Need Advice on PC Upgrades

[DaemonGrin]

Ok I asked this on Nexus but nada. So here it is I have a HP Pavilion p6710f http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&docname=c02628226 I've already upgraded the system with a corsair 600w power unit and a Geforce GTX 550 Ti graphic's card. I recently modded Skyrim with heavy hitting graphic improvement mods (ENB, Lush trees and grass, grass on steroids, etc) Looks amazing but it's an FPS whore. So I'm thinking I want to upgrade the AMD Athlon II X4 640 processor and memory (4gb to 16gb). I don't know much technical mumbo jumbo but I can install stuff by following instructions like a pro XD. So any advice on what to upgrade would be appreciated.

 

Thanks!

[Spartan 363]

I agree, Skyrim is a VRAM hog, but unfortunately, your current PC cannot upgrade the CPU because the motherboard BIOS on that HP is locked and would need much more effort and such to upgrade than just simply swapping the CPU.  You just really need a more powerful graphics card and a RAM upgrade.  That GTX 550 Ti is too weak for Skyrim if you plan on playing with all the eye candy mods and such.  I would suggest a EVGA GTX 760 FTW 4GB GPU as that card has the muscle to play Skyrim with all the eye candy mods without breaking a sweat.  Your PC cannot Overclock either because of the locked BIOS and that EVGA GTX 760 FTW 4GB will provide plenty of horsepower for Skyrim, even BF4 runs a cool 60+ FPS on max settings @1080p when playing 64 player matches on this card alone.  This card also has 4GB of VRAM which is VERY important and considered the sweet spot in gaming these days because of all the textures and such they use today, Skyrim needs more than 2GB of VRAm when using all the HD texture mods and the ENB's together.  That's the downside of buying these types of consumer desktops is that they are locked vs building your own from the ground up and overclocking them.

 

On the other hand, I would get a 16GB kit of Corsair RAM, the reason why I say this is because you want the RAM to all match in not only buss speed, but also latency, mem timings and such.  Your PC supports up to 16GB DDR3 1333 RAM and only supports ups to 4GB sticks per RAM slot on your PC.  Don't buy the 8GB sticks and anything above 1333 as well, it will not work and will give you headaches instead.

 

This is the only kit I found that will meet your 16GB needs and the only set that will work on your PC according to your specific PC model's specifications. 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233190

 

Here is the link to the EVGA GTX 760 FTW 4GB GPU, you won't be disappointed in this card either.  Your CPU is actually fine when 6 year old Core 2 CPU's work well when paired with the right GPU and RAM for Skyrim.  You want more than 2GB of VRAM and this card has 4GB and also will work great with your 600W PSU too.  Plus, it comes with Assassin's Creed IV and Splinter Cell game free with this card.  This card is the best price vs performance GPU when it's faster than a GTX 680 today in my opinion.  This card will cost you about the same as or even less then the CPU you are planning to buy and will make a much bigger difference than the CPU for your gaming needs.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130944

[DaemonGrin]

Awesome! I was also thinking about building or out right buying a gaming PC. I could probably build one but with my luck I would screw something up lol. I was looking at some but have no clue to the quality of the brands I was looking at I think it was a Cybertronpc looked awesome but the single review says he doesn't see how it has such a high price tag considering a couple of the components are rather enexpensive. Kinda refuse to look at alienware to hyped up and to many fanboys lol no offence to anyone sporting a hardon for them.

 

Thanks!

[Spartan 363]

I would stay away from those because they are indeed overpriced for brand recognition purposes.  I would just buy all the components separately as they are usually cheaper and it's the same or even better than the ones found in Alienwares and such.  Building PC's is fun and you learn a lot on maintaining and upgrading them, you also learn that it's cheaper to build your own vs buying a built gaming PC too.   I would also stick with Intel for your first build as the CPU has no pins to screw up installation unlike the AMD CPUs that do.  I learned a hard lesson when I bent one of the pins on my then monster AMD Athlon FX-62 CPU that cost me $1000 back in 2005, lol.  I did bend it back with precision and never again deal with AMD and plus, Intel Core i7's are better too.  I'm still rocking my old Intel i7 990x 6 core CPU and an aging MSI X-58 Pro-E mobo with 12GB of Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 2000 RAM.  Just upgrading my GPU and HDD to SSD has kept my gaming rig up to speed with the best of today.  It's about 5 years old too, lol.

