- Jan 6, 2009
- 88
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I'd like to spend some money and upgrade my PC. Here's my current set up:
i7 920 clocked at 4Ghz on air
EVGA GTX 295
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
150 gb velociraptor as my primary drive. Secondary is mostly irrelevant.
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD4P LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Iel Motherboard
Dell 20” 1600x900 monitor
My budget is around $1,000. But I could probably be convinced to spend more. Yes, I know that I don't NEED to upgrade, but I still WANT to upgrade.
Here's my thoughts:
CPU: I can't really do much as far as upgrading the cpu so I'll leave it alone for now. I've considered doing a full water cooling set up but that's going to blow half of my budget and what do I really gain? Best case scenario I reach 5Ghz. Worst case I gain another 100mhz and determine that my chip has reached it's limit.
Video card: I'm currently considering an SLI 560 Ti or SLI 570 set up.
Memory: Regardless of the other upgrades I choose I'll probably add a second 6gb kit. For the price there doesn't seem to be any reason not to?
HDD and motherboard: I want an SSD. But my motherboard only supports 3Gb/s SATA. So it seems like to really take advantage of the SSD's speed I would need to upgrade my motherboard as well which is going to really increase the cost. I'm also still using Vista so I'd like to upgrade to 7 at the same time I upgrade my HDD.
Monitor: It seems like to really take advantage of the power of my computer I need a decent monitor. I'd really like a 16x10 monitor but they're much more expensive. Which is completely ridiculous.
What would you spend the money on? I usually do most of my shopping on newegg but it's important to note that I have a microcenter 30 minutes away.
i7 920 clocked at 4Ghz on air
EVGA GTX 295
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
150 gb velociraptor as my primary drive. Secondary is mostly irrelevant.
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD4P LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Iel Motherboard
Dell 20” 1600x900 monitor
My budget is around $1,000. But I could probably be convinced to spend more. Yes, I know that I don't NEED to upgrade, but I still WANT to upgrade.
Here's my thoughts:
CPU: I can't really do much as far as upgrading the cpu so I'll leave it alone for now. I've considered doing a full water cooling set up but that's going to blow half of my budget and what do I really gain? Best case scenario I reach 5Ghz. Worst case I gain another 100mhz and determine that my chip has reached it's limit.
Video card: I'm currently considering an SLI 560 Ti or SLI 570 set up.
Memory: Regardless of the other upgrades I choose I'll probably add a second 6gb kit. For the price there doesn't seem to be any reason not to?
HDD and motherboard: I want an SSD. But my motherboard only supports 3Gb/s SATA. So it seems like to really take advantage of the SSD's speed I would need to upgrade my motherboard as well which is going to really increase the cost. I'm also still using Vista so I'd like to upgrade to 7 at the same time I upgrade my HDD.
Monitor: It seems like to really take advantage of the power of my computer I need a decent monitor. I'd really like a 16x10 monitor but they're much more expensive. Which is completely ridiculous.
What would you spend the money on? I usually do most of my shopping on newegg but it's important to note that I have a microcenter 30 minutes away.
as mentioned above, SLI/Crossfire is an option, but there are drawbacks to this as well, such as microstuttering and some games do not support it, etc. That's a decision only you can make, and if you are thinking about going that route, i would recommend you research this until you feel completely comfortable. I've had friends with issues in SLI recently and i don't suggest these setups for the average gamer anymore. 
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