Help a Girl Decide What Components to Upgrade

[suzii]

Hey ya'll, my birthday is soon and I am going to use the money my awesome friends and family give me to upgrade my PC. Realistically, my budget will be between $300 - $500 USD.

My biggest and most immediate concern is running heavily modded games like Skyrim with a goal of 40FPS. Right now, I run about 200 mods, most of them texture replacer mods, lighting mods, and body/hair/armor mods. I also use an ENB. Right now my game runs at about 40FPS but I have to turn my graphical settings down to medium and it still often crashes during fights.

Here is my current rig:

Processor: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07 GHz 3070 MHz

Motherboard: ASUS Rampage III Formula LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Video: GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

Power Supply: KINGWIN Mach 1 ABT-1000MA1S 1000W ATX / BTX SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3500641AS-RK 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Which are the components I should upgrade for the best gaming experience? I also have only stock cooling, something I need to change! But fiance forbids me from liquid cooling. Do you have a recommendations for cooling as well?

 

[DjDafiDak]

Well skyrim is a cpu heavy game, so if you wanna make it better, you should be looking into getting a stronger i5 cpu.

but most of the games, you dont really need a stronger cpu, so for them you would only need a better GPU.
with your budget, and while improving both components. you should get these two:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121656

edit: oh my mistake, your motherboard wont support the cpu i linked you
http://ark.intel.com/products/52585 get this one.

even though the best thing to do is getting a new motherboard and a ivy brdige i5 cpu, but it will be more expensive.

 

[Alain123]

I would recommend getting this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127696
And if you later get some more money you can look at the Core i7 975 Extreme.

 

[Alain123]

@DjDafiDak That CPU wont fit in her motherboard then she would also need to buy a new motherboard.

 

[suzii]

Maybe I should just save up and build a whole new rig at this point T_T And let my fiance keep this...he only plays WoW...so this works fine for him.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I appreciate it.

 

[Alain123]

MOBO: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-157-371
CPU : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=19-116-899
GPU : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

You can use this components and use your old components

New Machine:
Motherboard : ASRock Z87 Extreme6
CPU : Intel Core i5-4670K
GPU : 660TI
PSU : YOUR OLD ONE
RAM : YOUR OLD ONE

For a total of $725, but you can also use your old graphics card wich is fine and reduce the costs to $415.

 

[sam_p_lay]

The processor is actually excellent. A lot of people assume that anything newer will be better, but the gains Intel have made in the past few serieses have been minimal. The i7 950 performs near enough identically to the i5 2500 in applications that aren't heavily threaded. In those that are, the 950 will take the lead. Advancements in gaming performance have been totally stagnant since Nehalem (your 950) so there's really nothing to be gained directly.

What will help (especially heavily-modded Skyrim) is a newer graphics card. With that money you can hopefully get your hands on a GTX770. Failing that, a GTX670 will comfortably fit within your budget. Both are a huge improvement over the GTX470.

 

[Rhavi Marques]

i agree with sam_p_lay, if you want to see higher frames and less crashes i'd suggest a top of the line graphics card, and then worry about the motherboard and cpu down the road a bit, cause yours isnt bad at all. a 670 would blow your old 470 away.

 

[suzii]

Thank you all for your responses! I think what I will do is invest in a new graphics card for now and then when I can, build a new pc just for me so my fiance and I dont have to share XD