- Apr 17, 2013
- 19
- 0
- 10,510
Before I begin, my current rig as such:
So, with that out of the way, onto my dilemma; it's been two years since I first built my PC, and my whole reason for doing so was to be able to run every game max settings 60 frames per setting or more.
TL;DR: Hardware starting to show age, need advice on which CPU/Motherboard/Video Card/SSD to get with my $1400 (give or take $100) budget.
Up until now, everything has been smooth sailing. With my two most recent games - Grand Theft Auto 5 and Witcher 3 - and upcoming Arkham Knight, it won't be enough. With all this talk of Skylake and Zen processors coming out from both Intel and AMD as well as finding the best combination with video cards and RAM and the like, I'm not sure what to get. Come this fall, I'll have around $700 per semester extra from scholarships (based on last year's amount) to be able to upgrade my PC. From what I've been reading, it's not worth getting any current AMD processors for what I'm trying to accomplish. And considering predictions that Skylake will only receive a 5% performance gain over Haswell and leaks that Zen receiving a 40% performance gain over current AMD CPUs, is it better to just go ahead and get the current Haswell (if so, which one), or wait for either Skylake/Zen?
I do realize as of now that Zen is all speculation with a 2016 release, but I'm looking for a best guess. With the CPU comes a need for a new motherboard, which has less of an impact on performance, but does need to meet a certain requirement: I need 4 case fan ports like my current motherboard has.
Onto the video cards. At first I was looking at just getting a 970 or any after market R9 290X. Upon further research I stumbled upon this big guy. With recent reports showing that the R9 390X as well as the 980 Ti will be over or around $700, they might be completely out of my reach given my budget depending on the amount I receive. I would really just like some direction on which to pick.
And finally, my last problem is that my SSD is where I house Windows 7 and all the drivers/updates. It is filling up, with 22GB left as of now. I set all my downloads to go to my HDD which still has plenty of space, but I still find back ground files from some applications on my C: drive, which over time has really filled it up. I just need a great 256GB SSD and some advice on how to limit this issue in the future.
I appreciate any advice and thank everyone in advance!
- Princepolo
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155
Video Card: EVGA GTX770 Classified with ACX Cooling 4GB DDR5
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Storage 1: Samsung 840 Series 120GB
Storage 2: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
Memory: (2x) G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 2133
Case: Cooler Master HAF X
Power Supply: Corsair Professional Series AX860i
So, with that out of the way, onto my dilemma; it's been two years since I first built my PC, and my whole reason for doing so was to be able to run every game max settings 60 frames per setting or more.
TL;DR: Hardware starting to show age, need advice on which CPU/Motherboard/Video Card/SSD to get with my $1400 (give or take $100) budget.
Up until now, everything has been smooth sailing. With my two most recent games - Grand Theft Auto 5 and Witcher 3 - and upcoming Arkham Knight, it won't be enough. With all this talk of Skylake and Zen processors coming out from both Intel and AMD as well as finding the best combination with video cards and RAM and the like, I'm not sure what to get. Come this fall, I'll have around $700 per semester extra from scholarships (based on last year's amount) to be able to upgrade my PC. From what I've been reading, it's not worth getting any current AMD processors for what I'm trying to accomplish. And considering predictions that Skylake will only receive a 5% performance gain over Haswell and leaks that Zen receiving a 40% performance gain over current AMD CPUs, is it better to just go ahead and get the current Haswell (if so, which one), or wait for either Skylake/Zen?
I do realize as of now that Zen is all speculation with a 2016 release, but I'm looking for a best guess. With the CPU comes a need for a new motherboard, which has less of an impact on performance, but does need to meet a certain requirement: I need 4 case fan ports like my current motherboard has.
Onto the video cards. At first I was looking at just getting a 970 or any after market R9 290X. Upon further research I stumbled upon this big guy. With recent reports showing that the R9 390X as well as the 980 Ti will be over or around $700, they might be completely out of my reach given my budget depending on the amount I receive. I would really just like some direction on which to pick.
And finally, my last problem is that my SSD is where I house Windows 7 and all the drivers/updates. It is filling up, with 22GB left as of now. I set all my downloads to go to my HDD which still has plenty of space, but I still find back ground files from some applications on my C: drive, which over time has really filled it up. I just need a great 256GB SSD and some advice on how to limit this issue in the future.
I appreciate any advice and thank everyone in advance!
- Princepolo
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