Need some advice for upgrade!!!

[ern88]

Hello all,

Ok, I am currently in the mids of buying new core parts for a SB upgrade. I have already bought ram. I got G.Skill Ripjaws 2x4 gig DDR 1600 ram kit for $90. I am looking at either ASUS EVO or PRO Mobo. Not sure which one. Some advice would be nice. Also I can't decide if I should get the i7 2600K or i5 2500K. I am using this mainly for gaming. Some DVD burning on occassion. I am going to keep my case which is ANTEC gamer 900 case. I have a Zalman CNPS10X Quiet CPU cooler, 2 dvd burner drives. Sapphire AMD HD5850, Creative X-FI gamer sound card. I currently have a PC Power & Cooling 610 Silencer PSU. But on the fence if I should upgrade the PSU as well. I might either by another 5850 to xfire or wait till the next series of cards come out next year. Well, any insight and advice would be nice. I am going from an E8400 CPU. 4 gigs ddr2 ram, ASUS P5K-E Mobo.

 

[ubercake]

P8P67-M Pro motherboard seems to be a good cost-effective choice for this type of build. It offers both SLI and crossfire support (8x/8x) so you have options for future upgrades. Bad part about the P67 motherboards is it's going to be hard without you going with one of the extreme edition motherboards for you to be able to use your sound card. If you use two video cards on any of the more mainstream boards, you'll cover up the slots you'd use for your soundcard. On-board sound has really come a long way, though!

If your purpose is primarily gaming, the 2500k should suffice, but if you can get the 2600k, I say go for it.

That's a good power supply, though you might require an upgrade depending on which way you go with your video card selection. The 5850 spec states 18A are required on the 12V rail (216W at max load each) so you'd need 36A just for video if you crossfire and another 10-12A for the CPU and anything else pulling power from this 12V rail (Thats around 600W required on the just the 12V rail!).

Western digital black drives are my choice for HDD on any build. I like to use an SSD for my OS/boot drive.

 

[ern88]

I currently have a 500 gig WD HD. I am also looking to add a SSD later as well. But the main thing is the SB upgrade. I could probably go without the sound card that I have now. Ya, The PSU I have is pretty good. Just wondered if it was under powered.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Best answer selected by mousemonkey.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey