Friday, November 7, 2014

To upgrade the PC or upgrade the car ?

The last upgrade that went in to the PC was the graphics card I bought nearly 2 years back. In today's standards 2 years is a hell of a lot of time to keep using a graphics card, though I am going to stick to this for a while as I have no plans to upgrade the monitor resolution. The casing has seen many upgrades (perhaps a downgrade too) and it has sheltered the components for 6+ years straight without seeing one major upgrade; the cpu. I bought the E6750 in 2008 February for 25k hoping to keep it for at least 3 years. Anyways the priorities started to change slowly as I bought the first car in 2011. The PC had to take a lower place in the priority list. But hey! this is the gaming season. Call of duty Advanced Warfare is already here, and FarCry 4 is around the corner, perfect time for the long due cpu upgrade. The present cpu has seen its heydays and sadly doesn't have enough grunt to run the latest AAA titles.

I did my home work and figured with the budget I am allocating I can get some non K 4th gen i5 cpu with probably a B85 motherboard. Here I am going to skimp on the motherboard as there is no point spending on a high end one since non K cpus can't be overclocked no thanks to Intel. This would cost me close to 40k. I will be using the existing Ram which I upgraded few years back when the motherboard went kaput.

When I come to think of it, 40k, just for the sake of playing a couple of games this year, is it really worth to spend that much? On the other hand I could spend that money on the new car and take care of the suspension. The front suspension needs attention, probably 2 new shocks and some bushes here and there. I can say for sure the front left shock is a goner as it doesn't make the sound it is supposed to make when you bounce the car several times. Japanese KYB shocks cost close to 10k each, since you should change shocks in pairs it would set back 20k. Add the cost of bushes, labour charges and alignment charges and it will come close to 40k. I could go the cheap route and repair the shocks locally for 7k a pair but I have no faith in them. You should always try to get the genuine or the equivalent OEM parts at least for the critical components.
So the burning question is what should I upgrade?