Looking to upgrade to get towards 4k!

PSGamer · 21 Nov 2015 at 13:44

Greetings all,

I built a computer sometime last year with your advice (Thanks Stu!) and now I'm looking to venture further down the rabbit hole and if possible, get into 4k territory. Here are my current system specs:

Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle
Asus Radeon R9 290X ROG Matrix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive
NZXT Source 340 Midi-Tower Case - Red Window
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 2x4GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
Corsair CMPSU-600CX

Would getting into 4k territory (ie. playable 4k) be as simple as going crossfire with another card and improving my power supply to cope? or would more drastic actions have to be taken?

I see that the 290x seems to have been 'retired' from OCUK's store (Unless I'm not observant enough!) so what would you recommend? Ram, Graphics and PSU upgrade?

Thanks in advance! I know I'm in good hands here!

~Mike

Borealis · 21 Nov 2015 at 16:41

If you do go down the crossfire route, then you'll need a bigger PSU, probably 850W. 8GB RAM should be fine, but if you fancy getting 16GB (and can afford it), then go for it.

The R9 290X was replaced when the R9 3xx series came out. I've got so confused with AMD's naming structure, I can't tell you which one is equivalent to the 290X - it may be the 4GB R9 380.

Alternatively, you could stick with a single high end card i.e. 980Ti or Fury/Fury X. For playable 4K (what do you consider playable), you may need to dial down a few settings on a single-card, even with a 980Ti/Fury X.

What's you potential budget?

PSGamer · 21 Nov 2015 at 18:39

Hey, Thanks for the reply.

Well I'm looking at £600-700 ish in total WITH a 4k monitor. I would rather go for dual GPU as I think that would be a cheaper option. I don't expect constant 60 FPS on ultra setting but still fairly high FPS on medium/ultra.

I play things like Assassin's Creed, Fallout 4, WoW (I know this isn't graphically intense!) If that helps at all.

Thanks!

~Mike

Borealis · 21 Nov 2015 at 19:08

Unfortunately, I can't tell you what the exact equivalent to the 290X is. Crossfire support can be lacking though.

Without access to the Members Market, if you went second-hand you'd be dealing with a famous auction site!

You can get cheap 4K monitors, but I have no idea how good they are. £600-700 isn't an unreasonable budget if you can track down another 4GB 290X and a cheap-ish 4K monitor.

BTW due to lack of space I'm using a 1280x1024 17" monitor at the moment!

PSGamer · 21 Nov 2015 at 21:07

Thanks for the info!

The thing i'm slightly worried about is heat... 290x are notoriously hot and I dont know how ideal it is to have 2 of them aircooled! Any advice on this? Thanks.

Borealis · 21 Nov 2015 at 21:40

2 GPUs get hot, it doesn't really matter what they are. Yes the 290X is a notoriously hot card, not quite a room heater but it is hot.

As far as I know, there wasn't a 290X reference design - i.e. nvidia style blower. I can't remember if OCUK did a custom version that was reference cooled. TBH, that reference version (if it was a 290X) was pretty much aimed at the custom watercooling market - full cover blocks tend to only work with an OEM reference PCB design.