 

This is my current gaming rig, the GPU(s) are a EVGA GTX 670 FTW 2GB and a PNY GTX 560 Ti for PhysX processing.  I'm going to upgrade to a EVGA GTX 760 FTW 4GB because Skyrim is killing the 2GB VRAM on my 670.  Then I will use the 670 for PhysX duty, lol.  Behold, my 5 year old PC with a few upgraded goodies built from scratch

 

 

[DaemonGrin]

Very nice. Getting a little giggity thinking about building one to be honest XD. But like I said my techie mumbo jumbo is laughable. I know I need a CPU, HDD, Gfx card, RAM, motherboard, Power unit (have it unless I go bigger but the card you pointed out seemed pretty nice), Operating System (win 7 most likely) and a case. 

 

CPU - Intel i5 (read i7 not much of a performance difference but cost more)

Harddrive - 1TB whatever? 

Motherboard - no clue

Power Unit - Corsair 600w

RAM - 16gb 

GFX Card - The one you mentioned

OS - Win 7

Case - Prolly something sick looking lol I kinda wanna be superficial on this part XD

 

Fill me in on what you think a good build would be with a budget of $1000-$1500. 

 

Thanks!

 

[sora3]

It's lucky that you're going to buy and build your own computer. Otherwise, you'll be hit with a ton of problems for it.

 

@DaemonGrin, is the $1000 US or something else? If it is US, then you're probably pretty darn loaded...

 

In any case, here's probably what I'd grab.

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 4670K - a quad core is a minimum for most games and the i5 will last quite some time until games go more then 4 cores or become HSA dependent.

 

Hard Drive: Primary Windows drive - 120GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, Games and everything else - 1TB WD Caviar Black. I've split this into two since they are two different things. The SSD is to speed up Windows. Think of storing Windows a very very fast memory. Once you've gone SSD, you cannot go back to hard drives. The downside is that SSDs usually are very expensive once you hit 480GB and up. That's why you need another hard drive to store all your Skyrim, porn, music, whatever here. The Caviar Black is the fastest hard drive you can get for a reasonable price. You can pick up what is called a Velcoraptor but those hard drives are quite expensive and not that much faster overall.

 

Motherboard: Your choice of Gigabyte Z87X-D3H OR the Asus Z87-A. Both of these boards are very solid and are from quite reputable brands.

 

Case: Corsair (Carbide 400R recommended if tall case OR Graphite 230T if you want a stealth case), Fractal Design (Define R4 for tower). Both of these are the two brands I'd go with if I was to replace my case. Just take your pick on which ones you want and make sure they fit wherever you're going to put the darn thing!

[DaemonGrin]

@Sora3 - Yup that would be US$ just been frugal this year and think it might be time to get myself something nice! Thanks for the setup I shall look into those components.

[Rayblue]

Ok I asked this on Nexus but nada. So here it is I have a HP Pavilion p6710f http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&docname=c02628226 I've already upgraded the system with a corsair 600w power unit and a Geforce GTX 550 Ti graphic's card. I recently modded Skyrim with heavy hitting graphic improvement mods (ENB, Lush trees and grass, grass on steroids, etc) Looks amazing but it's an FPS whore. So I'm thinking I want to upgrade the AMD Athlon II X4 640 processor and memory (4gb to 16gb). I don't know much technical mumbo jumbo but I can install stuff by following instructions like a pro XD. So any advice on what to upgrade would be appreciated.

 

Thanks!

 

A commercial pre-built system intended for normal home and educational use will not handle modded Skyrim. You'll require a custom-built gaming PC from the ground up.

 

The most common Tom-Dick-and-Harry build I've seen from Skyrim players/modders:

 

• Intel i-series processors
• nVidia GPUs -- 2gb of VRAM and up
• ASUS/Gigabyte/MSI motherboards
• G.Skill memory kits -- 8-16gb
• Seagate or Western Digital hard drives
• SSD drives (for the operating system)
• Cooling systems (air-cooled, mostly Coolermaster)
• Seasonic PSUs
• Mid-tower casings with provision for liquid cooling and cable management

[...0...]

I reconment AMD card much cheaper and can handle Skyrim same as nvidia.

 

Its not wise put a expensive videocard in a prebuild HP pc not worth it.

 

3GB for skyrim is enough so with AMD you safe alot of money.

 

When build a new PC always go for hightower alot better then those crampy mid towers.

 

Get a decent PSU around 650watt or up.

 

4GB vram offcorse is better for future but older cards dont support newer DX like 11.2(not yet importend no game is made with 11.2 yet eather)

 

One of better upgrades almost a must these days SSD instead of regualr HDD.

 

For OC get the K series 4770k for example.

