Need thoughts on upgrade

[LoKiPP]

Current build

CPU : Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20GHz
GPU : HD6980
RAM : 4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz
Mobo: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. H55M-UD2H
HDs:59GB OCZ-AGILITY2 ATA Device
977GB SAMSUNG SAMSUNG HD103SJ ATA Device
OS: w7 64bit

I am bottlenecking somewhere pretty hard. I can't play eve full screen at 1920x1080 in a big fight without getting more than 10 fps, no matter the settings. I kind of cheaped out on the motherboard and CPU and I'm sure this is the bottleneck. People with worse specs can dual box with high settings, same with BF3 when I used to play. I posted a video card upgrade in one of the stickies and I was quickly reminded its a decent card so I'm thinking about dropping some good $ money on a mobo, cpu, and memory that will last me a long time.

CPU: i7 3770k 3.5http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0388575
Mobo: P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0386886
RAM: I'm not really sure but I will post what I found towards the bottom
Case: I need suggestions, last time I bought a cheepy but this time I want to buy something with good airflow
CPU sink: I also need some suggestions for this, I won't be overclocking and I've never installed a different heatsink before. I just want to keep it healthy for a long time.

What do you guys think?

[EntroX]

honestly dont go for ivy, sandy overclocks better and thanks to ivy it will go a bit down on price, go ahead and get 16gb of ddr3 because its retardedly cheap nowadays.

regarding the case, if you dont mind the size go for a nzxt phantom, there is quite a few of us around here that have it, its extremely well built and very very silent with excellent airflow.

regarding the cpu heatsink, if you can afford the 80$ or so, get a noctua nh-c14 fits perfectly with the side fan on the phantom or a nh-d14 if you dont mind losing the side fan.

your video card should be sufficient for actual games, if you dont have an ssd you might want to invest in one, the crucial m4 series offers very solid performance and very good price per gb.

if you want a setup that will last you for a while get an i7 2700k, it will overclock better and more stable than the ivy bridge version for sure~

[kzig]

You don't mention the OS / application drive you're using - what sort is it, and how old is it? Have you checked it recently?

[LoKiPP]

honestly dont go for ivy, sandy overclocks better and thanks to ivy it will go a bit down on price

I'm not really looking to overclock, never done it and knowing me I will fuck it up. I just want it to be fast out of the box, and everything I'm reading is that the 3770k has around 1-3% on the 2770k. I am going to be doing lots of frapsing, Vegas, Aftereffects, sound production, ect ect.

go ahead and get 16gb of ddr3 because its retardedly cheap nowadays.

What speed should I go?

regarding the case, if you dont mind the size go for a nzxt phantom, there is quite a few of us around here that have it, its extremely well built and very very silent with excellent airflow.

This looks sexy as fuck, how loud is it?

regarding the cpu heatsink, if you can afford the 80$ or so, get a noctua nh-c14 fits perfectly with the side fan on the phantom or a nh-d14 if you dont mind losing the side fan.

If I'm not looking to overclock would this be overkill?

I have SSD already, but its only 60gb (seriously not even close to enough space) and I believe its one of the first gen ones and I also cheeped out on it although I still think its solid.

[Verizana]

regarding the case if you want something a bit less "in yo face lazors" i can recommend the Antec P280. For a CPU cooler a Hyper 212 EVO is pretty good. Its cheaper, easier to install and is quiet. Nothing wrong with getting ivy bridge in your case.

[Daneel Trevize]

DDR3 @ 533MHz

You mean at least 1066, right? Edit: wait I'm mixing up MT/s and MHz.

As said, how are you with drivers & OS updates? Also 'high' settings performance can vary things hugely if you just drop 1 thing down 1 notch, and that's often a result very dependant on game/application plus hardware&software setup.
Do it the other way, dial down to medium, check you have good performance, dial things up one at a time/not all up at the same time, and see what's causing the lack of return. Then that should be able to lead to what's starved (GPU RAM/throughput/CPU/storage IO/etc).

Cheaped-out first gen SSD could well be very poor outside of small volumes of random reads.

[EntroX]

honestly dont go for ivy, sandy overclocks better and thanks to ivy it will go a bit down on price

I'm not really looking to overclock, never done it and knowing me I will fuck it up. I just want it to be fast out of the box, and everything I'm reading is that the 3770k has around 1-3% on the 2770k. I am going to be doing lots of frapsing, Vegas, Aftereffects, sound production, ect ect.

go ahead and get 16gb of ddr3 because its retardedly cheap nowadays.

What speed should I go?

regarding the case, if you dont mind the size go for a nzxt phantom, there is quite a few of us around here that have it, its extremely well built and very very silent with excellent airflow.

This looks sexy as fuck, how loud is it?

regarding the cpu heatsink, if you can afford the 80$ or so, get a noctua nh-c14 fits perfectly with the side fan on the phantom or a nh-d14 if you dont mind losing the side fan.

If I'm not looking to overclock would this be overkill?

