Upgrading help

[Iceblade]

Hallo fellow fellow PC maniacs,
I need to upgrade some hardware and would like some ideas, advice or help from my fellow gamers on here,

I'm just upgrading the following currently:
- CPU
- GPU
- mobo
- PSU ( have a Antec 650w Trio, but think it will not be enough)
- operating drive

I'm going to spend R12000 to R15000 on this upgrade,

I have been looking at advice from the Mag for the last 3months and seems,
they would go with I5, Samsung solid state 128, top AMD ATI.
Not sure I want to pay R10000 for GPU EVER

Looking at ASUS and MSI for motherboards and GPU.


Let's get this upgrade happening......

[StarBound]

CPU an i5 will do the trick. Just look at what you want to spend but I won't go too high since and i5 is an i5 regardless. The next step might be to go i7 but then we looking at R3.5k to R4k. I am sure you can get an i5 around R2k-2.5k.

Mobo I would say budget for R1.5k-2k and see if you cant get a Z97 or Z87 whichever fits the pocket.

OS drive I see you already mentioned a 120gb ssd. I would maybe recommend the M500 Crucial over the samsung since crucial uses MLC vs samsungs TLC. But as always my highest recommendation for a OS drive or boot drive is an intel SSD but then your looking at going from R1.2k to 2K.

PSU your 650W is enough but if you must then a 750W Coolermaster GX will set you back R1.2- R1.5k.

You didnt mention ram? You can get 8GB sniper gskill 1866mhz 9-10-9-28 for R1.2k. Double it to 16GB if you really want to.

GPU is your biggest cash dump. An MSI geforce 770 gaming should set you back around R4.5k and I would say well worth it if your looking at 1920x1080 and 60fps in most games. I'm not an AMD fan but if your going lower you can look at the geforce 760 or radeon R9 270 or R9 270X. They should be around R3-R3.5k.

Ofcoarse whatever you do with the rest is up to you. ...well I suppose everything you do is up to you

Try these sites:
www.wootware.co.za
www.rebeltech.co.za
www.titan-ice.co.za
www.prophecy.co.za
www.takealot.com

[Iceblade]

Thanks buddy,
Not a radeon fan myself, never owned one, but on stats the R9290 beats the GTX770

3DMark11 Score
AMD Radeon R9 290 $369 14570
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 $310 11310

PassMark - G3D Mark
Radeon R9 290 6,339
GeForce GTX 770 6,214

[GDI_Lord]

1) Don't skimp on the quality of your PSU: You don't want a "cheap" 1400W PSU (that cost the same as a good quality 750W PSU) to pop and take out some of your other components. Also, higher quality PSUs tend to have no or very little coil whine (the high pitched sound that comes from the coils inside the PSU.)

2) How much do you care about noise? Do you play with headphones, so 60dB coming from your case won't matter, or do you game while the rest of the family is asleep so you'd prefer a completely silent PC with no moving parts whatsoever?

3) What resolution is the monitor that you're going to be using?

4) If you're going to be gaming on it, why get an SSD? For my general purpose computer that is also my gaming machine an SSD made a SIGNIFICANT difference - a day/night type of difference. Do you need fast booting on your gaming machine? Can you wait for games to start in 20/30sec after you click on them instead of 5/10sec? Would spending the difference between an SSD and the same size HDD on your GPU not be a better investment?

5) Don't skimp on your RAM. In general, speed hasn't played that big a role in framerates compared to the impact that 1 or more dedicated GPUs and CPU have. 8GB should be fine for today. I would recommend getting 16GB as it should be enough for the next few years, and when you need more than 16GB of RAM the rest of your system will probably need upgrading too.

Also, f you want upgradability/future "proofing", try to keep some RAM slots open. Why? I bought 2GB of RAM when I got my PC, and they filled both slots on the motherboard. When I wanted to upgrade later the asking price for 2x 2GB DDR2 modules was quite a bit more than what 4GB was worth to me. If I bought a 2GB stick of RAM I would've only needed to buy one 2GB stick of RAM.

6) What case are you going to be using? Does it matter to you?

[Iceblade]

Two great replies already.....


I like your views on this GDI_lord,

- I'm going for 16gb gaming RAM, 2 x 8gb sticks
- I have a great PSU now ANTEC 650W, but will test it with new setup and see if it needs upgrading, but I'm thinking it will have to get some love too
- The SSD is also on the money, quess anyone can wait few seconds more, but as a gamer .....do we want to
could get more gaming done with SSD if you do the math
- Have no idea on a case yet, maybe just keep the current old handle case and dump more money into GPU.
- Don't like excessive noise from the case, but not a huge problem for me, but should not out-noise my music

[Iceblade]

CPU

Intel I5 - 4670K

GPU

MSI ATI 9290


MOBO
Either
Gigabyte G1 Sniper Z87
or
MSI MS-Z87 Gaming MPOWER
or
ASUS MAXIMUS VI GENE


HDD
Samsung 840 PRO 128 SSD
or
Intel® 530 Series 180GB 2.5" SATA Solid State Drive

[Iceblade]

Due to budget cuts,
I needed to downgrade the memory
from:
2 x 8gb Corsair Vengeance Pro 1,866mhz
to
2 x 4gb Corsair Vengeance 2,400mhz

But think 8gb should do the job for now

[GDI_Lord]

What's the price difference between 2x 4GB 2400MHz and 1x 8GB 1866MHz?

If you're worried about upgrading later on (assuming that dual-channel memory performance will actually make a difference in your gaming life) does the motherboard support a mixed configuration e.g. 1x8GB 1866MHz and 1x 4GB 1866MHz (or even 2400MHz - it might just run at 1866MHz though.)

