Upgrade Advice Request

B

BladeOfAnduril

n00b
Joined
Mar 20, 2010
Messages
22
Hello all,

My rig is getting a little long in the tooth. I'm looking for the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade I can get utilizing exiting components.

Here is what I have currently:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 (AMD3+ socket, supports up to FX-8370 CPU)
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 630
RAM: 8GB DDR3
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 460 FTW edition
HDD: System drive: 250GB WD VelociRaptor
Storage: 2TB WD Black
PSU: Corsair 850W
OS: Windows 8.1 x64

Again, the goal is the biggest performance gain for the least $$.

I was considering a GTX960, but there are a few concerns (which would probably apply to any GPU upgrade) - the current motherboard is only PCI-E v2. I figure I'll also need a CPU upgrade so as to not further bottleneck the card. If I can avoid it, I'd prefer to retain the motherboard for budget reasons, but if that's going to be a major choke point I'll reconsider.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? - Casual gaming, general use.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included? ~$400
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible. Doylestown, PA, USA
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need. GPU, CPU, motherboard?
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model. Motherboard(?), GPU, RAM and hard drives listed above.
6) Will you be overclocking? Maybe, probably not.
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it? 24" 1920x1080
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? ~month or 2
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc. - No particular requirements
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit? Yes, Windows 8.1 64bit

What do you guys advise?

Thanks!
 
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Definitely upgrade to 6core FX
Save/scrounge more money and just grab a 970

You'll be okay with pcie 2.0
 
PCI-E 2.0 is perfectly fine.

Grab an FX 6350 and an AMD R9 290.

Those two pieces are probably your best bang-for-your-buck.
 
BladeOfAnduril said:
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? ~month or 2
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You're planning too early since hardware pricing and availability can change in as little as week. So if you want up-to-date specific hardware recommendations, please come back when you're 1-2 weeks away from buying the parts and ask for advice then. horrorshow's recommendations are more than likely not going to be solid recommendations two months from now.

Also, the PCI-E 2.0 won't really hurt as long as you don't get too high-end of a video card. As for a possible CPU upgrade, what games are you planning on playing? At current pricing the 8370 is a total rip-off.

In addition, what case do you have? Which Corsair 800W PSU do you have?
 
Dangman said:
You're planning too early since hardware pricing and availability can change in as little as week. So if you want up-to-date specific hardware recommendations, please come back when you're 1-2 weeks away from buying the parts and ask for advice then. horrorshow's recommendations are more than likely not going to be solid recommendations two months from now.

Also, the PCI-E 2.0 won't really hurt as long as you don't get too high-end of a video card. As for a possible CPU upgrade, what games are you planning on playing? At current pricing the 8370 is a total rip-off.

In addition, what case do you have? Which Corsair 800W PSU do you have?
Click to expand...

Generally I play things like CS:GO, Lord of the Rings Online, Skyrim, definitely Fallout 4 when it comes out. I'd like to be able to run this all on max settings.

I have a Rosewell ATX mid tower case. The PSU is actually 850W. It's the CS850.
 
BladeOfAnduril said:
Generally I play things like CS:GO, Lord of the Rings Online, Skyrim, definitely Fallout 4 when it comes out. I'd like to be able to run this all on max settings.
Click to expand...
You don't have the budget for that.
BladeOfAnduril said:
I have a Rosewell ATX mid tower case. The PSU is actually 850W. It's the CS850.
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Which Rosewill case? As for the PSU, ouch. In that case, we better make sure that the GPU is relatively low powered.
 
OK

here goes

Crucial 256GB SSD boot drive $100
http://smile.amazon.com/Crucial-MX1...UTF8&qid=1433493920&sr=8-1&keywords=256GB+SSD


AMD 8 core $140
http://smile.amazon.com/AMD-FD8320F...e=UTF8&qid=1433493367&sr=8-4&keywords=AMD+CPU

Sapphire R9 280 $140 after MIR of $40
http://smile.amazon.com/Sapphire-Ra...ie=UTF8&qid=1433493432&sr=8-1&keywords=R9+280

$380

Since you have 8GB and your board supports a FX series this is a pretty good upgrade

adding a r9 290 increases your video card cost by $120 and you WILL need a beefier PSU and that will run you $100+
 
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you 'should not' need to upgrade the psu. Pretty sure that is the 850W 80+Gold one?

