Upgrade Advice
Want a minor upgrade, video card more RAM maybe, CPU i'll consider depending on how much it will set me back. So some advice from you guys on what parts I should upgrade to notice any difference, would be greatly appriciated. Also want to be prepared for the Oculus next year...budget around $600- $700
What I have at the moment ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Motherboard Intel Core i5 2500K GTX 680 GPU (GV-N680D5-2GD-B) G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB ST2000DL003 Silverstone Strider Plus 850W ST85F-P |
05:23pm 29/06/15 Permalink
for $600-700 you'll notice almost no improvement if you change anything except for maybe your video card.
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06:35pm 29/06/15 Permalink
Motherboard, biggest advantage gained from an upgrade in bang for buck.
Just on the PCI-E bandwidth improvements is leaps and bounds over the last couple of years vs older kits. Went from an ASUS Extreme III to an Extreme IV and almost doubled my frame rate with 2x 7970 in crossfire @ 5760x1080p |
06:40pm 29/06/15 Permalink
OCZ drives used to have reliability issues. I don't know if that has changed but I would probably still stick to a Samsung personally.
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06:41pm 29/06/15 Permalink
If you are aiming to be Oculus ready... start with their minimum specs
NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater 8GB+ RAM Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output 2x USB 3.0 ports Windows 7 SP1 or newer So for your price range you can either do nvidia 980 or nvidia 970+some ram. |
07:07pm 29/06/15 Permalink
My advice would be not to upgrade now for something that is coming out next year.
Your system should handle most current games fine, you are better off putting that money in the bank and maybe adding $20 a week or something to it then when the oculus actually comes out use the money to upgrade then. Spending $700 in 9-12 months time will probably get you $1400 worth of gear today. |
07:56pm 29/06/15 Permalink
Your system is fairly well balanced at the moment. If you upgrade your CPU then your GPU will hold it back, if you upgrade GPU than it is likely your CPU will hold it back (depending on the game).
To upgrade CPU you may need to get a new MOBO. So a 4690+mobo will cost at least $350. A decent mid range GPU will cost about $250-350. So that alone is looking to be $650. You'll probably want to upgrade to 16gigs of ram too, gaming systems are starting to benefit from having that much, that can wait tho 8gigs is still plenty good. Unless you have poor frame rates in the your favorite games I would wait until you need to upgrade and save your money. |
08:06pm 29/06/15 Permalink
looks good change the SSD drive to samsung or cruical
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08:16pm 29/06/15 Permalink
Cheers for all the advice guys. What is the fastest cpu for this socket(1155) by the way? Did it finish on the i7-3770K?
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08:22pm 29/06/15 Permalink
I had exactly the same setup.
All I upgraded was to a GTX 970 and SSD, pretty happy with it. I might look at getting an i7 soon. Make an update if you do get one so I know what its like :) |
08:36pm 29/06/15 Permalink
I am also thinking of upgrading my CPU and Mobo.
Its i5-2500 too (socket 1155). Is there not much of a difference between my 2500 and say Intel Core i5 4590 3.3GHz 6MB? Its the same Ghz but I assume that there is more going on there than just the fact it is the same speed. Everything else in my case is alright. |
02:04am 30/06/15 Permalink
if everything is still kicking along well, video card, and maybe a little more ram
also, getting rid of that green drive, things will load and run much better. that said, not like that current setup isn't going to be ok imo, I would be more keen to save a little extra scratch and do an upgrade when the new intel chipset drops, and DDR4 |
10:19am 30/06/15 Permalink
Here's the CPU Supported list for the MOBO
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z68%20Extreme4%20Gen3/?cat=CPU |
10:24am 30/06/15 Permalink
