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Gaming PC Upgrade

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Moonzta

Moonzta

Registered
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Joined
Jun 27, 2014
Location
Mandurah, Western Australia
Hi!, i was planning to upgrade my PC again around christmas time, by then i will have roughly $1300-1500 and i wanted to atleast upgrade my Motherboard, memory, graphics card, case and my power supply but im not really sure what motherboard to buy or what graphics cardor where to buy it from (im in australia). Im also planning to overclock my cpu. I dont have any preference for AMD or nvidia graphics cards either.
 
You already have a 4th gen i5 and Skylake will be out probably sometime in the first half of next year. I would hold off on the CPU/motherboard/RAM upgrade til then. It will support DDR4 and (hopefully) RAM prices will have dropped by then.

How old is the power supply you have? It's likely fine, but if you wanted to replace it, Seasonic has become my go-to brand. There are other, cheaper options, it'll just depend on what the prices are where you buy from (I can't help you with that, btw).

Graphics card and case are honestly the only things I would upgrade now - Christmas. The new Nvidia cards (GTX 970 and 980) are extremely impressive from both a performance and pricing standpoint. You're look at close to double the performance of your 760 with either of them and they only cost $330 and $550, respectively. At what resolution do you game? That'll really determine which is a better fit for you.
 
I'd look at upgrading to 2400Mhz RAM when you upgrade the rest of the parts. The CPU can handle it and many comparisons show gaming perf increases with faster RAM and Haswell.

An alternative is to wait, sell your current system, and start fresh with Broadwell/Skylake in Q1 (probably) 2015. Better chipset, DDR4, more powerful CPUs... You'll still be able to get decent coin for your current parts as PC parts don't lose value that quickly.

Up to you.
 
The power supply isnt that old, i got it at the start of the year, but it also isnt modular at all, but i was going to OC my cpu if i got a new motherboard and wasnt sure if ide use too much power (im looking at buying a 980 atm) and i was gonna get some faster ram (mine only does 1333) but i dont rmemeber where i read it (mightve been somewhere here) but someone said FSP werent that reliable power supplies and i dont want to bust my parts since im relying on some of them to get money, and i was going to keep my cpu, just change the motheroboard so i could overclock it.
 
Theocnoob said:
I'd look at upgrading to 2400Mhz RAM when you upgrade the rest of the parts. The CPU can handle it and many comparisons show gaming perf increases with faster RAM and Haswell.

An alternative is to wait, sell your current system, and start fresh with Broadwell/Skylake in Q1 (probably) 2015. Better chipset, DDR4, more powerful CPUs... You'll still be able to get decent coin for your current parts as PC parts don't lose value that quickly.

Up to you.
Click to expand...
2133 is where things stopped scaling really, and the price, at least a couple weeks ago, tended to go up significantly over 2133 speeds.
 
I also think the difference was in the neighborhood of 0-3 FPS. Even if you just stayed at 1333 until the suggested Skylake upgrade, you'd only be missing out on 5 FPS. I would say that bump isn't worth more than $20-25 out of pocket. To each his own, though.
 
If i stay with what i have currently until the skylake upgrade would you recommend a new graphics card and power supply? or should i wait with those aswell?
 
It depends what kind of results you're looking for. Your current 760 isn't going to be maxing any modern game, even at 1080P. If that's something you're after then I say do the GPU upgrade now. If you're happy w your current performance, then wait for the rest of the upgrades and see what's available in your price range then.

If you're asking what I'd do, then I would upgrade the GPU now to either a 970 or a used, non-reference 290/290x (they're going for $225-250 now!).

If you don't feel comfortable with the age of the power supply or its quality, then definitely grab a new one. That's something which can be reused on part 2 of your upgrade.
 
