Hardware Upgrades

[medic975]

Ladies and Gents,

 

I'm seeing indicators on my system which signals to me that it's time to upgrade to a new system. I've been frankensteining this one for years.

 

My current set up is 

AsRock Z68 Gen3 LGA 115 Intel 6Gb Sata USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel i5 2500k 3.30Ghz

16gb ram. 4 4gb Corsair XMS3 240 pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

GTX 690 (Which I'm less than impressed with and wish I had researched more.Was listed as a 4gb card and it's actually a 2gb for skyrim purposes)

Samsung 840 Pro 128gb SSD

12 tb of storage of other harddrive space.(This is also my work computer and I have to store a huge amount of images and videos on it.)

ThermalTake Toughpower XT TPX - 1475W SLI CrossFire Ready

 

All I'm interested in Upgrading at the moment is the Processor, Motherboard, RAM (Mainly due to the age.), and Graphics card. 

I'm playing at pretty high textures, PoutPourri ENB, HDT Armors and Bodies.

 

I'm looking at getting 4gb or up card. I like to stay with Intel and Nvidia.

 

What would be some of your recommendations?

 

 

 

 

[nutluck]

What kinds of problems are you having? I ask cause my system is roughly on par with yours. i7 processor but a bit lower ghz, less ram but faster ram than yours, and a 660Ti 2 gig video card. I have no problems running Skyrim on max settings with pretty much every graphic mod out there. I don't use a ENB though.

[medic975]

It's not just Skyrim. My issue there is I'm addicted to followers and they're some of the biggest VRAM hits out there. Skyrim plays great overall and I'm running 235 mods and 2k textures. It's mostly other system things. Overall speed and sluggishness, need a clean reinstall of windows 7. OS is starting to act wonky. Long Access times on the hard drives. Strange graphics behavior. .NET errors which are new. I've had the GPU, motherboard and RAM for working on 5 years now I think and I'm mostly just thinking it's overall system fatigue. 

 

But since I'm planning on grabbing at least those 3 I figured I'd look at getting an actual 4gb or more card. Then I can downsample as well for even better visuals.

[medic975]

Thanks,

I was considering that or the 770. The 690 works but it with games like Skyrim it only uses 1 of the 2 gpus. I'll be retaining it for

Additional monitor support though.

[nutluck]

Ah ok, though still seems like you would need a lot of followers for that to become a issue. I have had up to 3 and never had issues. I run Skyrim pretty much the same as you.

 

My next question is what is your budget? I mean there is lots of things I could suggest but doesn't do any good if they are outside your budget.

 

I personally would go with the best motherboard you can get. Then go with the best CPU. You can use your Ram and Video card for now and later upgrade them. That would be my biggest suggestion unless you have a really big budget.

[medic975]

My budget's open. I'll pick it up a piece at a time, but I can generally grab new everything over the course of 3 months. Part of it is my job allows me certain assistance on hardware because I use it for that as well.

[medic975]

Thank you, I will.

[...0...]

New intel Haswell 1150 CPU comming soon with improved boards for SSD 10GB bandwith and the refresh haswells better cooled.

 

Also future proof for next gen cpu's.

 

I can't say anything about Nvidia cards so i let that to the nvidia fans

[medic975]

Oh really? Might be I fresh install on windows and look at that when it drops.

[lordofthedread]

Avoid dual GPU cards, there are only few games that work well with them, if you have the budget go for a 770 or 780.

[medic975]

Avoid dual GPU cards, there are only few games that work well with them, if you have the budget go for a 770 or 780.

Which is why I wish that I delved deeper on the 690 reviews or just had bought a Titan.

 

Thanks for all the comments guys I hadn't kept up with the tech like I used to.

[nutluck]

For a motherboard I would check out the MSI Z87 series. Three of them made the top 10 list on several sites for best motherboards of 2013 rankings. The tended to be good to great performers for the value. Which one of them depends on your budget. I think MSI Z87 XPower is or was their top board but it is really expensive, honestly I feel to expensive for the slight increase it has over the other ones. The MSI Z87 GD65 seemed to be the best overall in terms of performance and reasonable price but it is still far from a cheap board. Then I would just get the best i7 intel CPU you can afford, still not sure the 6 core ones are worth getting over the 4 core though.

 

You will likely certainly need to get a liquid cooling system for the CPU if you don't already have one and even if you do you might want to consider upgrading it to a better cooling system.

 

After that I would look into upgrading your PS, after you know what you plan to do with the video card. Then look at the video card and possible upgrading the ram as well. The final thing I would look into is a solid state drive for you OS and games. Keep everything else on a second drive as speed is less important to the rest.

[D_ManXX2]

 

It's not just Skyrim. My issue there is I'm addicted to followers and they're some of the biggest VRAM hits out there. Skyrim plays great overall and I'm running 235 mods and 2k textures. It's mostly other system things. Overall speed and sluggishness, need a clean reinstall of windows 7. OS is starting to act wonky. Long Access times on the hard drives. Strange graphics behavior. .NET errors which are new. I've had the GPU, motherboard and RAM for working on 5 years now I think and I'm mostly just thinking it's overall system fatigue. 

 

But since I'm planning on grabbing at least those 3 I figured I'd look at getting an actual 4gb or more card. Then I can downsample as well for even better visuals

 When was the last time you performed a fresh install of windows? It's the general rule that after two years or so the program becomes so cluttered and fragmented it will begin to effect the entire PC. It could be that your correct and all you need is a fresh install of windows if you're getting close to a couple of years. I would back-up any data you want to keep and try a new install before you consider replacing any hardware, it might be that's all that is needed to keep your system running at its best. 

 

 

I did not know that. i have an old laptop i use for online internetting and windows xp is still there on it after 10 years. never once did i make a reinstall yet, but if this is necessary for windows 7 i will probably do this soon.

Since i did encounter slowness in my system not to mention it has not been detecting my internal pci Wireless adapter anymore after i did a full pc cleaning this weekend and removed all dust from the inside.

 

When you say reinstall i take you mean complete format right ?? Looks like i will have to backup my files before doing anything like that.

 

instead of full reformat i will probably just use the setup from within windows 7 and keep my data in check the only thing then is reinstall of software and drivers and everything like users and data is kept in check. This will safe allot of other work.

[...0...]

Don't matter if its XP or WIN7 which btw is better then XP(specially now with no support anymore).

 

Clean install is always best no matter what.

[Mercenary666]

If you have the ORIGINAL Win7 install disk, you might want to consider doing a repair/install instead of wiping your HDD and starting from scratch. It works like just like an upgrade but you're just going from Win7 to Win7. All your original data is preserved but a new copy of the OS is installed. I did this myself about 2 years ago when out of my own stupidity, I corrupted some components of Win7. It's been fine ever since. Check this out if you like.

 

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

 

 

Of course, if you're bogging down due to viruses, a clean install would be better.

 

Just last week I upgraded from Radeon HD 6870 x2 in Crossfire to a couple of GTX 780's in SLI. This was a big jump and it was like night and day. Overkill? Maybe, but I'm running 200+ mods with RV ENB at ultra, a gang of 6 followers, and the game is smooth as silk. My next step is to see how it runs at 5760x1080 resolution.

 

[medic975]

I've done that before Mercenary. I will do a clean install though. Haven't had time yet due to project load. I have a Thermal Take case which lets me swap out harddrives fairly easily and I don't install anything irreplaceable on the C Drive. I'll just yank all but that one and do a clean boot soon. I'm possibly going to wait another month before pulling the trigger on it all as I think I'll be able to snag the new hardware during a pause then.