 

But it offcorse all depend on your budget.

 

Building my own pc's for almost 15 years also with OC best way to get a decent rig for alot less money then some damn prebuild one.

[...0...]

I would stay away from those because they are indeed overpriced for brand recognition purposes.  I would just buy all the components separately as they are usually cheaper and it's the same or even better than the ones found in Alienwares and such.  Building PC's is fun and you learn a lot on maintaining and upgrading them, you also learn that it's cheaper to build your own vs buying a built gaming PC too.   I would also stick with Intel for your first build as the CPU has no pins to screw up installation unlike the AMD CPUs that do.  I learned a hard lesson when I bent one of the pins on my then monster AMD Athlon FX-62 CPU that cost me $1000 back in 2005, lol.  I did bend it back with precision and never again deal with AMD and plus, Intel Core i7's are better too.  I'm still rocking my old Intel i7 990x 6 core CPU and an aging MSI X-58 Pro-E mobo with 12GB of Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 2000 RAM.  Just upgrading my GPU and HDD to SSD has kept my gaming rig up to speed with the best of today.  It's about 5 years old too, lol.

 

This is my current gaming rig, the GPU(s) are a EVGA GTX 670 FTW 2GB and a PNY GTX 560 Ti for PhysX processing.  I'm going to upgrade to a EVGA GTX 760 FTW 4GB because Skyrim is killing the 2GB VRAM on my 670.  Then I will use the 670 for PhysX duty, lol.  Behold, my 5 year old PC with a few upgraded goodies built from scratch

 

 

 

Nice rig but x-58 is from end of 2009 and your MB is gen 1 plus some other limtations with will bottleneck your system with newer generation hardware.

 

And you mean it can handle most games of today and not todays PC'S becouse it can't hehe.

 

But thats only importend if you realy want top notch and OC performance.

 

Your MB also dont support dual DDR3 (only triple which prolly not sold anymore)and higher GHZ frequency of today.

 

Again its not an attack on your system its realy nice and great you still use it and upgrade.

 

 

[LordJerle]

You need a massive hard drive for teh pr0nz

[tallal]

Definatly 4G Vram dispay card, moved from a 1.5G card and all the stuter and slow downs vanished (I am at 2560x1600 though ).

Also the SSD, with games not installed to c:/prog.... , in own dir on the SSD maks a big diff once you have a 64bit os and >6G real ram.

 

 

 

[storm55]

I love how none of you guys actually address anything. The problem with people who build their own PC's is that they tend to think one-way. Never knowing what other people are wanting, or recommending things. Like me, I plan to build a budget. I'm using AMD and I've researched how to put the damn thing together.

http://www.logicalincrements.com/

Use logicalincrements. It's kind of biased but it displays ALL the current good parts for everything. Computers need 3.5" HDD's, and colors make are the "Best" hand-picked parts. So caviar, black, green. This applies to GPUs, and CPUs. Don't buy "gamer" shit, it's shoddy, and expensive. Only buy Seasonic for your power source unit, hell, all companies take Seasonic made PSU's and rebrand them for themselves. You don't need that much Ram, even with video editing, unless you're making a monster go for it, but it's not required. Second a good, cheap video card is the Asus Radeon r270X - avoid the 280 as it's just a repackaged HD 7870. And for fuck sakes, YOU DON'T NEED A GOD DAMN SSD, unless youre bent for time you don't need it, with 8 (or 16 for some of you) Gigs RAM you'll boot up in around fifteen seconds.

 

Power-wise you can actually NEVER use more than 430 watts. I saw a guy benchmark some beefy parts, and he only hit 350 watts. Buy a 80 bronze (whatever precious metal), certified PSU. This guarantees you get 80% of the power, all nice and clean.

 

You don't need to spend more than $1k - And that's even with Intel parts. (EXCLUDING Mouse+KB, monitor, and speakers). Make sure you get your drivers ahead of time, and know what to update. And if you must buy Windows, only get Win 7. There's reasons, but you're a fool if you get Win 8, it's expensive dogshit.

[DaemonGrin]

And if you must buy Windows, only get Win 7. There's reasons, but you're a fool if you get Win 8, it's expensive dogshit.

 

Haha! My exact reason for saying I was going with Win 7.

[sora3]

@storm55, I'd respectively disagree on some of the points that you've noted.

 

 

Computers need 3.5" HDD's, and colors make are the "Best" hand-picked parts. So caviar, black, green.

 

FUCK NO. That's one big mistake a lot of people make when choosing hard drives. Black means 7200rpm drives plus a larger cache (64MB against 32MB of most other drives) which means the HDD is able to process more instructions than other drives. Green is a VARIABLE spin speed of roughly up to 5400rpm. So in essence, it's SLOWER than the Black. Hence, the reason why the Greens are so much cheaper than the Blacks or Blues because of the slower spin = cheaper components = slower load times. Blue has a spin speed 7200rpm which puts it between the Green and the Black. Also, the Seagate HDDs all have a flat speed of 7200rpm on all drives as does Toshibas. I'd suggest you'd read all the specs for the HDDs first before writing that. Read the differences from this review: http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_blue_1tb_review_wd10ealx

 

 

 

Only buy Seasonic for your power source unit, hell, all companies take Seasonic made PSU's and rebrand them for themselves.

Nope. All PSUs use CWT, Seasonic or FSP. They all roughly have the same design apart from some specific manufacturer differences. And CWTs are quite rugged as I'm using with my Corsair PSU. Read this about why load testing is more important than just company designs: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Why-99-Percent-of-Power-Supply-Reviews-Are-Wrong/410/4

 

 

 

You don't need that much Ram, even with video editing, unless you're making a monster go for it, but it's not required.

Perhaps, but care still needs to be taken in regards to this. It is recommended to go with faster speeds than capacity since speeds are more required for gaming. And generally anything else.

 

 

 

Second a good, cheap video card is the Asus Radeon r270X - avoid the 280 as it's just a repackaged HD 7870

You're getting this fucking wrong again. The R270 IS the HD 7870. The 270X is just the HD 7870 Boost. Read this: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/R9_270X_PCS_Plus/ OR this: http://techreport.com/review/25466/amd-radeon-r9-280x-and-270x-graphics-cards OR even this: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_r7_260x_r9_270x_280x_review_benchmarks,1.html

 

Also, Asus is overpriced when compared to Sapphire or Powercolor (TUL) graphic cards. Oh, did I mention that the Sapphire are actually AMD's official board partner so they get to design most of the boards out there.

 

 

 

And for fuck sakes, YOU DON'T NEED A GOD DAMN SSD, unless youre bent for time you don't need it, with 8 (or 16 for some of you) Gigs RAM you'll boot up in around fifteen seconds.

Again, wrong. That really depends on a COMBINATION of factors such as RAM, HDD and as well as the motherboard with the CPU to some extent. Please watch this for a fair comparison:

 

 

 

Power-wise you can actually NEVER use more than 430 watts. I saw a guy benchmark some beefy parts, and he only hit 350 watts. Buy a 80 bronze (whatever precious metal), certified PSU. This guarantees you get 80% of the power, all nice and clean.

Again, read the link I have put above in regards why load power is more important. And also read this: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/corsair_cx600m_psu_review,7.html

 

 

 

And if you must buy Windows, only get Win 7. There's reasons, but you're a fool if you get Win 8, it's expensive dogshit.

To you, but Windows 8 (and now 8.1 for that matter), it contains perhaps the most up-to-date Windows needed. Don't have a graphics driver? Windows 7 defaults to 16bit colour and 800 * 600 screen size. Windows 8 doesn't have that problem as it dynamically adjusts to what monitor you have and the highest colour palette possible. Windows 7 doesn't do SSDs natively. Windows 8 does and boots faster than 7, even with a HDD. Metro is just a full screen Start Menu which you'll probably look at no more than 5 seconds. Overall, there are a lot of reasons to go Windows 8 but I'm not the one calling the shots. I suggest you'd actually play with it instead of bitching because you heard it elsewhere.

 

For all that, please go and actually look or read what I've posted. Misinformation from people like you makes me so frustrated why I even bother with this site.

[Rayblue]

I wonder if he actually assembled PCs for a living, which is what I do for years.

 

There's tons of pages that tell you to know how to build a $500 gaming PC, but YMMV:

 

https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=assemble+a+pc+for+%24500&oq=assemble+a+pc+for+%24500&aqs=chrome..69i57.7010j0j1&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

[...0...]

Funny how people believe video's and have no clue at all about SSD compare to HDD.

 

SSD is in so many ways superior its even a crime not buy one.

 

And the poster who is talking about starting up to desktop from moment i push the power buttom of my pc a regualr HD takes around 40sec on my rig to desktop then i bouth the vertex 4 OCZ SSD and it takes exactly  11 seconds. not to mention how fast it load sites or maps in a game. from one sdd to another ssd i can have a file in 450 mb + speed with a normal HD 7200 ITS 60 MB. i GOT 3 SSD in my rig and will never goback EVER to normal HDD.

