Guild Wars 2

I got my build in late 2010, and it has served me well.

Nvidia 470 1200 Vram
Intel i7 950 3.0 ghz
Asus Motherboard
12 gigs of ram
2x Corsair 128 SSD in raid zero

Now the SSD is failing, and and I want a new case because the one I have is too noisy with the fans.
I’ve been thinking about if I should upgrade the video card or the CPU to get better performance in GW2.

But then I discovered that my motherboard cpu socket is 1366. A standard not used anymore. So not only would I need a new CPU but a new motherboard, and probably a new aftermarket cooler. suddenly it has become really expensive.

But I read somewhere that CPUs have not progressed very far, and that my CPU is still good. I read that I should try and see if I could overclock my CPU to 4 GHz and get a corsair cooler solution in the H hundred series.(ive never done water cooling before), and then instead focusing on getting a GPU.

What do you guys think? is it worth it at this point? I’m afraid my motherboard will be too old as its almost 3-4 years old. I thought that maybe I should just use my money on a playstation 4 and not try and upgrade my computer. Advice please!!

Rather than get a new case, just get a new set of silent fans. You can just overclock the i7 950 if you have the cooler and the board supports it and if you’re willing to learn how. Your RAM is absolutely fine. Seriously. Spend 2,000 dollars on RAM and spend 30 dollars on RAM the only difference you’ll see is what it looks like. Almost no performance difference in that regard.

If your SSD is failing well we both know the answer to that. GTX 470 is fine enough for this game most settings on high.

You could grab a Corshair H60 or H80i since those fit great in 120mm fan slots and then look up overclocking your CPU and board combo. I think it’s worth it.

The least money spent to get better performance in my opinion would be cleaning the computer regularly of dust and crap, defragging, minimizing process task use, optimizing. All of this being free.
For money spent, an H60 cooler or H80/H80i whichever you want for the CPU to overclock and if you wanted to go a bit further, an extra 200 to 250 on something like a GTX 660TI. Some people will say GTX 760 but a 660TI is just about as good.

Same advice for the fans. Or buy a fan controller and tune it to your acceptable levels.

Heck, even after simply buying a GTX 660TI I doubt you’d get anything less than fairly enjoyable performance if you’re not getting so already.

[Edit]
Your SSDs might not be failing, they might just be slowing down, something that happens over time with the reading and writing to them. I refresh them with PArted Magic using Secure Erase to get ‘fresh-out-of-box’ performance and it works literally instantly on SSD and it’s top speed once again. I wouldn’t doubt that your SSDs might have a little bit of life left in them.

In regards to SSD’s, dont fill them up, try leave atleast minimum of 25% free space.

As for ur CPU. There was a good performance jump from 1st to 2nd generation i series CPU’s , but from then on (2nd to 3rd to 4th) there really wasnt much imporvment.
That said if u dont feel like spending them oney for a new motherboard board, CPU, and cooler then try overclocking.

Your GPU is fine, the 470 is still good enough to handle GW2.

While I can’t address your SSD issues (I don’t trust them enough to use them, yet), your motherboard, CPU & GPU are fine. Give the applications Avelos mentioned a shot, you don’t really have anything to lose.
If you are looking to improve performance; I would advise you install an old style 1TB drive and move your swap file as well as most of your applications to it. Based on what I have read, you really don’t want Windows swap file on an SSD.

The video card could very well be a fairly cheap upgrade path. Although what you have is still decent. I doubt it will make much of a difference in Guild Wars 2 at this point in time however until they move some more of the action off of the CPU.

Also just to clarify with Parted Magic if you try that, it will delete everything off of the solid state so be sure to back everything up. I clone my SSD to a spare hard drive, secure erase, and clone it back. Works no problem.