Help me decide on upgrade

sandeep

sandeep

sandeep

Associate
Joined
8 Jan 2009
Posts
743
Location
Gidea Park, Essex
I'm reviving my old custom PC after 6 months of using a Macbook Pro, turns out Mac OS X actually makes you less productive! So I'm selling my £2k Macbook and bringing back my PC build.

OK so my build is pretty dated and I'm looking at what's worth upgrading in my build that would show an improvement, can you guys help?

I have maybe around £1500 to invest in worthy upgrades.

Case: Antec 1200
CPU: Intel i7 2600K (Potential Upgrade to Haswell-E 5820K)
CPU Cooler: Antec Kúhler H2O 620
Mobo: Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P Intel Z68
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz (Potential Upgrade to 16GB)
GPU: Crossfire AMD 5850 1GB (2 GPUS) - (Could upgrade to one GTX 970)
HDDs: 640GB WD Caviar Black + 750GB Hitachi Deskstar both 7200rpm
SSDs: 120GB Intel 520 SSD + 128GB Samsung SSD (Forgot which model)
PSU: Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 850w

I will mainly be using the system for gaming every now and again, programming and watching movies. I will also like the system to be as quiet as possible.

My first decision is to strip everything out the case, remove any dust and replace all case fans with quiet Noctua fans.

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
Thoughts are,

• Still a great CPU and you have a board that can overclock it to 4.5GHz or more.
• PSU is fine.

The GFX card is weak by todays standards so should be replaced.

The case can be swapped for a "silenced" case such as a Antec P280 or BeQuiet base 800.

Maybe more RAM.
 
What's your budget?

Definitely overclock the CPU if you haven't already as that's some free performance.

Your CPU is absolutely fine for gaming so in my opinion all you'd be looking at is a GPU upgrade and maybe a case upgrade if you fancy it? But that's more of a personal choice :)
 
Thanks guys, I think I already have the CPU overclocked to about 4Ghz and left it at that.

I'll probably leave the case as it as I would just end up throwing it away then which I won't want to do as it's still a top notch case.

You guys think I should go for a GTX 970, or anything else?
 
970 is nice, there is a 290X LE from MSI thats a good price or wait for the 300 series from AMD around June time?
 
"gaming every now and again" then definitely do not invest in Haswell-E...

Personally I'd keep the CPU + Mobo they are not bad at all. I'm still on 1st Gen i7 and don't feel the need to upgrade much to intels annoyance.

I would only upgrade the RAM to faster modules, instead of simply upgrading on the basis of increasing the amount to 16GB. As that wouldn't make much difference if you don't use anywhere near the existing 8GB (worth monitoring your use when gaming or whatever big tasks you do).

With your budget then on the GPU I'd consider SLi 970 or an OC'd 980. For silence go ASUS Strixx as the fan drops to 0db on idle

If your system feels slow then its likely you just need to purge unused apps - or more drastically re-install Windows and start a fresh...

Overall you have a nice budget but I cant see any value in upgrading mobo/cpu yet. The gains are marginal unless you're only interested in getting higher scores on 3DMark etc...
Put the money to GPU power as that's what modern games are optimised for
 
Last edited:
I'm only using 8gb's of 2133 ram and it's fine for gaming. I went with 2133 over 2400 as the 2133 I got runs at 1.5v where as 2400 and up tends to run higher. If your not using your PC for anything that uses more ram than gaming then 8 gb's would be enough for now so you could leave that upgrade and if you decide to go for a cpu upgrade in a year or two you can go with ddr4 then.

I think just a new gpu and the fans you mentioned for noise will do the trick and give you a perfectly capable gaming rig.

What I haven't seen mentioned is what resolution you want to run. If 1080p then a 970 is fine but if you want to run higher wait and see what the 300 series bring and if Nvidia counter with the fabled 980 ti we keep hearing about, Once there all available then decide. Something cheaper like a 770 or 280x would keep you going until then if you can't wait but personally I wouldn't go spending money on the current high end gpu options so close to a new batch.
 
Last edited:
Appreciate the info guys, I defo will need 16GB RAM as I will be using VMWare Workstation to run a few VMs.

Here's what I'll be going for in response to your posts

EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC rev2.00 ACX 2.0 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (04G-P4-3975-KR)

Corsair Vengeance Pro Red 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (CMY16GX3M2A2133C11R)

Noctua NF-P12-PWM 120mm Silent Case Fan - PWM Pin

3 x Noctua NF-S12A ULN Fan - 120mm

Noctua NF-S12A PWM Fan - 120mm

Total: £499.92

The reason I went for the EVGA 970 was that it includes the fans dropping to 0 feature and it's the deal of the week at £281.99

What you guys think?
 
Thanks for the tip! I'm going to go ahead and order the parts and work on the system over next weekend.

Thanks for the help guys
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom