What to upgrade?

danlocke

danlocke

danlocke

Associate
Joined
30 Dec 2011
Posts
9
Hi,

I built my current setup using bits from Overclockers a little over two years ago now. I want to beef up the system a little for gaming. It is currently dual-booted with OS X 10.7 being used as the main OS and 7 on another HDD for gaming. When I built the system I used a 500GB WD Green SATA II drive for OS X and an old 80GB Seagate Barracuda SATAII drive I had lying around for 7 (the latter was meant to be temporary, but I never got round to upgrading). I've only used about 70GB on the OS X drive as I don't have too much installed and use external drives for media. I would like to buy an SSD for OS X (and clone the 500GB onto it (possible/easy?) and maybe an SSD for 7 as an OS drive, then keep the 500GB for games. I'm also tempted to upgrade the RAM, case and maybe even go crossfire with another card. Also I've recently moved the case up on my desk, would be nice to quieten it down a bit (using antec 3-speed 120mm fans atm x4) and either run without the side panel or get something with a window and invest in some nice lighting.

Specs are below; what do people recommend I do? Don't want to spend more than £2-300 on upgrades.

Cheers,

Dan

i5-2500k @ 4.0GHz
Gigabyte P67A-UD3P-B3
Kingston HyperX Grey 8GB @ 1600MHz
Sapphire 6870 1GB GDDR5 (driving a 23" ACD @ 1920x1200)
500GB WD Green SATA II
80GB Seagate Barracuda SATAII
Corsair CX600
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
Antec 300
 
is that one stick of 8gb ram or 2x4Gb ? as if you only have one stick i'd definately upgrade that so your at least running in dual channel mode..

Dump the 80Gb drive, get a 256Gb SSD and partition it to run both osx and win7, plus should have some room for your most played games on there. Just use the 500Gb to store games your not currently playing?

also sell your 6870 and buy a cheap Gtx770 £180?
 
Last edited:
Gunda said:
is that one stick of 8gb ram or 2x4Gb ? as if you only have one stick i'd definately upgrade that so your at least running in dual channel mode..

Dump the 80Gb drive, get a 256Gb SSD and partition it to run both osx and win7, plus should have some room for your most played games on there. Just use the 500Gb to store games your not currently playing?

also sell your 6870 and buy a cheap Gtx770 £180?
Click to expand...

2x4GB in dual channel already- would it still be worth bumping it to 16 as well as upgrading the card?
 
Get the best card you can afford.

You may have to do a bios update on the board so it recognizes the newer cards.
 
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