Do I need a full or partial uprade?

Davey_Pitch

Davey_Pitch

Davey_Pitch

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I'm thinking that it's time to spend a bit of money on my PC and I'm wondering whether I need to go for a full build, or whether I can keep some/most of my current gear and just upgrade key components. This is what I have currently...

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge)
Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67
Asus GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5
GeIL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9
Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB (for OS, I have other drives for apps/storage)
Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI Sound Card
Corsair HX 850W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply

The main thing that needs an upgrade is the graphics card as that is horribly old now. Could I just upgrade that, or would I see a good performance upgrade from getting a new i5, motherboard, 16GB ram and a new SSD?

If I go for the new build I'd have roughly £1k to spend, but if I can spend less then so much the better.
 
You'll see barely any increase in performance with a new i5, they're not that much better. 16GB RAM is overkill for gaming and you won't see any tangible performance increase.

My advice is get a new graphics card, maybe a 290x or 980. Another SSD for programs will also improve loading times. And finally over clock the CPU if you haven't already.
 
Andreas.96 said:
You'll see barely any increase in performance with a new i5, they're not that much better. 16GB RAM is overkill for gaming and you won't see any tangible performance increase.

My advice is get a new graphics card, maybe a 290x or 980. Another SSD for programs will also improve loading times. And finally over clock the CPU if you haven't already.
Click to expand...

That was my thinking about the new processors. It'd be nice but probably not worth the cash.

I do a bit of photo editing in Lightroom and Photoshop, so I'm thinking the extra ram might be useful there. However, that's something I can easily add at any time if I'm not doing a full build.

snips86x said:
What about the 295x2 currently on offer?
Click to expand...

I'm primarily a console gamer so spending £500 on a graphics card is probably overkill for me. Something like a 970 or 980 would be a huge increase over my current GPU and still within what I'd consider a good price range.
 
A 290X LE or the 970 would be a great idea, and possibly a larger SSD if you wanted but not required
980 for a bit more longevity or wait for the new AMD cards to arrive

YOUR BASKET
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **WorldWide Exclusive** £281.99
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290X LE Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £239.99
Total : £521.98 (includes shipping : ).



What case do you have and do you have an aftermarket CPU heatsink also? You should overclock that 2500k as well :)
 
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Never been a fan of cards that need their own dedicated cooler loop, I'd go with something smaller. You could wait till the launch of the 3xx cards, but if you don't wanna wait that long then I'd suggest the 980.

But that's just my 2p, I'm sure there's a fair few put there that would pick the 295.
 
Shivy011 said:
What case do you have and do you have an aftermarket CPU heatsink also? You should overclock that 2500k as well :)
Click to expand...

My case is an Coolermaster CM-690 II Advanced Dominator Case and I've got a Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler. I'm pretty sure the CPU is overclocked a bit, though it's been that long since I messed around with it I honestly can't remember any more!
 
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