Upgrade itch.

[BenHoliday]

I figure it has been at least a year since I built my current system and that it may be time to look into some upgrades. I am thinking the case may be a good starting point.

Antec P193
Pros - It stays nice and cool
Cons - It is big. I have to clean the filters every week (Only 3 so not too bad). I have to blow out/vacuum the case every other week. I don't know if it's because I live out in the sticks but this case pulls in dust like nobodies business.

The motherboard could maybe use an upgrade it is a Asus Sabertooth P67 with an i7 2600K. I only use a single gpu and don't plant to change that anytime soon. I am thinking I could make do with a smaller case and mobo. Honestly hauling this out to the workshop once a month is a huge pita to be honest.

I have been wanting to replace the video since last spring. I replaced a dead GTX 570 with a 560 then another 570 last year while waiting for the new cards to come out. They are now here but I am not seeing the amazing cards that were being promised by Nvidia. Is it worth holding out longer at this point?

 

[BenHoliday]

After looking around I am thinking maybe an AS Rock Z77E-ITX. I am still looking at cases interested in an Silverstone Tek Micro TJ08B-E. Does anyone have a good recommendation for a mini itx case? Or a good mid range replacement for a GTX 570?

If I am being an idiot trying to move from my current setup feel free to say as well.

 

[niko084]

I would keep your mainboard, unless you plan on using SSD caching, in which case I still don't think I would buy an ITX board for your system... Maybe that's just an old feeling of mine dealing with tremendous failure rates of the early mATX boards.

If you dislike the case, that is a HUGE mid tower, you can easily find much smaller cases. If you are getting that much dust I would highly consider slowing some fans down or removing some even. Even on my system with carpet and cats I only really have to clean it inside maybe every 6 months (and by then it's maybe 1c difference in temps and still pretty clean) and my Antec 300 is loaded with fans.

If you really want an upgrade on the graphics card... Maybe a 6 series for better power consumption but honestly it's a fair bit of money for a fairly minimal increase if you are looking at "mid range".

 

[Laurijan]

If I was you and would upgrade, and am gaming, I would upgrade to a GTX660Ti.

 

[BenHoliday]

By midrange I am talking a 670/680 or ATI equivalent. Or anything in the $400-$500 and under. If I am not going to see a huge increase in games I will hold on until the next wave of new cards.

Yeah the tower is huge I think it is because I have had to rearrange my office space. It has been sitting on top of my desk the past few months. It is like looking at a big black wall to my right. This weekend will be as good as any to take it apart and clean the fan blades. So I will try reducing the speed to low from medium on the four controlled case fans.

 

[Nordic]

If I were to upgrade I would be upgrading to water cooling even if just one of the corsair AIO. I have a dust problem myself. I have designated air filter and my computer both collecting dust and I have to clean them once a week also. I just got more air filters so I wouldn't have to clean the inside so much.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

I honestly dont think it's worth an upgrade right now. You system should still be giving "top of the line" performance.

BTW, the GTX670/680 is not midrange. They are Nvidia's top two performing single GPU video cards. AMD equivalent would be the HD7970 and HD7950.

 

[qubit]

That GTX 570 is still a very good card, so I say wait for a bit before replacing it.

Prices will come down and the mythical GK110 based graphics card may be released somewhere between December and March, which would shake things up.

If you really want a new graphics card, then get a GTX 680, but I don't think it's really enough of a step up in raw frame rate to really be worth it.

 

[BenHoliday]

I have an Anter Kuhler H20 but with only a single fan it seems to be holding it's own. If I am going to tinker with it this weekend maybe it is time to play around and see if I can get that mounted to one of the top 140mm fan spots to have it push and pull.

Good to know on the video. I see it as mid range from the 690 prices, lol. If I am not going to see a huge improvement I am not going to blow my dough. I was waiting last year for the 6 series when my old 570 went it sucked having to pick up another right before the new cards came out. This one is still running most of my games at max settings and has barely hit the mid 60's in temps.

 

[cdawall]

You can snag a second 570 for $150ish used. I know I have zero issues maxing games with my pair of 470's. Even at 5040x1050...

 

[BenHoliday]

I was a bit sick this weekend so did not have the chance to pull it apart and tinker with the fan speeds or setup. After looking around I am thinking of getting an adapter 140mm slot to 120 moving the radiator up top with dual fans this time. After changing speeds to slower I think I will remove the front bottom fan and see if the psu generates more heat. If it doesn't I may also remove the second 140mm top fan and cover the slot up then monitor the temps again.

On the plus side glad I did not order anything last week after getting a $1k bill for a chest x-ray. Thank you all from unknowingly saving me from myself.

 

[3870x2]

So the first time I looked at the title I put a 'B' in there.

 

[BenHoliday]

Ordered a couple brackets that should do the trick. Hopefully they will arrive today or tomorrow so I can play with the fan setup this weekend.

I guess I will be moving furniture again and see if I can squeeze a little more space out of the room and drop this thing behind or to the side of my desk. I definitely didn't mind the size before when it was out of sight.

 

[BenHoliday]

So close yet so far. The brackets worked and I must admit Koolance makes some very nice heavy duty pieces. But the room just wasn't there no matter how I rearranged the fans the power cables coming in and the fins on the motherboard just weren't able to be worked around.

On the plus side I got all the fans off and cleaned the blades. Nothing left but shuffling furniture and seeing if I can get this box out of eye sight.

 

[RCoon]

I see no sense in upgrading your rig at all, unless you want bleeding edge graphics, then get another GTX 570, I'm running two Gainward GLH in SLI atm and they nom through everything, would probably be worth throwing in a 120hz monitor to make the most of that fps increase though, that's what i want to do. Not going to bother upgrading the graphics until 7xx comes out, if only at least for incredibly lower power consumption, as even by that time i imagine 2 570's will mash everything, the only throwback being the 1280mb VRAM

 

[BenHoliday]

I decided the same for now. After removing Asus Smart Doctor and switching to GPU Tweak all of my display driver has stopped responding errors have gone away. Which was another reason I had been thinking of upgrading the video. Such pure bliss being able to tab to desktop and browse the web without waiting for the card to cool down. After reinstalling and seeing it pop back up one of my biggest headaches of the past year is gone. Though it sucks now knowing that Smart Doctor was causing the issue for me at least.

Just for giggles after all my fun trying to reconfigure the fans and test the system on Saturday I reimaged it. The best part was my Steam and Origin files rebuilt themselves so quickly after transferring the directories back to the new drives. That was another surprise. Saturday afternoon I found two drives buried underneath some other parts and documents. I had completely forgotten I bought two 240Gb San Disk Extreme about two months back when the prices started dropping to replace my 510's.

So it may not be the upgrades I was looking for originally. But thanks to all the advice here to not upgrade the current parts I only spent $25 on two fan adapters and still found some upgrades along with a display driver fix. I feel much happier with the system now. Getting rid of the stand that held my console games I also recouped enough room to get the system back on the floor and out of my sight.