Upgrade Thoughts?

[caligrown]

It's time to upgrade my current PC for next gen titles, (AC Unity, FarCry 4, Witcher 3), thanks to DannyBui (aka Dangman) and Tiraides for helping me put my current rig together back then!

1) Gaming & media consumption
2) < $1000
3) SF, CA, USA
4) New GPU, RAM?
5) Re-Using everything else (See below)
6) Mild & Stable OC
7) 26" 1920x1080
8) Will purchase today
9) Re-Using Mobo
10) Win7 HP 64bit

Current Rig: (copied from Sig)

i5 3570k
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H
EVGA GTX 670
CM Hyper 212+
Corsair DDR3 1333MHz 8GB
Crucial m4 128GB
Seagate Barracuda 2TB
Corsair HX650
Windows 7 HP

So this is what I'm thinking of picking up:

EVGA GTX 980 SC 4GB $569.99
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GTX980-S...e=UTF8&qid=1415731398&sr=1-1&keywords=gtx+980

Any thoughts on this GPU? Should the rest of my system be good to go? (CPU,PSU?) Should I upgrade to 16GB RAM?

Thanks!

 

[tiraides]

I know that you have a cool grand to work with, but the GTX 980 is overkill for 1080p gaming. Downgrade to the GTX 970 and divert some of your money elsewhere.

You might as well upgrade the RAM before it gets more expensive, but instead of buying another 8GB DIMM, sell it and grab a 16gb kit like the Kingston HyperX Fury kit (that particular model is currently on sale). One alternative is the ever-reliable Crucial Ballistix Sport kit.

You should also improve your cooling if you want to overclock. The Seidon 120V is better than the Hyper 212 Plus at cooling, but the Hyper 212 Plus is quieter.

You may want to consider grabbing a newer, faster SSD while you can afford one. One easy choice is the Crucial MX100 512GB, which gives you plenty of room and a notable performance boost without breaking the bank. (The best performance SSDs with at least 500GB of capacity cost upwards of $300.)

 

[caligrown]

Thanks Tiraides, I went ahead and ordered the HyperX kit and the GTX 970 you recommended.

My current 128GB SSD is less than half full and doing well, and prices seem to be constantly dropping so I'll hold off for now, and my Hyper 212+ has been keeping things nice and cool.

Thx!

 

[tiraides]

No problem.

 

[caligrown]

Got the 970 and the 16GB RAM installed and all is well!

I'm about to run memtest to check for any errors on the new RAM and was wondering, is 1 or 2 passes enough? Some say to run it overnight?

 

[cyclone3d]

Got the 970 and the 16GB RAM installed and all is well!

I'm about to run memtest to check for any errors on the new RAM and was wondering, is 1 or 2 passes enough? Some say to run it overnight?

Instead of using memtest86+ which can take forever to even detect a single error, go ahead and use HCI Memtest which is much more reliable and quicker at detecting bad RAM.

You will need to run multiple copies in order to test all of your RAM.

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

 

[caligrown]

Thanks I'll use this, should I test each stick individually? Or all at once?

It looks like you can't boot off USB with the free version of this, so you can only test unused memory.

 

[chrcoluk]

Instead of using memtest86+ which can take forever to even detect a single error, go ahead and use HCI Memtest which is much more reliable and quicker at detecting bad RAM.

You will need to run multiple copies in order to test all of your RAM.

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

+1 to this.

memtest86 can run 10s of hours on ram error free that hci will detect in minutes.

 

[schmuckley]

I use Hyper-Pi 32m