Upgrading five year old build

[THAVICIOUS1]

Hey guys i am a currently following tom's hardware over the years and finally decided to be apart of the community
for the first time ever, i am currently getting ready for this generation of gaming (Direct X 10/11 era) my system
is a last generation Direct X 9.0c build, this is what i am asking i posted the future specs of my computer at
the bottom of this thread really i am going to re-build my system this week or next week.

This is what i will be running very soon:

Upgraded to
RAM: 4GB Corsair RAM
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
HDD(s): 1: 1TB Western Digital HDD HDD 2: Western Digital 500GB HDD 3: Seagate 300GB HDD
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5
Motherboard: ASUS M4A79XTD EVO (ATI Crossfire board)
Processor: AMD Athlon II 2.7GHZ triple-core processor (overclocked TBD)
Soundcard: Soundblaster X-FI Xtreme Music
Power Supply: Antec 750 Watts Power Supply
Heatsink: Zalman CNPS 7500 Cu LED 110mm (Blue LED)

As we are in the Direct X 11 era will most games like Crysis run on my system
i played it on what i have now and it seems to be a exciting game even
playing on with low settings.

I just hope everything works fine i purchased new hardware every month
i would of bought everything together but i don't work anywhere and
i am on disability which sucks.

Oh and the last question is, will i be able to unlock a fourth core with the motherboard
that i have? Someone told me i could, i hope they are right and didn't make me
buy the processor in my list for nothing.

Thanks in advance
i am looking forward to staying apart of the community.

THAVICIOUS1

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

With unlocking cores, that's never a guaranteed thing, however, good news for you is that right now, triple cores are still good for gaming.

It looks ok to me, I would say if you have not purchased the soundcard, you may want to hold off. Lately onboard sound is actually very good. Like me, I use onboard sound, and mine is labeled as hi defintion 7.1 I think. It's not bad for gaming, or in general.

 

[asteldian]

Only things I would adjust if you have not already purchased, is changing the CPU to the Athlon II RANA x3 440 (it runs at 3.0ghz and is well priced). Like mentioned above, unlocking is no guarantee, but that is ok because 3 cores is the sweet spot for gaming anyway

I would also change the RAM to G Skill Ripjaws (1600mhz, CL7 and usually a good price)

You seem to have a lot of HDDs, I personally would just grab a 1tb Samsung Spinpoint F3.

What resolution do you play at? The money saved on getting just one HDD could allow for a more powerful GPU.

I also would not worry about getting a sound card.

None of these changes are very significant, just some tinkering that may improve the build a bit.

Also, a 750w PSU is more than you will need even in an XFire set up, of course it does leave you lots of room for upgrades. Otherwise an XFX 650W PSU would do.

 

[THAVICIOUS1]

Ah thank you for your help man, well that is so good to hear, cause everytime i upgrade my computer a month later something else is the latest and.... you know how that goes lol But as for the soundcard i am recycling hardware it's going into my new build its brand new still, and still looks like new even with a few dust furies on it.

Oh well hopefully the processor won't get outdated fast i do not like upgrading unless i have to, and i never really re-installed a processor before even if i do sometime far in the future, do i have to re-install W7?


Thanks again.

 

[THAVICIOUS1]

Only things I would adjust if you have not already purchased, is changing the CPU to the Athlon II RANA x3 440 (it runs at 3.0ghz and is well priced). Like mentioned above, unlocking is no guarantee, but that is ok because 3 cores is the sweet spot for gaming anyway

I would also change the RAM to G Skill Ripjaws (1600mhz, CL7 and usually a good price)

You seem to have a lot of HDDs, I personally would just grab a 1tb Samsung Spinpoint F3.

What resolution do you play at? The money saved on getting just one HDD could allow for a more powerful GPU.

I also would not worry about getting a sound card.

None of these changes are very significant, just some tinkering that may improve the build a bit.

Also, a 750w PSU is more than you will need even in an XFire set up, of course it does leave you lots of room for upgrades. Otherwise an XFX 650W PSU would do.

1440x900 is my native screen resolution, i got an Acer AL1916W monitor w/ 16:10 aspect ratio.
Well i wish i would of waited i went on another tech forum and guys recommended most of the hardware
and i was just sticking to the brands that didn't let me down 5 years ago.

 

[asteldian]

At that resolution the 5770 is plenty powerful enough, a more powerful card would not be of much use. So no worries there.

All the parts you have picked are good quality so no worries about that, the only things I mentioned are slight tweaks, nothing that will make or break your system which is asolid build

 

[THAVICIOUS1]

Awesome thank both of you guys for the help, and just think i was worried about buying a second 5770 for crossfire, oh well i can cross that out and buy something else like a new BD-ROM drive it would be awesome to have, upgrading from DVD-ROM/R/RW to BD-ROM/R/RW drives would be such a breeze, kbowing you have like 20GB of space on a disc. Hopefully the drive i have are IDE/PATA drives.

Hopefully they will work with Windows 7 and not have problems i have heard one customer say that the Mobo i have, they had problems trying to get their IDE/PATA drives to work Hope this is newer hardware fixed so the drives can work better or whatever the problem should be.

Thanks again guys
these forums rawk.

 

[asteldian]

I would hope your drives are SATA rather than IDE because SATA is a faster connection and does not have the horrible fat ribbon cables that IDE use. IDE is a dying breed.

Its good to have a motherboard that can Crossfire as a second 5770 may be great in the future if you end up getting a bigger monitor, but for now it definately is not worth picking up a second card as you wont need it

 

[THAVICIOUS1]

I would hope your drives are SATA rather than IDE because SATA is a faster connection and does not have the horrible fat ribbon cables that IDE use. IDE is a dying breed.

Its good to have a motherboard that can Crossfire as a second 5770 may be great in the future if you end up getting a bigger monitor, but for now it definately is not worth picking up a second card as you wont need it

Yeah i know, i really want to get a Blu-ray drive parallel is so old and slow,hopefully i won't have trouble getting those drive in my
chassis, i have an Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case. Hope the serial cables are long enough, it may though i just never seen a
long SATA cable before.