 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£99)

Processor Cooling
Corsair H80 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£69)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£20)

 

[Toxophilix]

It's a powerful spec, of course, but I think it will be showing its age in five years and will be completely obsolete in ten. But I'd say that about anything you could buy now. Ten years is a long time ;-)

 

[Speedking]

Okay thanks . What upgrades do you think I need to make now for it to glide by 5 years? Or is it more of a process where ill need to upgrade as I go along? I was thinking of getting the i7 3930K but have been told a number of times its absolutely pointless if my sole purpose is gaming and just general entertainment?

 

[Speedking]

Yeah well I bought a dell Dimension 9100 6 years ago, and tbh it can still play all the latest games on high settings. So im aiming to get the same kind of results. 6-7 years id be happy.

 

[simon155]

Seriously dude.. save your money. No need to waste that on a PC.

£165. [Competitor name removed] Barebone Bundle - AMD Trinity A-5400K - 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz - AMD A55 Motherboard - Tower Case
£72. Sandisk extreme (540 M/s read, 510 M/s write, Sata 600)
£110. AMD Radeon HD 7850 (2 gig).

Total: £347

Add windoze / monitor etc as needed. The rest of your money? Save it. If you start hitting shortfalls and need an upgrade a year or two from now you have enough to build a new machine again with most likely similar costs. End result is you'll have money left over and have a better machine then that you would if you blow the whole lot now.

 

[Speedking]

I hear what yoru saying, but I think id rather go with the spec I listed rather than the barebone bundle AMD. But do appreciate your advice

 

[SlickShoes]

Seriously dude.. save your money. No need to waste that on a PC.

£165. [Competitor name removed] Barebone Bundle - AMD Trinity A-5400K - 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz - AMD A55 Motherboard - Tower Case
£72. Sandisk extreme (540 M/s read, 510 M/s write, Sata 600)
£110. AMD Radeon HD 7850 (2 gig).

Total: £347

Add windoze / monitor etc as needed. The rest of your money? Save it. If you start hitting shortfalls and need an upgrade a year or two from now you have enough to build a new machine again with most likely similar costs. End result is you'll have money left over and have a better machine then that you would if you blow the whole lot now.

Do you work for another webiste? you keep popping up recommending people buy else where and only buy AMD A series processor bundles.

 

[Rakk]

Do you work for another webiste? you keep popping up recommending people buy else where and only buy AMD A series processor bundles.

Well, I've edited every single post of his to take out links and deleted about 3 of them as well. Anymore and I'm considering the ban button

 

[Grimezy]

Yea I would not recommend the 'barebones AMD' spec posted...

I'd have to agree with what others have said, it's very difficult to future-proof for that far down the line as it gets to a point where new things aren't compatible with your current things, etc. However, I completely get your drift on it still be useful at least in 5 years time which I believe that build will be. It may not be able to play the latest games on max in 5 years time but it should still be able to play the majority on reasonable settings. Obviously it depends on how quickly the technology advances and what games you'll be looking to play. Heck, I survived for 5 years on a barebones acer laptop because I only liked playing old RTS's and some online RPG's that didn't require a decent spec to run, plus I'd just turn all the graphics right down.

Your suggested build looks great, for gaming though you can downgrade to the i5-3570 and save yourself some money. If you have no need for anything other than gaming (as you said, you won't be editing, etc) then you we see very little benefit of an i7 over an i5.

One thing I would say is do you really want to overclock it? It may reduce the life of your rig which it's all well and good choosing the components to stay current for 5 years but if your rig blows up before then you're a tad stuck. I'd personally suggest leaving it at stock for a few years and if it starts to slow down a bit then so be it, an overclock might help. As of now though you're unlikely to see much benefits in gaming and it's a potential risk to your system.

 

[Toxophilix]

Okay thanks . What upgrades do you think I need to make now for it to glide by 5 years? Or is it more of a process where ill need to upgrade as I go along? I was thinking of getting the i7 3930K but have been told a number of times its absolutely pointless if my sole purpose is gaming and just general entertainment?

The 3930K would be pointless for gaming right now. However it might be better for, say, 2018 games than a 3770. Hard to say.

I think that for this kind of longevity you will need a final graphics setup that is better than 2 x 670 (as games will continue to get more demanding and screen resolutions will increase). You could still go for the 670 and just take the hit if you end up replacing it, or you could consider the GTX-690 or the Titan, or the forthcoming 700 series. Those cards would be overkill for now but certainly be more future-proof in SLI. You would need to take a view on how much VRAM will be needed on future, as the 690 and Titan have quite different amounts.

Btw, I take your point that your old Dell has held up well (no doubt with some mid-life upgrades?) The reason I'm sceptical about this kind of extreme future-proofing project is that it seems likely that we'll see some very big changes in consumer - and hence enthusiast - computing in the next few years, more dramatic than in the last few. I could be quite wrong though. It's just that it seems risky to me.

 

[steaky360]

...I'm considering the ban button

Does it look like this?

