What to upgrade?

volt9291

volt9291

volt9291

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2 Feb 2006
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First I will start be listing my current system: (Its in no particular order, I just copied it from my order history)

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 940 Black Edition 3.00GHz (Socket AM2+) (Overclocked to 3.51GHz)
XFX GeForce GTX 260 "Core 216 55nm" 896MB GDDR3
Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W Power Supply
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 AMD 770 (Socket AM3/AM2+) DDR2 Motherboard
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
OCZ Gold Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 Dual Channel
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler
Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
Dell UltraSharp 2209WA 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Win 7 64bit

I feel like upgrading something as I haven't touched the system since I built it in May 09:eek: And its my birthday soon so feel like treating myself :)
That said it still seams to run games at good settings (I guess this is because of the size & res 1680x1050 of the monitor?)

I was thinking the best upgrade I could do is get an SSD? But maybe I would be missing out on the full speed because of the motherboard only being sata 2?

What would you guys recommend?
Do you think I should upgrade different parts?
 
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If you don't fancy a graphics upgrade then, personal thought, I would replace the case.
Not a fan of the Antec 300, gathers dust like no ones business, no cable management and a bit of a eye sore. (told you it got personal :p)

The best upgrade performance wise would be a new graphics card.
 
Yea you are right about the dust! but i like the case.
It only sits under my desk so a better looking case wouldn't make sense to me
IMG_0166.jpg


So even tho I can run all the games I play on high settings, you think a better graphics card would be a better option to an ssd? I cant see i would notice much improvement...
 
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R088ieS86 said:
If you don't fancy a graphics upgrade then, personal thought, I would replace the case.
Not a fan of the Antec 300, gathers dust like no ones business, no cable management and a bit of a eye sore. (told you it got personal :p)

The best upgrade performance wise would be a new graphics card.
Click to expand...

This

my vote is for the CM690 II Advanced case. I did a new build with one of those earlier this year and it was one the nicest, well designed, well laid bits of kit I ever used for less than 70 notes ( I got it on a this week special sometime in march I think)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-196-CM&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=29

Prices are higher now, but still a nice case, if you want to spend a bit less maybe go for the K62

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-005-LN&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=1447

another solid case
 
gah. my slow fingers, ignore above as you dont want a case :)

SSD I am not sure is worth it unless you are simply looking for faster load times etc, also depedning on how big your games catalogue is you could end up spedning a fortune for only a marginal icnrease ? I use a 1TB F3 for my games / data and just because I have OCD used a small 40gb SSD for the OS :)

GFX card wise you could go for something like a 6870 or a 6950 for the sub 200 mark or if you were looking for more beef a 6970. Unless you are an Nvidia man then look at something like the 560Ti twin frozr a bit more but supposedly quite good
 
Depends what games you play I guess. but your 260 will start to hit a barrier soon.
EG Skyrim is out this week and it recommends a 260 as a minimum card. And if you've ever played game with min specs 99% of the time you feel like the game deserves more!!
As above a nice 560Ti will be a nice boost: 260 Vs 560Ti

An SSD will make your system seem a bit snappier, a lot on boot and a bit on general loading of programs on it so its not a bad investment, but you will less wow'd by that than cranking games up to max :)
 
Well If i was to get an ssd i was looking to spend around £160, so looking at 128Gb. I don't have too many games on my pc, The only new game i am wanting for the Pc atm is diablo 3, so maybe that would be better having an ssd?

I have played BF3 on my pc and it ran fine imo...
 
Depends on your budget really. My SSD broke (don't worry it was old, OCZ and 1st gen) and I miss it! It was slow by today's standards but I can tell the difference in Windows and personally I'd get an SSD. For everyday stuff I think windows just runs better, and mine was 30GB so I had no programs on it just windows.

Of course GPU is also a good upgrade.

Possibly CPU/RAM/MOBO? Depends on budget, always fun and i5's overclock so well. Probably little performance wise but then you've got a solid base to later improve with GPU etc... ?
 
sorry, should have said I don't really want to spend over £200

Due to the less time i game on my pc now (have cod and other games on ps3) and the only pc game i want when its out is diablo 3, maybe i should go with my idea of an ssd, and at least its something i can take into my new system if i do a new build next year.
 
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+1 to the SSD. I dropped one an OCZ Vertex 2E in my current rig (when they were newer!) and it gave a phenomemal performance boost. Boot times are quicker, program load times are quicker and everything just seems snappier. Like you said, even though you game on your PC, people do use them for other tasks as well. IMO it's one of the best all round performance boosts I've had from an upgrade and would recommend one to anyone. Don't worry about SATA II speeds, I'm on a SATA II board and my SSD is still a lot quicker than any HDD. The only down side is that a full reinstall of Windows is often necessary. Put the SSD in AHCI mode in the BIOS before installing Windows and Windows 7 does the rest for you really. The Crucial M4 128GB SSD seems to be the one to go for at the moment.

EDIT: Who said the Antec 300 has poor cable management :P

dsc01551pd.jpg


That's an old shot of my rig when I first put it together. It's had a few changes since then. I do agree with you however that this case is a bit long in the tooth now and there are better cases available for cheaper. The cable management is nothing a good holesaw here and there can't fix though!
 
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I couldn't give you numbers but it's not the fast read/write speeds that speed up boot and things IIRC, its that the access time is lightning fast. So that will still be fast. I had a SATA II SSD and it was still pretty good. So it will limit it for sure, but whether you'll notice I dont know/don't think so.

Also if you did upgrade at a later date then the speed is there.
 
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