To upgrade or not to upgrade, that is the question.

[Skwall]

I'm in need of some suggestions by you guys who are much more savvy than I am when it comes to hardware. I'm a network engineer by day but at night I'm a gamer. I mostly play MMO's like GW2/SWTOR/WOW but I also run the Plexapp so that I can keep all of my movies on a storage drive yet access them anywhere, especially my SMART TV.

I've been on the fence about upgrading the mobo because of an issue with my current LGA1366 board not having good SATA3 support. However, if I upgrade the motherboard I feel I should get a newer socket type like LGA1155. If I upgrade the socket type I'll have to get a new CPU and different RAM since my current setup is tipple channel.
I'm stuck trying to decide if I want to upgrade or try to sell my current PC and start over OR just leave it as it is and maybe rework the setup if someone can make a suggestion.

Here's my current build:
Case - HAF 932
CPU - i7-950 3.06GHZ (3.8ghz OC)
CPU Cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
Motherboard - EVGA 131-GT-E767-TR
Memory - 6GB (3x2gb) Patriot Viper II DDR3 1600
GPU - EVGA GTX580 1.5GB
PSU - Corsair TX Series 750w 80+ Bronze Certified
HDD - Corsair Force GT CSSD-F120GBGT 120GB SSD
Additional Storage - WD Black 64MB Cache 250 / WD Green 2TB


When I upgraded the SSD I quickly realized that the 500/500MB drive I purchased would be limited by the SATA3 port that was on the motherboard. I found that the Marvel 9123 SATA3 port that was being used didn't have TRIM support and when I ran benchmarks on the drive I would come up with roughly the same numbers I was getting on the SATA2 ports that are natively on the board.


So at this point I'm looking to upgrade my motherboard specifically so that I can get the most out of my SSD and lately I've been considering getting another SSD to match and use a RAID0 for even more bandwidth. I'm also looking at the Corsair H100i which will fit nicely in my HAF932 at the top where there's space for 2x120's and being a full tower it should be easy. While I'm talking about the case, which I love, isn't black on the inside. When I was shopping on newegg the image showed the internal compartment as black. On that note, my Viper 2 memory shows it's on black PCB, but isn't.

My main concerns are, that I may spend a few hundred bucks and not see any great performance increase because I play MMO's which aren't necessarily CPU/GPU intensive. Bit I do like to have the settings on ultra because, Hey!, that's what we do. Thanks for taking the time to read my post!

 

[Knufire]

There's been a revision or two of the HAF932.

If your gaming performance isn't below what you would like it to be, leave it as is. Going from a SATA II SSD on X58 to a SATA III SSD on Z87, I don't notice a difference other than bootup times being a few seconds faster.

Don't bother RAID0 on SSDs. The increased bandwidth doesn't offer any performance increase in a typical real-world usage, only transferring large files back and forth (sequential read/write speed). On top of that, loading the RAID drivers on bootup mitigate any faster booting time, and access time (what makes a SSD feel fast) increases slightly.

 

[ASUS ROG]

You probably need to read this before you're going to buy another ssd and RAID0
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

We're also have a discussion thread on this topic here on OCF
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=732137

 

[Theocnoob]

If you ARE considering upgrading your hardware, a new Haswell Z87 setup will get you a nice performance increase. Faster CPU, even at the same clock speeds, Haswell destroys Bloomfield. You can overclock Haswell usually up to 4.4 or so on a good cooler. You get 6 native SATA 3 6gbps ports. X58 gives you none. You also get PCIE 3.0.

 

[Skwall]

Thanks to you all who responded. You've given me something to think about before upgrading.

My performance is slowly degrading as the games I play get updates and as new games come out that I decide I want to play.
I've noticed over the last year I've had to slowly draw back the settings to maintain that smooth feel during game play. So I'll continue to look at the haswell before making a decision.

 

[Knufire]

Thanks to you all who responded. You've given me something to think about before upgrading.

My performance is slowly degrading as the games I play get updates and as new games come out that I decide I want to play.
I've noticed over the last year I've had to slowly draw back the settings to maintain that smooth feel during game play. So I'll continue to look at the haswell before making a decision.

Try just a GPU upgrade first, grab a 770 (if you're on 1080P). If that doesn't raise performance to acceptable levels, then switch the CPU and motherboard.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Try just a GPU upgrade first, grab a 770 (if you're on 1080P). If that doesn't raise performance to acceptable levels, then switch the CPU and motherboard.

This +1. The x58/950 combo is still a good setup for sure.

 

[manu2b]

^Third.