I have SSD already, but its only 60gb (seriously not even close to enough space) and I believe its one of the first gen ones and I also cheeped out on it although I still think its solid.

the case with the fans at full pelt (you can adjust the fans externally) is so quiet that i can hear my secondary 1tb hard drive spin up and down on use.

regarding overclocking, its so fucking piss easy nowadays (particularly SandyBridge) that you *cant* get it wrong, i run a 4.4Ghz overclock on my 24/7 box and i've yet to have issues.

[Lana Torrin]

Go for the fastest ram you can.. It has never hurt anything and ram is cheap these days.. (Plus when you OC the CPU it will keep up)

Other than that, im just gona say a good SSD makes a huge difference in system performance.

[Zekk Pacus]

Wrong. Memory beyond 1600Mhz shows tiny, tiny performance increases for massive, massive price gains. See here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/s...he-best-ddr3/6

What's that? Less than half a FPS difference between the best and worst? And the price difference between a kit of 2133 with good timings and a kit of 1600 with good timings?

http://www.ebuyer.com/319760-g-skill...000cl9q-16gbzh
http://www.ebuyer.com/274037-corsair...16gx3m4a1600c9

About £50. Not MASSIVE but not worth it for that tiny, tiny real world performance increase. In synthetics you might see a difference, in real world performance you won't.

[LoKiPP]

Proposed Upgrade

CPU: i7 3770k or 2700k
Mobo: P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard
RAM: Vengeance Series 16GB DDR3-1600
Case: NZXT Phantom 410
PS: Enthusiast Series TX850M 850 Watt
HS: Hyper 212 Plus Universal CPU Cooler

The current mobo I have picked has a ton of features, but there is an option to downgrade for less features (and less $).
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0388318 165$
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0387156 140$

The main difference I see is just the features, PCI-E slots and a difference in SATA 4.0/6.0 slots.

[Zekk Pacus]

Stick to the board you've got, one feature it has that they don't is an Intel LAN chip, which is driverless and generally incredibly good. Much faster than a Realtek chip. I'm generally not a big fan of ASUS' LX or LE boards, they're built to a price and you can see as much in their construction.

[LoKiPP]

What do you think about the power supply? I wasn't expecting it to be so much $.

[Frug]

What do you think about the power supply? I wasn't expecting it to be so much $.

You haven't provided the video card? But I doubt you need 850w unless you're doing SLI or something. Wait for someone who knows what he's talking about to answer more accurately, but I've noticed people love to recommend gigantic PSU's for no reason at all. It's like getting giant exhausts on a honda civic.

[Zekk Pacus]

Better to spend it than not spend it. 850W is overkill though, a 650W would do it absolutely fine.

Also, you said 6980 - do you mean 6970 or 6950?

[EntroX]

confirming a 650w would be perfectly fine, but a good PSU is always a good long term investment.

[LoKiPP]

Sorry, I have a 6870.

[Cool09]

Also get the hyper 212 evo (not plus).

Its the same cooler, except the evo has flattened copper heatpipes for better contact with the CPU.

[Raine Woot]

I happen to be running a system with a 2700k, 6870, and an m4 SSD. Can confirm they all have turned out to be good choices. I haven't looked at prices, are there still 2600k's available for $50ish less than the 2700k? Somehow all that beer money makes much more sense than an extra 100MHz, mine was only worth it due to a special deal.

edit: also, if I may suggest this PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371059

I have the 750w non-modular version and would prefer the fewer watts to so many extra cables clogging up my case. I was forced to get it by an emergency and lack of local stock.

[LoKiPP]

Ok here is my final build I am going to be picking up tomorrow



I went with the 2700k, going to try overclocking for the first time once I get everything settled. I bought two sinks because I'm giving my current computer to my brother and it runs hot. If he doesn't end up using it I am going to use it as a server or something.

Now on to the funny part. Putting on the heatsinks will be new for me. I have 'Ultra-Chill Brush-On Silver Thermal Grease' sitting right here and I've never used it. I know I have to dissolve the stock paste on the heatsink and put this on, sounds easy, to fuck up :P I guess I will go look up some how to videos but any pointers from you guys? Also any tips on cable management or in general putting everything together tips?

Last time I re-installed windows I managed to fuck up the MBR. It was stuck on one of my older drives and I couldn't disconnect them or I couldn't load windows, this was about 9 months ago. I tried doing everything to fix it last night but I just ended up rage re-installing windows last night so right now I only have a few games and applications installed, I am hoping this eases windows fear of a ton of new hardware being thrown at it.

edit: hey the motherboard is 50$ less on checkout 8)

[Lana Torrin]

Wrong. Memory beyond 1600Mhz shows tiny, tiny performance increases for massive, massive price gains. See here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/s...he-best-ddr3/6

What's that? Less than half a FPS difference between the best and worst? And the price difference between a kit of 2133 with good timings and a kit of 1600 with good timings?

http://www.ebuyer.com/319760-g-skill...000cl9q-16gbzh
http://www.ebuyer.com/274037-corsair...16gx3m4a1600c9

About £50. Not MASSIVE but not worth it for that tiny, tiny real world performance increase. In synthetics you might see a difference, in real world performance you won't.

Well done you can use Google. I was talking about your ability to overclock. One of the things you will end up doing when overlooking is ducking around with all of your timings. RAM that can do this is infinite more usefully than RAM that can't.

Also your price difference numbers are shit.