[Iceblade]

What's the price difference between 2x 4GB 2400MHz and 1x 8GB 1866MHz?

If you're worried about upgrading later on (assuming that dual-channel memory performance will actually make a difference in your gaming life) does the motherboard support a mixed configuration e.g. 1x8GB 1866MHz and 1x 4GB 1866MHz (or even 2400MHz - it might just run at 1866MHz though.)

R1500 more

The ATI 9290 took a big chunk from the budget, but think it would be worth it.

Seems that only difference I would feel from 16gb to 8gb, is that with 16gb there would be zero disk swapping.
But wouldn't notice it in gameplay.

If I do upgrade later, I will either sell these or get another set, run 4 x 4gb @ 2400MHZ.

[Iceblade]

Sorry, it's R1500 more for a kit.

single 8gb modules is only at 1600MHZ and R300 less than what I'm paying.

[StarBound]

I might be too late to the party but what are you playing for your ram kits? The higher clock speeds does drop off signifigantly after 1600mhz, 1866mhz is slightly faster, 2133mhz barely, and from there on its really hard to tell.

Your best bet is to get 2x 8gb modules even if they run at 1600mhz.

Why did you go corsair? They are more expensive than Gskill.

[Iceblade]

get Corsair, Adata and Transcend at cost price

[StarBound]

See if you cant get Corsairs 2x8gb even if they are 1600mhz then. I don't know what transcend has other than AxeRam and then that is expensive.

[GDI_Lord]

In general, I'd be with SB on this one. However, from what you said about what you are planning to do when you upgrade, and from the fact that faster RAM _DOES_ make a difference in some games (a few measly FPS in an F1 title or GRID or something, nothing spectacular,) but mainly about what you said about what you are planning to do when you upgrade, get the faster RAM.

[StarBound]

Reason behind going with more ram is you disable pagefile when you have an ssd. Watch dogs is the first game to hit over 8gb ram used that I know of.

[GDI_Lord]

Reason behind going with more ram is you disable pagefile when you have an ssd.

FTFY.
My workstation at work is running a slooooowwwww 5400RPM HDD, but it has 24GB of RAM. I set up a 4GB RAM drive to house the temporary file locations and also a small 16MB pagefile. I still have a page file because some programs in the stone age of computing used to not function at all without a swap file, so I just play it safe and have a small 16 meg swap file just in case.

I only have 4GB of RAM at home, so I just set my swap file to 10GB (2.5 * RAM - and yes, I know that there is debate around the "correct" size of a swap file :- ) on my SSD and away I go. I saw this article this morning: http://techreport.com/review/26523/the- ... a-petabyte
so I feel a bit better about doing so :- )

Watch dogs is the first game to hit over 8gb ram used that I know of.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

[Iceblade]

I would love 16gig to be honest and would also love fastest possible memory,
And yes this upgrade would be for gaming like 85%.

Even PC format article on upgrades would skimp on memory and go as low as 4gig for memory and spend the money on SSD and GPU.

[GDI_Lord]

8GB/16GB. either way you're going to be happy in the vast majority of cases. If you're confident that you're going to be able to upgrade later if need be, get 8GB now.

[Iceblade]

I think later I can get another 8gb pair and run it as quad setup at 2400mhz. The mobo supports till 3000mhz.

[GDI_Lord]

I see that you've updated your PC specs on your board profile. Have you set it up yet?

[Iceblade]

I wish I could,
looking at all the stuff, it's my precious.
But also doing the case now, looking at Zalman Z3 plus, but also the Z11 Plus.

And then decide if I will enter the full MOD Ninja zone again......

[GDI_Lord]

I vote for a white Nanoxia Deep Silence 1* as a case. It's silent and cool and beautiful. And yes, I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Except for the DS1, that's beautiful regardless of what your opinion is.

It costs about R1 800 with a two week lead time (when I enquired about it) from a place in the Cape. See my thread about it for more information. (I'm on my phone, can't get the link to the thread sorry.)


* Or the DS6 if you want to go REALLY big, REALLY quiet, REALLY cool and, you know, have a few extra bucks lying around.

[Iceblade]

That is awesome case, would love to see one at a LAN,
my budget on a case was R1000(basically the memory budget cut).
Can get the Zalman below that even.
http://www.zalman.com/global/product/Pr ... hp?Idx=476
http://www.zalman.com/global/product/Pr ... hp?Idx=821


Still worried about the PSU too .......

[GDI_Lord]

i5 4670K
Max TDP - 84W
http://ark.intel.com/products/75048/Int ... o-3_80-GHz

MSI R9 290X Twin FROZR
Max wattage 455W (it's the 290X at full tilt, but let's pretend it's the 290)
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6179/m ... dex23.html

CPU + GPU = 539W.
Plus 10% to be safe - 54W
CPU + GPU + margin = 593W

Mobo + RAM + SSD + HDD thumbsuck running at super ultra high power levels = 50W (and I think that's waaaay high BTW)

Total = 643W (including the 54W safety margin we added from the CPU + GPU above)

You have a 650W PSU so you should be fine.

Code: Select all

Computer running at full load:
=============================
CPU + GPU = 539W
Other     =  50W
Total     = 589W

You have  = 650W
Diff      =  61W

CPU + GPU Safety Margin   =  54W
Diff with Safety Margin   =   7W

And you're hopefully not going to run your CPU + GPU and *ALL* your peripherals at the same time, 100% of the time your computer is on. If you feel like upgrading, go for it, but I think that you're PSU is fine.

[Iceblade]

That really helped, thankd GDI !!!

I love the PSU, paid more to get the ANTEC and it has served me well.