Upgrade / New build recommendations for gaming PC.

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Shadowprice

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Right now I am using a AMD Phenom X4 II Black Edition 3.2ghz, 4GB Corsair RAM, not exactly sure on the exact type ram but I know it's DDR3 1600 RAM IIRC, XFX ATI 5770 1GB video card, 500GB Barracuda 7200RPM drive. I run Windows 7 64 bit edition.

Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650-Watt TX Series 80 Plus
Motherboard: ASUS M4A87TD/USB3

I'll be using the PC to play BF3, Skyrim, WoW, other Bioware games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, Call of Duty, Netflix, iTunes, Blu rays. No video or photo editing.

My budget is $1,000 max.. Saving money is always nice, but if there is some build configuration that is going to be mind blowing I will go for it.

I already have a Asus 24" monitor and I game at 1920x1080 resolution.

I don't plan on overclocking, I'm not very experienced with it and I am a rather casual user. However I refuse to purchase pre-built PCs as I am good at building them myself and I love room for expansion. I would however like to max out Skyrim and BF3, as right now I need to scale them down to medium settings to get smooth FPS performance.

My ideas that I would like to bounce off you guys is possibly a processor upgrade to the AMD Hexcore, possibly more RAM, and a better video card. I think the video card is what I am needing most.

An i5/i7 build with new mobo and video card seems tempting. If it's not going to give me massive performance I'll skip on it though.

Thanks for any input. Sorry for the repost, last one was sort of lazy.
 
Just a suggestion, feel free to edit to your liking (case,psu)

  • Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
  • GIGABYTE GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
  • G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL
  • Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive .
  • COOLER MASTER Storm Enforcer SGC-1000-KWN1 Black SECC / ABS Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ATX PS2 / EPS 12V
  • COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RS600-PCARE3-US 600W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Power Supply
  • EVGA 02G-P3-1568-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

    Total $820
 
Your best bet would be a GPU upgrade. Go for the HD 6950 2GB or the HD 7950 2GB when it comes out in a few months.

As for the CPU, right now, your best bet would be to wait for Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs to come for a cost effective CPU upgrade due to your desire not to OC.
 
I was looking at that card too. Definitely would be nice if I could get a good gaming boost out of it. I just keep getting told that sandy bridge is the way to go and my system is hampered, so its why I question it. Should I look at upgrading my processor, ram, or HD at all? Maybe a SSD?
 
I agree with Danny - the real limiting factor for you is the video card. If you upgrade that, you should see pretty good improvements in frame rates even with your existing CPU. You could also try overclocking your CPU - that's a lot cheaper than getting a new system, and the Black Edition should be easy to overclock. At the very least, I would get the GPU first and see how you like the performance, then if you still feel like it is lacking it would be easy to drop in new MB/CPU/RAM. The hexcore and more RAM aren't going to have that big an impact on your performance.
 
If you have the funds - once you go SSD, you won't want to go back. SSD will make your system overall snappier. There are decent deals every now and then around $1/GB.
 
Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.

I'm still trying to get a feel how powerful my processor is though. I'm hoping a new video card won't bottleneck my system. How does my rig honestly compare to say a i5 or i7 build? In trying to see how much longer it will last. Since the only things I really do on my PC that are physically demanding is gaming would a sandy bridge build offer leaps and bounds more performance for me? Or is Phenom still really good?
 
Xan433 said:
Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.

I'm still trying to get a feel how powerful my processor is though. I'm hoping a new video card won't bottleneck my system. How does my rig honestly compare to say a i5 or i7 build? In trying to see how much longer it will last. Since the only things I really do on my PC that are physically demanding is gaming would a sandy bridge build offer leaps and bounds more performance for me? Or is Phenom still really good?
Click to expand...

It depends on the game. An i5 or i7 could provide a significant increase in performance in games like BF3 or Skyrim, but less so in the others you mention - while the GPU upgrade will benefit everything you mentioned. If this was 6 months ago, it would probably be worth upgrading, but with Ivy Bridge practically around the corner (three months or so), it probably makes more sense to wait and see what that brings. You have a relatively modern quad core processor, so you aren't hurting all that much. In the interim, you could try overclocking the chip you have - even a 10% overclock should provide good boosts in BF3 and Skyrim, and should be as easy as adjusting the multiplier and Vcore on your chip.
 
Xan433 said:
Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.

I'm still trying to get a feel how powerful my processor is though. I'm hoping a new video card won't bottleneck my system. How does my rig honestly compare to say a i5 or i7 build? In trying to see how much longer it will last. Since the only things I really do on my PC that are physically demanding is gaming would a sandy bridge build offer leaps and bounds more performance for me? Or is Phenom still really good?
Click to expand...

A Core i5 2500K/Core i7 2600K is roughly 35% faster than your current CPU in BF3 at stock. However, if you OC that Phenom II to around 3.7Ghz or higher, the difference becomes 23%. Then again, if you OC the 2500K, the performance difference would be even greater.
 
I'm opening to OCing, my problem is I'm not sure I have enough fans in my case to keep it stable. I also don't know the first thing about overclocking, where and how I would go about doing it. I don't know clock speeds or voltage, basically I don't want to burn my system up. Lol.
 
Xan433 said:
I'm opening to OCing, my problem is I'm not sure I have enough fans in my case to keep it stable. I also don't know the first thing about overclocking, where and how I would go about doing it. I don't know clock speeds or voltage, basically I don't want to burn my system up. Lol.
Click to expand...

Just do a search for "Phenom II overclocking" over in the AMD CPU or Overclocking and Cooling subforums. As for case, what case do you have?
 
