Can I upgrade my PC?

TheGiven

TheGiven

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I have been out of the PC world for a long time.
I dont know jack **** anymore.
I want to upgrade my pc, but want to know if its maybe possible to upgrade just
the GPU?
The PC is mainly used just for 3D rendering.

This is the current spec:

Intel Core i7-3770k 3.5GHz LGA1155 Quad Core Ivy Bridge CPU

Gigabyte GV-N560OC-1GI GeForce GTX560Ti OC 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E Desktop Graphics Card

MSI Z77A-G43 LGA 1155 ATX Intel Z77 Desktop Motherboar

Corsair CP-9020002 TX650M, 650W (12v: 648W), 80PLUS Bronze Certified Modular Power Supply

CoolerMaster RC-370-KKN1, Elite 370, No PSU, Black - ATX

G.Skill F3-1600C9D-8GAB 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600MHz 1.5V CL9 Dual Channel Ares Desktop Memory

Can this motherboard take say a 1080?
Also will this case be big enough?
Can I over clock this CPU?
Can I upgrade ram in anyway? it says there 8gb, but my system info says 16gb

This would be my secondary machine, so I want power, but it doesnt need to be crazy.

Any help, or tips?
Also if I cant upgrade on this Mboard, what do you think this rig would sell for?

Thanks
Abe
 
CPU-wise, you're stuck on the 3770K. That was the highest-end chip for Ivy Bridge, but it's still pretty decent.

RAM-wise, you might have four sticks of that memory in your motherboard. You can verify this by running HWINFO and expanding the "Memory' section to see if you have rows 1-4 filled.

GPU-wise, you can slap in anything you want. If your rendering work uses CUDA, the sky (and your budget) is the limit. Your PSU is plenty strong as well.

Case-wise you are still good to go, although I would verify if you have a fan installed on the front, or not. The Elite 370 supports up to a 140mm fan in the front, and higher-powered GPUs do better with a fresh air intake.

GPU-wise there is a limit on the length of the card you can install. You are limited to cards that are smaller than 315mm or 12.4 inches long. There's still a huge amount of cards to choose from, but you may not be able to fit some cards in there.

You can overclock the chip, but Ivy Bridge at this stage is an old chip, and what may have been reasonable limits with launch silicon will change with age. 4.6GHz at 1.15V would probably be the easiest to achieve. You're also limited by RAM speed, and DDR3 support for Ivy Bridge could go up to DDR3-2666 quite reliably. Finding a kit today would require scouring second-hand forums.

What would it sell for?

The motherboard, RAM, CPU, and the cooler (if it's aftermarket), would sell quite easily for between R4000-R4500. It seems logical to want more out of it because of the i7 branding, but a Core i3-10100 today stomps all over your system for less money.

Even with the overclocking capability, Ivy Bridge is slower today thanks to Meltdown and Spectre mitigations, among other things. On a technical level, Windows 10 will run but driver support for this platform may be limited in future releases.

If you add in the rest of the components, the full build would be between R5000 and R5500. The GTX 560 Ti isn't a useful card anymore, and the most value is in the case and power supply. And storage.

This system would sell pretty fast at R5500.
 
Last edited:
CataclysmZA said:
CPU-wise, you're stuck on the 3770K. That was the highest-end chip for Ivy Bridge, but it's still pretty decent.

RAM-wise, you might have four sticks of that memory in your motherboard. You can verify this by running HWINFO and expanding the "Memory' section to see if you have rows 1-4 filled.

GPU-wise, you can slap in anything you want. If your rendering work uses CUDA, the sky (and your budget) is the limit. Your PSU is plenty strong as well.

Case-wise you are still good to go, although I would verify if you have a fan installed on the front, or not. The Elite 370 supports up to a 140mm fan in the front, and higher-powered GPUs do better with a fresh air intake.

GPU-wise there is a limit on the length of the card you can install. You are limited to cards that are smaller than 315mm or 12.4 inches long. There's still a huge amount of cards to choose from, but you may not be able to fit some cards in there.

You can overclock the chip, but Ivy Bridge at this stage is an old chip, and what may have been reasonable limits with launch silicon will change with age. 4.6GHz at 1.15V would probably be the easiest to achieve. You're also limited by RAM speed, and DDR3 support for Ivy Bridge could go up to DDR3-2666 quite reliably. Finding a kit today would require scouring second-hand forums.

What would it sell for?

The motherboard, RAM, CPU, and the cooler (if it's aftermarket), would sell quite easily for between R4000-R4500. It seems logical to want more out of it because of the i7 branding, but a Core i3-10100 today stomps all over your system for less money.

Even with the overclocking capability, Ivy Bridge is slow today thanks to Meltdown and Spectre mitigations, among other things. On a technical level, Windows 10 will run but driver support for this platform may be limited in future releases.

If you add in the rest of the components, the full build would be between R5500 and R6000. The GTX 560 Ti isn't a useful card anymore, and the most value is in the case and power supply. And storage.

This system would sell pretty fast at R5500.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the fantastic and comprehensive reply. I'm working in blender so, Cuda cores are king. So a 1080 will fit the board and the power supply will be sufficient?