CPU would probably top out at about 200W the R280 probably top out at around 350W with overclocking and 100% usage. leaving you with about 100W to spare. should be more than enough the rest of your basic components.

Add in SLI/Crossfire then look at a new one.

If you do plan on getting a new PSU look into the GTX960/70 video cards. they require less power in general than the AMD 280/90 series. so add the price of the PSU and whatever 280/90 you where getting and see if it is near the price of a gtx970 then decide..

then again the big bonus to buying another PSU is you would have a spare :)

I agree a 280 should be more than enough for most 1080p games at higher (but not max) settings.
Double check me on this as i'm not a AMD CPU user.. I think you could use the FX-6350 6 core.. save a few bucks and power as well.
Also agree whatever SSD you can afford, Tiger, newegg, amazon all have sales all the time.
 
CPU is almost low enough to be replaced first. Replace that followed by GPU. PSU should be fine as is RAM.
 
Dangman said:
It's a so-so quality PSU that worse than previous Corsair PSUs in that price range.
Click to expand...

maybe but something like a FX-6350 isn't going to take more than 220W running 6 threads at 100% at stock

and something like a R280 isn't going to go over 310W at stock

so say 550W you still got plenty of wiggle room left for other components.
 
Yeah Dangman, I think you're being a bit picky here. He's not going to run it anywhere near full load. It will be 450w worst-case.

I would agree with your concerns if he bought an FX 8-core PLUS an R9 290, but he lacks the budget for that.
 
defaultluser said:
Yeah Dangman, I think you're being a bit picky here. He's not going to run it anywhere near full load. It will be 450w worst-case.

I would agree with your concerns if he bought an FX 8-core PLUS an R9 290, but he lacks the budget for that.
Click to expand...

The thing is that he's planning this build so far in advance that his upgrade could very well include just that.

With that said, let's table the PSU discussion for now until the OP is finally able to buy upgrades.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I'm really not that concerned with getting cutting edge stuff when I make these purchases. I'm not a serious bleeding-edge gamer or anything. I only make major upgrades every 4-5 years or when failures occur.

If the PSU ends up being an issue, I'll replace it. I'm probably sticking to nVidia, so at least a GTX960. I'm still weighting if the additional cost is worth the additional performance of a 970. At this point I have no plans to add a second monitor (my wife would not abide that much desk space being taken up) and I have no plans to do 4K at all. 1080p is good enough. With that in mind, would it change your recommendations for a GPU? I'm guessing that eventually the GPUs will reach the point where graphic improvement will be maxed out for a single 1080p monitor and the only real gains will be if I were to move to multi-monitor and/or 4K (excluding future versions of DirectX, etc...). I'm not sure if they have reached that point yet, but I have to guess they are getting close.

I'll take a look into doing the CPU first. I'm limited by what the motherboard can support anyway, so I don't think I run much risk of something better coming out.
 
GTX 960 is fine for 1080p. In fact I just upgraded my GTX 460 1GB to a 2GB 960, been loving it. After doing the research, I found that the 4GB cards do absolutely nothing, so the 2GB is the best buy.

GTX 970 will give you more years between upgrades, and at $310 it's a lot harder to make that decision. But you won't be missing much at 1080p with the 960. Only so high you can go

Can max-out Borderlands 2 with max physx, and can run BF4 all high with 2xmsaa. About the only game that it can't max-out is GTA 5 and Witcher 3, and both of those are pretty close to max.
 
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yeah GTX970 will give you a bit more time between upgrades and do 1440 no problem cause while 1080 is fine now in 2 years it may not be.
GTX960 also takes less power.

If you got the extra budget i'd go with a 970.
But if you got that budget you can go with a 960 and upgrade another component and probably be just as happy with video performance in the short term.

But still since your waiting a bit.. don't be sold on nvidia quite yet.. wait and see what AMD is going to push out in that time before you make a final decision.

regardless which ever you choose will be better :)
 
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