Purchased prebuilt mid tier gaming PC, looking to upgrade to the next level.

[MCap2]

I recently got, a Lenover Erazer x510 and I really like it, its fast and great but occasionally there are a few hiccups/lag while performing multiple high usage tasks simultaneously. Full screen gaming with max 1080p settings, chrome, skype, spotify, word ect. The computer currently has 16GB ram 1TB HD with 8GB SSD and an intel i7 4770k. Given these specs and whatever you all know about Lenovo PCs what should I be looking to do, do I want SSDs in Raid 0, do I want better a graphics card or 2 of them? Or a 32GB ram kit? Suggestions would be spectacular and any help would be massively appreciated when it comes to aftermarket product selection.(I'm relatively new to PC Gaming) Thank you guys!

 

[Anonymous09]

Your computer doesn't have an 8gb ssd, it has a single SSHD, or otherwise known as a hybrid drive. If you want true ssd performance, you'll have to buy an SSD. Otherwise, the only other thing you could potentially upgrade is the gc, maybe a 970. But everything else looks good, the 4770k is still one of the best so I wouldn't touch that. If you want recommendations on what to buy, give us a price point.

 

[logainofhades]

An actual SSD, and a graphics card upgrade would be all you really need with that system. Everything else is pretty good. You may want to hold off with the GPU upgrade though, as Nvidia's next gen is not far off. In the meantime, just turn some settings down a bit, like shadows, or AA.

 

[MCap2]

Thanks for your help so far guys, my budget is flexible in that as long as i feel like im getting something that is worth the money i dont need ultra high end but bang for the buck is the key. Are there faster/bettdr brands of ssd you can reccomend? Also would the hdd be usable as an external drive or something? How would i even go about transferring everything i currently have to the new ssd?

 

[logainofhades]

After you get the SSD, and transfer your OS partition to it, you can format that partition, and use it as extra storage internally. Sandisk Ultra II are good budget choices, followed by Samsung 850 evo. Wouldn't go below a 240gb. Samsung comes with software to transfer your OS. Sandisk has a way on to do it also. Both come with instructions on how to do it. You will probably need to buy another SATA cable, but those are pretty cheap.

 

[MCap2]

So i was reading some reviews on this exact pc online and someone suggested this: installed two 256 GB SSD's and setup a RAID 0 array. I installed a 300-watt power supply that is dimensioned identical to a hard drive, so I installed the power supply in the extra hard drive bay below the DVD burner. Now having an extra 300-watts, I bought two NVIDIA GTX 970's, one powered by the stock x510 power supply, and the second with the add-in 300-watt power supply. I bought a $8 SLI Bridge, and setup the two GTX 970's in SLI mode.

How difficult/expensive would this be to pull off?

 

[logainofhades]

SSD's really don't benefit much from Raid 0. Just get a single drive. Not sure about that add on PSU either. Not all games scale well, with SLI, you would be better off just getting a single, fast GPU.