Although I am itching for a ryzen thread ripper.
 
R4000 for CPU, ram and mobo, on Gumtree, and junkmail maybe else where closer. 2k.TX PSUs is like first gen corsair PSUs, over 10 years old same with regards to the gpu, there aren't much value in those either. Both GPU and PSU is likely well beyond their expected life expectancies.

You would be hard pressed to get more then 3k perhaps, 3.5k for the entire system. Guestimates are way off. :D
A full haswell system with a 256gig SSD and 1060GTX budget b85 board and 4460 i5 CPU sold for 5k on carbonite another was a 4470k,z87 and 16gig ram and that still only fetched 3.5k. 5k for this system, not going to happen, sorry
 
Last edited:
TheGiven said:
Thank you for the fantastic and comprehensive reply. I'm working in blender so, Cuda cores are king. So a 1080 will fit the board and the power supply will be sufficient?
Click to expand...

It should be sufficient, yes.

You could scratch that itch pretty soon if you have enough budget for a system upgrade this year. Ryzen 4000 series CPUs should be popping out next month, and that will bring down the prices of the existing 3000-series chips nicely.

wizardofid said:
You would be hard pressed to get more then 3k perhaps, 3.5k for the entire system. Guestimates are way off. :D
A full haswell system with a 256gig SSD and 1060GTX budget b85 board and 4460 i5 CPU sold for 5k on carbonite another was a 4470k,z87 and 16gig ram and that still only fetched 3.5k. 5k for this system, not going to happen, sorry
Click to expand...

It's been a while since I scratched on Carb to get a feel for second-hand systems, but you're right. R5k might be reaching a bit.
 
CataclysmZA said:
It should be sufficient, yes.

You could scratch that itch pretty soon if you have enough budget for a system upgrade this year. Ryzen 4000 series CPUs should be popping out next month, and that will bring down the prices of the existing 3000-series chips nicely.



It's been a while since I scratched on Carb to get a feel for second-hand systems, but you're right. R5k might be reaching a bit.
Click to expand...
Look system is actually still pretty fine for most development purposes and should do okay with games once you add a newer GPU and another 8gig of ram.The PSU is definitely not going to cut it, pretty old. There is going to be some bottle necks with the GPU and the older pcie slot, even the ram, but nothing spectacularly bad.

In a pinch , new PSU, GPU and extra ram, would do the trick, games would work decent frames at med settings or so.
Iam pretty scared of that PSU, that is definitely the first thing that needs to go.

edit
I see that it is the tx650m PSU that is from 2017, so should be okay the first gen 650 is from 2013.
 
TheGiven said:
This is the current spec:

Intel Core i7-3770k 3.5GHz LGA1155 Quad Core Ivy Bridge CPU

MSI Z77A-G43 LGA 1155 ATX Intel Z77 Desktop Motherboar

1. Can this motherboard take say a 1080?
2. Also will this case be big enough?
3. Can I over clock this CPU?
4. Can I upgrade ram in anyway? it says there 8gb, but my system info says 16gb

Also if I cant upgrade on this Mboard, what do you think this rig would sell for?
Click to expand...

1. Yes, but with your CPU you will not get the full benefit of a 1080.
2. Check the case & gpu specs.
3. Yes, how far depends on your cpu cooler.
4. Yes, you have 4 dimm slots so if you have two spare you can add some more sticks.

Instead of spending money on an old platform it might be better to flog the cpu/mb/ram/gpu and upgrade to something newer but that all depends on budget.
 
wizardofid said:
The PSU is definitely not going to cut it, pretty old.
Click to expand...
This was a CWT design that is still sold today with a few tweaks, so I don't think it would be that bad. It certainly hasn't had to work hard at all up to this point, and everything up to the fan was designed for an expected operational life of ten years at least.

Seeing as OP is just doing rendering work using CUDA libraries, I don't think there'll be any significant bottlenecks. And it is PCIe 3.0 x16.
 
CataclysmZA said:
This was a CWT design that is still sold today with a few tweaks, so I don't think it would be that bad. It certainly hasn't had to work hard at all up to this point, and everything up to the fan was designed for an expected operational life of ten years at least.

Seeing as OP is just doing rendering work using CUDA libraries, I don't think there'll be any significant bottlenecks. And it is PCIe 3.0 x16.
Click to expand...

Edited my post as I didn't see the "m" tx650m is from 2017, which is fine the normal tx650 is from 2013, with our load shedding and brownouts and what not, it is risky still :D I Think the TX had 6 years, and the one higher up 10
 
TheGiven said:
I bought this system in 2012 so I dont think either of those psu specs are right.
Click to expand...
So old TX650 then, would definitely get a new one, especially if you get a new GPU, capacitor ageing is around 10%-20% a year.That was a double design if I remember correctly, nothing spectacular but good build quality, and good output overall. Definitely lost some wattage over the years, new GPU might cause some stability issue especially if you going to use a card the requires extra juice.The bigger question do you have a workable budget ?
 
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