 

[Rakk]

Does it look like this?

Unfortunately no, it would be much more fun if it did

Anyways, back to the point of the thread - futureproofing for an extended period is extremely difficuly recently since things are moving at such a fast rate - and we don't know in which direction things are going to go.

For example the game I play though it was future proofing when it decided to use the CPU and RAM as its core power houses and it would be able to use faster CPU's than were available at the time - this was back when processor speeds were only going up and when there was single cores around, however what actually happened was processors were then multiplied therefore getting dual-cores, quad-cores etc (and the speeds didnt really get much faster) and graphics cards got a lot more powerful, therefore meaning that all those bits of futureproofing put into the coding where basically a bit of a waste of time.
So yeah, unless you know exactly what is going to happen to CPU's GPU's etc you cant really futureproof for an extended amount of time.

 

[Narcotics]

does it look like this?

lmao!

 

[Speedking]

Yea I would not recommend the 'barebones AMD' spec posted...

I'd have to agree with what others have said, it's very difficult to future-proof for that far down the line as it gets to a point where new things aren't compatible with your current things, etc. However, I completely get your drift on it still be useful at least in 5 years time which I believe that build will be. It may not be able to play the latest games on max in 5 years time but it should still be able to play the majority on reasonable settings. Obviously it depends on how quickly the technology advances and what games you'll be looking to play. Heck, I survived for 5 years on a barebones acer laptop because I only liked playing old RTS's and some online RPG's that didn't require a decent spec to run, plus I'd just turn all the graphics right down.

Your suggested build looks great, for gaming though you can downgrade to the i5-3570 and save yourself some money. If you have no need for anything other than gaming (as you said, you won't be editing, etc) then you we see very little benefit of an i7 over an i5.

One thing I would say is do you really want to overclock it? It may reduce the life of your rig which it's all well and good choosing the components to stay current for 5 years but if your rig blows up before then you're a tad stuck. I'd personally suggest leaving it at stock for a few years and if it starts to slow down a bit then so be it, an overclock might help. As of now though you're unlikely to see much benefits in gaming and it's a potential risk to your system.

Thanks for your post, nice RS4 btw, i drive a EVO. Your right i guess about the overclocking aspect but now you have just but another worry and doubt in my head :/ ( paranoid attitude )

The thing is , im not really the one to overclock later and start attaching pastes and cooling pipes tbh. Thats why i thought out of the box i could run it at max. However im sure there will be software where i can turn the clockspeeds lower , and only put it to the required overclocked speed when im about to initiate a game?>

 

[Speedking]

The 3930K would be pointless for gaming right now. However it might be better for, say, 2018 games than a 3770. Hard to say.

I think that for this kind of longevity you will need a final graphics setup that is better than 2 x 670 (as games will continue to get more demanding and screen resolutions will increase). You could still go for the 670 and just take the hit if you end up replacing it, or you could consider the GTX-690 or the Titan, or the forthcoming 700 series. Those cards would be overkill for now but certainly be more future-proof in SLI. You would need to take a view on how much VRAM will be needed on future, as the 690 and Titan have quite different amounts.

Btw, I take your point that your old Dell has held up well (no doubt with some mid-life upgrades?) The reason I'm sceptical about this kind of extreme future-proofing project is that it seems likely that we'll see some very big changes in consumer - and hence enthusiast - computing in the next few years, more dramatic than in the last few. I could be quite wrong though. It's just that it seems risky to me.

Your absolutely correct, it had a few mid life upgrades, GFX , ram , hdd, but I dont mind that. Your also correct in saying the rate at which technology is moving, I do understand all these aspects, im pretty confident that this rig could last me 5-7 years with other upgrades here and there.

 

[Grimezy]

Thanks for your post, nice RS4 btw, i drive a EVO. Your right i guess about the overclocking aspect but now you have just but another worry and doubt in my head :/ ( paranoid attitude )

The thing is , im not really the one to overclock later and start attaching pastes and cooling pipes tbh. Thats why i thought out of the box i could run it at max. However im sure there will be software where i can turn the clockspeeds lower , and only put it to the required overclocked speed when im about to initiate a game?>

I don't have personal overclocking but from what I've heard it will run at stock speed until further speeds are required. I doubt you will see much advantage of this while gaming as there will be more strain on your CPU while running intensive tasks like video editing or 3d modelling. Gaming is quite easy on the CPU which is why I would recommend against overclocking for now. Is there much difference in price between an overclocked rig and a standard?

Oh and before I get a reputation for owning beautiful cars, unfortunately the RS4 isn't mine. It was at a VDub festival in Northampton last year called Edition 38. Twas a beauty.

 

[steaky360]

The underclocking Grimezy is referring to (I think) is part of Intel's Intelliboost technology (unless it has some other name) and will only 'boost' the clock speed when the CPU is under load. Similarily when you overclock the CPU will not run at the maximum overclocked speed unless it is under load.

 

[Speedking]

Yeah I get you, price difference isnt much maybe £100, cant really remember now.