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$1200 Upgrade

L

Lycidas

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 22, 2010
Messages
237
Hello all. I'd like to spend about $1200 on an upgrade for my computer. I'll be taking the best components and transferring them to the upgraded box and taking some old components and putting together a 'secondary' computer. See the image for a nice chart.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming & light video editing
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$1200 - tax + shipping included.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Cleveland, OH (microcenter down the street)
4&5) 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.
I own all components listed here:
ckh50.jpg

6) Will you be overclocking? no.
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?1900 x 1280 (23")
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? This week. or next if someone convinces me otherwise.
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. Would like Crossfire//USB 3.0
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit? No.

Build thus far:
$120 - NZXT Crafted Series ATX Full Tower Steel Chassis - Phantom Black
$205 - Dell UltraSharp U2312HM 23" IPS LED LCD Monitor - 16:9 - 8 ms
$145 - ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77
$280 - Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz LGA 1155 Processor
$140 - Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - OEM
 
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It might be cheaper for you to get the mobo from Microcenter and the OS from Newegg as Microcenter is knocking $50 off the total costs when you purchase any socket LGA 1155 mobo with the Core i7 3770K. In addition, since you're not overclocking, you don't need such a high-end mobo. You should be fine with the Asus P8Z77-V LK or the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H.

In addition, do you really need to upgrade this PC or need a secondary PC? In gaming, you're really not going to notice that large of a difference between your current CPU and that Core i7. In addition, you said "light video editing" so you're probably not doing enough video editing to justify the costs of that i7 3770K + mobo upgrade. To justify the costs of the i7 3770K upgrade, practically 75% of the time you're using the PC it's involving video editing.

So from what you've said so far, unless you have someone other than yourself that needs that secondary PC, I don't see a good reason for you to upgrade the CPU and mobo. If you want a gaming boost, just spend the money on faster graphics cards.
 
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I'm not expecting a huge boost in my gaming performance, but I would like to just grab some new components and essentially separate my processes. I often play more than one game at a time (I know it sounds strange) so I could have up to 4-5 games running at any given time, all having different processes working. I could drop my processor to a lesser i5, but then video editing would probably be a bit laggier.

Anyway, the most video intensive game I play would be Skyrim, which my 6950 handles just fine. I'll look into the mobo you suggested and see what microcenter offers then update the thread. Thanks again Danny!

Edit: The Gigabyte board doesn't support Crossfire, so that's out. I'll grab the mobo from Micro center and the OS from Newegg
 
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I'm not sure you understand video editing. It wont "lag" like you say. It'll just encode the video in less time with the i7. The difference in time between an i5 and an i7 isn't that much. Hence the reason why "light video editing" isn't really worth the i7 cost premium. If you were doing a LOT of video editing, then the time you'll save encoding the videos a little faster would benefit you.

Also running 4 - 5 games at the same time sounds a bit retarded, unless you are playing some sort of MMO where you need separate instances of the game running for multiple characters. If not that, then that's just wasting resources when a single instance of the game will undoubtedly run better (I'm thinking you're running Skyrim and BF3 at the same time, one minimized while the other you're actively playing)

I also second what Danny_Bui says. I'm rocking an i7 870 and I don't need to upgrade to a SB or a IB processor; neither the i5 or i7 setup.

If you really need a secondary PC, then lets focus on it's primary use and build a computer specific to it's needs. Pretty sure you can get by without having to upgrade that CPU/Motherboard on your main rig. Transferring that GPU to the secondary, while upgrading it on your primary as you'll see the biggest performance increase with a GPU upgrade over a CPU upgrade in terms of gaming. I'd also opt to get a bigger SSD so you don't have to do much swapping with game installs.
 
Then you better tell Gigabyte then because according to their website, it does:
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4144#ov
Click to expand...

Ah, I hit DS3H not D3H. Ctrl+F failure.

Also running 4 - 5 games at the same time sounds a bit retarded, unless you are playing some sort of MMO where you need separate instances of the game running for multiple characters.
Click to expand...
Yep. I typically have 2-3 clients of an MMO open, then will switch to TF2/BF3. At times will leave them idling while switching to Skyrim or something. With my current build, I don't really notice even if it is retarded but I figure I might as well build a separate box and put high end games on one, low end games on another.

Unfortunately I already have the 120GB SSD as I received it as a gift.

Perhaps leaving my current CPU/mobo combo and upgrading my GPU is the best way to spend the $1200.
 
Lycidas said:
Yep. I typically have 2-3 clients of an MMO open, then will switch to TF2/BF3. At times will leave them idling while switching to Skyrim or something. With my current build, I don't really notice even if it is retarded but I figure I might as well build a separate box and put high end games on one, low end games on another.

....
Perhaps leaving my current CPU/mobo combo and upgrading my GPU is the best way to spend the $1200.
Click to expand...
Yes it is. Considering that you have that many games, VRAM is gonna be problem. So go for the GTX 670 4GB or GTX 680 4GB. That'll handle your multiple gaming just fine.
 
Danny Bui said:
go for the GTX 670 4GB or GTX 680 4GB.
Click to expand...

So assuming I go for the GTX 670 4GB ~ $460
and I get the monitor ~ $200

I'll have a 6950 2GB, 4GB RAM, and a spare monitor lying around. That just makes me want to go for an i3 build with the remaining $600. Would that be too insane to ask? Something like:

$100 - Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit OEM
$80 - Core i3 3220 3.30GHz LGA 1155
$109 - MSI Z77A-G43 LGA 1155
$75 - Corsair Carbide Series 300R Black Steel
$55 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W PSU
 
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Lycidas said:
Ah, I hit DS3H not D3H. Ctrl+F failure.
Click to expand...

Actually, the GA-Z77-DS3H does support CrossFireX. It does not officially support SLI because NVidia will not certify any motherboard that runs its dual slots at unequal bandwidths for SLI.
 
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