 

Sure if you compare it with a prehistoric game like WoW which is build on engine from 2000? frozen thrones and with a 8year old rig SDD is no use to many bottlenecks.

 

But PC from last 3-4 years SSD is one best improvements concerning hardware.

 

[DaemonGrin]

I played with win 8 for a few minutes but seeing as it wasn't my laptop I couldn't try changing anything without being bitched at lol. Can it go to a classic layout? I did not like the scrolling screen crap? I'm really diggin' the SSD!

 

EDIT: I've also read that win 8 has a lot of compatibility issues with games? That was another determining factor for me leaning towards win 7.

[...0...]

I played with win 8 for a few minutes but seeing as it wasn't my laptop I couldn't try changing anything without being bitched at lol. Can it go to a classic layout? I did not like the scrolling screen crap? I'm really diggin' the SSD!

 

EDIT: I've also read that win 8 has a lot of compatibility issues with games? That was another determining factor for me leaning towards win 7.

 

You have a classic win7 shell yes with start button.

 

Im still on win7 ultim myself even with newest AMD 290x.

 

When you go to OC sites most still on win7 and benchmark records still from win7.

 

If games released for new dx11.1 or 11.2 then eventually maybe and i STRESS maybe i concider win8.

 

I wish linux had more games support.

[storm55]

@Sora3.

Christ. Don't be so impetuous. "People like you make me despise this community!" M-muh sekrit club! Excuse me, sunshine, the world doesn't revolve around you, I gave my opinion, naive, and obviously blunt but I tried to address the concerns of someone and you get apprehensive to defend various things, You being a big-time, all around cunt to me is no fair and you could have easily gave your opinion instead of attacking me, on a personal level as if I killed your children. Thanks for telling me that about colored hard drives, I didn't know all that, and I've read plenty on load power, plus I've been told many times XFX is shit; I guess that doesn't matter to you. RAM could be argued be argued endlessly and I never said to go with lower than 1600, but it's really out there as the speed doesn't improve dramatically, man. And I didn't spend hours painstakingly researching things, I'm so very sorry for that.. however,  Windows 8 is garbage, there's barely any compatibility for most games..so backwards compatibility, programs, I don't know about you but I like to emulate a lot of old titles on most of the old, supported consoles, plus there's a good amount of software programs that wont work as well, It just takes a lot of screwing around with to get anything working correctly, and considering how most people actually want to play games I think people should go for Windows 7 -- Don't be such a M$ shill.

[Rayblue]

I played with win 8 for a few minutes but seeing as it wasn't my laptop I couldn't try changing anything without being bitched at lol. Can it go to a classic layout? I did not like the scrolling screen crap? I'm really diggin' the SSD!

 

EDIT: I've also read that win 8 has a lot of compatibility issues with games? That was another determining factor for me leaning towards win 7.

 

If you need to get an SSD, it'll help to read some reviews. Now if you want to make it load Skyrim, an SSD between 128 to 256gb may cut it.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html

http://www.ssdreview.com/

http://www.thessdreview.com/

[EternalDamned]

The best bit of advice you will ever get no matter how much or little you spend on buying or building a pc. Routine Maintenance! Open that thing up once a month and clean out all the dust. Use canned air and a small paint brush to clean the fins on CPU and GPU if you need to. You would not believe how many times I have seen people shell out $1000+ on a shiny new computer, plug it in and then wonder why they start having hardware failures less than 2 years later even though they rarely used and never pushed it hard. All because when you open it up, you see a CPU with it's cooling fins completely clogged with dust. A PSU whose fan stopped working because of a half inch of solid dust caked inside of it!

[...0...]

Still got a XP PC and 2x win7 pc high end i can run most games past 15 years without a emulator. There all 3 in very good condition to(PCis my hobby building and OC)

[panathas]

Even though it can be intimidating at first, i suggest you build you own system. take your time and save some dough. and drop about 1800-2000 $ and be good for the next 5 years at least

 

PS its better to go for the mid-high to high end  hardware because you gonna save a lot more money for the bang instead buying an hp or delll

 

 

 

Good online places newegg and tigerdirect. ebay. i dont know if you have microcenter stores where you live at ?" they got some good deals there on procs and mobos

[brokencircle]

If you're anything like me and know absolutely nothing about building a pc.Try going to a local shop with an idea of what you want and a budget.Talk to someone that does it for a living, could save money.My local shop only charged me $75 to assemble it and load the software.Plus they told me if I ever had any problems the first year "hardware wise" they would fix it free of charge.