I was looking at a 970 or 980 since they're both actually pretty cheap for their performance, but im not sure which one to go with, or which brand either, and was going to go for an EVGA superNOVA G2 850w power supply (since its on the good power supply list and its pretty cheep)
 
For a single card intel system overclocked to the moon, a 650W PSU is fine. Grab the EVGA 750W (as they do not make a G2 Supernova in 650W).
 
1080p at the moment but i play fps games so im going to get a 144Hz monitor sometime soon so im not sure if the 970 would be able to do battlefield 4 and get a high enough framerate
 
970 will probably land you in the 80s (avg FPS). 980 in the 90s. Whether that difference is worth $200 is up to you.
 
Am I the only one who believes in squeezing every last drop of performance out of a system? The same way you squeeze every last drop of liquid out of cheese? If you squish cheese I mean? I realize most people don't squish cheese but I digress...

Seriously, if you can gain 4 FPS by buying significantly faster RAM, why wouldn't you? If we're talking about the difference between 56 and 60FPS, on a 60Hz monitor, that is HUGE. No more tearing, no more jerky framerate.

Same goes for buying the best GPU you can afford. Sure, the 980 might only buy you 10FPS (if THAT) over a 970. Don't you want those 10 frames? I know I do.

I see this as a hobby first, a pissing contest second, and a fun way to pass time third. For anybody else that sees it as a hobby, I can't understand stomaching anything but the best (provided you can afford it). What's the fun in gloating to your friend that you just bought a new midrange CPU and GPU? Seriously. There's no fun in that.

Where's the sense of omnipotence and superiority with midrange hardware? It's nowhere to be found. JM2C.
 
Theocnoob said:
Am I the only one who believes in squeezing every last drop of performance out of a system? The same way you squeeze every last drop of liquid out of cheese? If you squish cheese I mean? I realize most people don't squish cheese but I digress...
Click to expand...

:rofl:

Cost is something everyone has to consider, though. You might get 10 more FPS from the 980, but what if even that ends up not being enough? At that point, you're looking at $1100 for SLI 980s vs. $700 for SLI 970s. Seems smarter to grab the better price-to-performance card and double down on it if necessary.
 
Theocnoob said:
Am I the only one who believes in squeezing every last drop of performance out of a system? The same way you squeeze every last drop of liquid out of cheese? If you squish cheese I mean? I realize most people don't squish cheese but I digress...

Seriously, if you can gain 4 FPS by buying significantly faster RAM, why wouldn't you? If we're talking about the difference between 56 and 60FPS, on a 60Hz monitor, that is HUGE. No more tearing, no more jerky framerate.

Same goes for buying the best GPU you can afford. Sure, the 980 might only buy you 10FPS (if THAT) over a 970. Don't you want those 10 frames? I know I do.

I see this as a hobby first, a pissing contest second, and a fun way to pass time third. For anybody else that sees it as a hobby, I can't understand stomaching anything but the best (provided you can afford it). What's the fun in gloating to your friend that you just bought a new midrange CPU and GPU? Seriously. There's no fun in that.

Where's the sense of omnipotence and superiority with midrange hardware? It's nowhere to be found. JM2C.
Click to expand...


By that logic its not worth building a gaming computer unless its a 5960x and 4 of the best gpus on any given day, so 980s today. Also, you arent going to gain 4 fps in a game that is running at 56 fps by switching from 1600mhz ram to 3000mhz ram, nevermind the more mainstream 2133-2400mhz ram. You will only gain 4 fps on titles runing in north of 200fps, because the difference is about 1-2%, and that is at low detail settings and low res to emphasize the effect. A game running at 56 fps, will see more like .25-.5fps gains. a 4 fps gain at 56 fps is 7%, thats the kind of gap you get going from a 290 to a 290x, or a 780 to a 780 ti, not what you get from upping your ram speed.

Its not that we dont all want more performance, its that its just plain silly to say its always a good idea to pay a 50-75% price premium for an extra 5-10% performance, or in the case of ram upgrades, a 700% price premium (ddr3 1600/70$ ddr3 3000/500$) for 1% performance.
 
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