Upgrade Time Incoming!!!

[Spangles]

Hello gentlemen of general hardware,

I make my way to you, from GD, to ask for your advice. I am currently running a slightly budget & bung together rig, the specifications are as follows.

AMD A5800K 3.8GHZ APU
8GB Ram
MSI 7850 Twin Frozr 2gb
Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H Motherboard
XFX Pro450W PSU
1 x 500gb HDD, 1 x 1TB HDD, 1 x 128GB Samsung SSD
CoolerMaster CM690 II Advanced Case

Now, I am looking at investing money into my system over the next month or so, rather than blowing it all up the wall on drinking, change of life style and all that! The way I see it, I can have circa £500 in a months time to upgrade the system.

I am giving genuine consideration to moving over to Intel, and teaming up a 4670K, Corsair H100i for cooling, MSI Z87 GD65 & a new PSU to be Haswell compatible too.

The month after, I shall upgrade the graphics card, most likely to a MSI Radeon R9 280X so the card & motherboard should match, to provide a nice looking red & black theme. This leaves me with the problem that my case is currently of a blue theme, well the lighting anyway. Would you reckon I should just change the fans in the case for something red? Or look into moving up to the Storm Trooper which I believe comes with a red light theme already? I am also looking to get a bit less noise from my system too, as it is currently quite audible, so is the Trooper better for noise than the CM690?

Thanks for any hints, tips and advice. Not only helping me with an upgrade, but also getting myself back on track.

Thanks again,

Yours, Lovingly,

Spangles

x

 

[Idleman]

You could look at swapping out your case fans or getting a noise dampening kit.
But first I would look in the case to see what is making the most noise.
Likely culprits: Psu, fans( you could try adjusting the RPM) and Gpu. What cooler are you using?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Foam Silencing Kit - Cooler Master 690 II Cases £24.98
Total : £28.90 (includes shipping : £3.26).

 

[Spangles]

The cooler is the standard one that came with the APU, which I do believe is not meant to be the quietest, but once I upgrade and get the H100i, then that won't be a problem. I can live with the noise for now, but the case & graphics card wont be until a month after I get the other parts. My case at the moment does have a window on it, will the sound dampening not get in the way of that? Also, bit fed up of the fan mount on the clear panel as well, great if you want another fan on there but if you don't then it just looks a bit ugly.

Perhaps if I was to remove the case fans, replace them with red LED fans, and then mount another red one onto the window too? Will that help to illuminate the inside of my case at the same time do you think? A nice red tinge to the whole system would be quite nice with the motherboard & graphics card.

Also, for the 280X, will I be able to get a nice back plate for it? This has been my first build for some time that I currently have, and having to see the back of the pcb on the card is not pleasing to the eye.

Edit - The system will be used for all manner of entertainment, and will hopefully run Rome 2 as well as possible, do you think it will be alright? Is it worth going to 16gb? I know not many, if anything, use 16gb, but worth asking.