Combining Light Gaming and Audio Engineering Build

[JEB2]

I am looking to update my current system. I enjoy occasional gaming (planning to pick up Bioshock: Infinite) and my wife is a audio recording engineer (uses Nuendo and ProTools). She has been having trouble with my current computer so I am looking to make some upgrades. I could use some advice to make sure I am putting my money in the right place.

First should I go ahead and build an Ivy Bridge comp or wait on Haswell?

What would you suggest based on what I have and what I am currently thinking?

Current build:

CPU- i5 -750 lynfield
Motherboard- MSI p55m-gd45
RAM- 2x2gb Gskill ECO 1333
(already purchased Ripjaw X 2x8gb 1600) this may have been a mistake because I don’t think it is compatible with my MB but haven’t tested yet.
GPU- Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
PSU- Antec EarthWatts 650
SSD- OCZ 120 Vertex
HHD- Samsung 1TB 5400rpm
Case- CoolerMAster HAF 922
CD Drive- Lite-On 24x

I am hoping to reuse:
Case
PSU
GPU
New RAM

Plan for new Purchase:
CPU- i7 3770k
CPU Cooler- Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
Motherboard- Gigabyte Z77x U3H
SSD- Samsung 840 120gb
HDD- Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200rpm

Does this seem like a balanced and decent performance setup?
Big concerns for me where upgrading ram and CPU for my wife to use her recording software. She has been maxing out and crashing the current setup.
Thanks for any advice and opinions

 

[thesupergeek]

you may want to wait till haswell comes out, but only with the purpis of being able to buy ivy bridge components cheaper. The main advantage of "haswell" CPU's is greatly improved integrated video, plus a little speed boost, but with the stuff you will be doing it does not matter all that much especially if you will be using non-integrated graphics anyways. you will see a little bit of a bottleneck on that gpu with the new cpu, but you can pick up a knew gpu later if you really need an upgrade.

 

[TheBigTroll]

you can probably wait but if you cant, give me a budget and ill get started

 

[JEB2]

Thanks, for my budget I am looking at $1000 high $600 low and was planning on spending somewhere around $800. The 2 biggest things I am concerned with is CPU and increasing my RAM.

Do you really expect much of a drop in prices after Haswell come out. I am guessing MB prices might drop some.

And for my last build I bought everything from Newegg but now I live near a MicroCenter so im hoping to use that to my advantage.

 

[TheBigTroll]

you can re-use most of your build. all you really need to buy is the CPu, CPU cooler, motherboard, and GPU

get this
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NdOG

-GPU comes with bioshock. save your money on that
-CPU is 229.99 at micro

 

[JEB2]

Thanks for the advice. I went to microcenter this morning and picked up:

CPU- i7 3770k for $229
Cooler- Hyper 212 Evo for $29
SSD- Samsung 840 120gb for $99
HDD- Barracuda 7200rpm 1tb for $74

And I am ordering the Motherboard (Gigabyte UD3H) from Newegg.

The only thing I didnt do was upgrade the GPU. I think I might hold off on that until it becomes an issue.

Another question about setting this up. Can I use the new ssd as my primary drive and my old SSD to load all of my programs (games, Protools, ect..) and also keeping my old HDD as an additional overflow storage? Or will my comp be slowed down during normal processes due to randomly trying to access the older hard drives? If I try this setup anything I should look out for?

Thanks

 

[TheBigTroll]

why did you get the 840 non pro? its pretty much the lowest end sata 3 SSD out there. there are cheaper SSDs such as the sandisk ultra plus that perform a fair bit better for 10 bucks cheaper. id return it if you arent going to be charged a return fee

yes you can do just that