I'm using a antec. It was given to me by a friend as a hand me down when I first built the comp so I'm not sure on the model. one USB port in the front doesn't work and I had to remove one back fan because the barring was going out and it was extremely loud. So I'm running a large top fan, and my professor fan of course, the 212 cool water with thermal paste. I definitely think I need a new case if I want to dabble into OCing.
 
** Update **

Still considering doing some upgrades. I tried OCing my processor using AMD overdrive utility and I blue screened about an hour later, again I'm very amatuer at this. I don't really know what happened, temps were running at 38C~ so I'm puzzled there. I tried OCing from stock to 3.6ghz using stock voltage.. and I use a aftermarket coolmaster hyper 212 plus CPU fan. so i'm not sure what happened. I'm hoping I didn't damage my processor.

I definitely need a new hard drive. The one I'm using now is slow as piss. If I do any file transferring my entire system slows to a crawl. I have a 500GB Seagate Barracuda drive. I really want a SSD or high performance 1TB drive.

I need a new case too, for he previous reasons mentioned above.

I'm also going to need new RAM, so I'll look for recommendations there. I have 4GB of Corsair DDR3 XM3 1600mhz ram. I'm technically borrowing the ram from a friend and need to return it and get my own.

I'm finding myself only really playing WoW now lately. I've finished a character on Skyrim and a little burned out on BF3, so I'll still look at the 6950 card or otherwise keep my 5770 card as it does great on WoW.

Other then that my system seems to be fine, outside of WoW I'm a relatively light gamer and I only use my computer for basic web browsing, opening documents, and Netflix.

I'm definitely thinking I won't need a i5 after all but my big concerns are the case and hard drive. Anyone have any recommendations for the parts I said above that I could upgrade? I'm planning on doing this in mid February.
 
Last edited:
Xan433 said:
I tried OCing my processor using AMD overdrive utility and I blue screened about an hour later, again I'm very amatuer at this. I don't really know what happened, temps were running at 38C~ so I'm puzzled there. I tried OCing from stock to 3.6ghz using stock voltage.. and I use a aftermarket coolmaster hyper 212 plus CPU fan. so i'm not sure what happened. I'm hoping I didn't damage my processor.
Click to expand...
Might have to bump other voltages as well. Again, do some googling and find out what settings you need to modify.


As for the SSD, hard drive, and RAM, I recommend the following:
$44 - G.Skill Sniper F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$105 - Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SSD
$146 - Hitachi Desktar 7K1000.D HDS721010DLE630 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
----
Total: $295 plus tax and shipping

As for cases, I recommend the following:
$50 - NZXT Source 210 Elite White with Black Front Trim ATX Case
$70 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K58 ATX Case
$70 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K56 ATX Case
$80 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K58W ATX Case
$65 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K7B ATX Case
$98 - Cooler Master CM690 II Advance ATX Case
$90 - Cooler Master HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$100 - Corsair Carbide Series 400R ATX Case
$100 - Lian Li PC-7B Plus II ATX Case
$120 - Lian Li PC-9F ATX Case
$120 - Fractal Design Define R3 Arctic White ATX Case
$130 - Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl ATX Case
$120 - Fractal Design Define R3 Silver Arrow ATX Case
$133 - NZXT Phantom PHAN-001WT White Full Tower ATX Case
$140 - NZXT Phantom PHAN-001BK Black Full Tower ATX Case
$140 - Antec P280 ATX Case
$140 - Antec Performance One Series P183 V3 ATX Case
$143 - Cooler Master HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$144 - Silverstone RV03B-W ATX case
$160 - Corsair Graphite Series 600TM ATX Case
$160 - Silverstone RV02B-W ATX case
$164 - Corsair Special Edition White Graphite Series 600T ATX Case
$178 - Silverstone RV02B-EW ATX case
$190 - Corsair Obsidian Series 650D ATX Case
$230 - Silverstone FT02B ATX Case
$270 - Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW Full Tower ATX Case
 
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Danny,

I was looking through those cases and the antec performance is the one I have going off the picture. One of the bearings in the fans went out and I had to disable it. Would I be able to just replace the fan then attempt another OC?
 
Xan433 said:
Danny,

I was looking through those cases and the antec performance is the one I have going off the picture. One of the bearings in the fans went out and I had to disable it. Would I be able to just replace the fan then attempt another OC?
Click to expand...

Yes.
 
I'm still working on putting my upgrades together and just wanted to bounce an idea off you guys.

What would you think of a 6870 card vs. 6950 in performance for gaming at a 1920x1080 res. I have a $200 gift card to amazon right now and the 6870 is ~$160ish so I would literally have to pay nothing which is nice. If I'm playing mainly skyrim/WoW and maybe BF3 if I decide to pick it up again I'm trying to see the performance difference. Are either of them significant over my 5770 card?
 
Xan433 said:
What would you think of a 6870 card vs. 6950 in performance for gaming at a 1920x1080 res. I have a $200 gift card to amazon right now and the 6870 is ~$160ish so I would literally have to pay nothing which is nice. If I'm playing mainly skyrim/WoW and maybe BF3 if I decide to pick it up again I'm trying to see the performance difference. Are either of them significant over my 5770 card?
Click to expand...

With the games you mentioned, yes you'll notice a difference in performance between the HD 6950 and the HD 6870. Yes both cards are significant performance increases over the HD 5770.
 
Xan433 said:
I'm still working on putting my upgrades together and just wanted to bounce an idea off you guys.

What would you think of a 6870 card vs. 6950 in performance for gaming at a 1920x1080 res. I have a $200 gift card to amazon right now and the 6870 is ~$160ish so I would literally have to pay nothing which is nice. If I'm playing mainly skyrim/WoW and maybe BF3 if I decide to pick it up again I'm trying to see the performance difference. Are either of them significant over my 5770 card?
Click to expand...

If you are interested in BF3, I'd spring for the 6950.
 
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