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$900 for My Upgrade & Son's PC Build

KankanKankan Member UncommonPosts: 55
I would like to update my PC a bit and I need to build a PC for my Son's, both are used just for gaming. My PC runs fine except I am noticing a lower Frame Rate now and some lagging in newer games. I tend to play MMO's and FPS for the most part as do my son's. I run my games in 1920x1080 and would like to do the same on the other pc. I have $800 - $900 to spend between the two, I could squeeze more if I needed to but that involves the wife. 

First my PC.. this is what I'm running currently. Just looking for any upgrades that would be best bang for my buck.

*1 x CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready 
*CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC ...
*1 x XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI 
Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support ...
*1 x Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
*1 x AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-
Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX
*1 x G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual 
Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL8D-
*1 x Western Digital WD Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" 
Hard Drive -Bare Drive
*1 x ASRock 890GX PRO3 AM3+ AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX 
AMD Motherboard

Build for Son's - Gamer Only
Looking for recommendations.

Thanks

Comments

  • BenezettaBenezetta Member UncommonPosts: 94
    My first priority would be to get new RAM.  It doesn't matter what components you have, your system will always suck if you have only 4 gigs of lower speed RAM (my apologies but I'm telling it like it is).  I would recommend going to Newegg and getting 16 gigs of 1600.  Secondly I would get a 240 GB  SATA drive and move the operating system and the main games to it and use the remaining harddrive for the rest of the programs and storage that you need.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347

    The good news is that you've got some decent parts, so you'd probably be happy with the results of a simple video card update to roughly double your graphical performance:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161426

    That would leave around $700 for your son's computer.  If you've already got peripherals for it, and just need a case and everything that goes inside it, that's enough to build something decent.  If you have one computer now and need to make it two computers, meaning all new peripherals for the son's computer, then $700 would be tight enough that you'd be better off leaving your computer as is and putting the whole $800-$900 into building a single computer.

  • KankanKankan Member UncommonPosts: 55
    Originally posted by Kankan
    I would like to update my PC a bit and I need to build a PC for my Son's, both are used just for gaming. My PC runs fine except I am noticing a lower Frame Rate now and some lagging in newer games. I tend to play MMO's and FPS for the most part as do my son's. I run my games in 1920x1080 and would like to do the same on the other pc. I have $800 - $900 to spend between the two, I could squeeze more if I needed to but that involves the wife. 

    First my PC.. this is what I'm running currently. Just looking for any upgrades that would be best bang for my buck.

    *1 x CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready 
    *CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC ...
    *1 x XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI 
    Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support ...
    *1 x Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
    *1 x AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-
    Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX
    *1 x G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual 
    Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL8D-
    *1 x Western Digital WD Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" 
    Hard Drive -Bare Drive
    *1 x ASRock 890GX PRO3 AM3+ AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX 
    AMD Motherboard

    Build for Son's - Gamer Only
    Looking for recommendations.

    Thanks

    No peripherals needed on either build, looking to keep it upgradable for the future. Also, is my current mobo going to work if I wanted to pick up an AMD FX 8350 in a couple of months. Son's PC needs to be from scratch, no splitting up current pc. 

    Thanks 

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1199279

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1218494

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151256

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231550

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416550

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161426

    You get two of the video card:  one for yourself and one for your son.  That comes to $913 including shipping, before $33 in rebates.  The rebates bring it back under the stated $900 budget, so hopefully your wife will be fine with that.

    Having two of the same video card means that you'll have the option to someday upgrade both computers by moving both video cards to the same computer in CrossFire and buying just one new higher end card.  That doesn't automatically mean you should do that, but it will at least be an option.

    -----

    As for upgrading the CPU on your current computer, that depends on whether AsRock has released a BIOS update for it.  You'd have to check with them.

    For future CPU upgrades, you'll be pretty limited no matter what you get today.  Richland is lower end (what you'd buy in two months if you were getting integrated graphics), Haswell will take a new socket, and everything that comes after that is likely to use DDR4 memory, which will force a new socket.  There's an off chance that AMD will eventually release a successor to Vishera that has both DDR3 and DDR4 memory controllers, like how Phenom II chips had both DDR2 and DDR3 controllers, in order to allow for backward compatibility to Socket AM3+ motherboards.  But I'd bet against that, as AMD no longer makes separate chips for desktops, as opposed to making chips that are mainly targeted at servers or laptops and releasing a desktop variant of them.  For what it's worth, Intel does that, too.

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383

    Also, don't forget to ebay/craigslist your older hardware. You can often get a surprisingly high amount for them, and can feed that back into your builds. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get enough out of your 5770 to afford a 120G SSD, and that will make a dramatic difference in the way your computer feels.

    Aside from that comment, depending on the game, it's difficult to tell if your video card or your CPU is causing you lag issues - some games really don't like those AMD CPUs for whatever reason (be they poorly coded or not, as Quiz likes to say, it's just a fact of life and at least I tend to pick games that I think are fun, rather than on the merit of their coding ability). A GPU upgrade will get you better performance, no doubt, but there are certain games where you could throw $1000 in GPU at it, and you'll never get away from some amount of lag simply because of that Deneb CPU - it is a 4+ year old design now, and that's ancient for a CPU. I'm not saying it's bad, it has plenty of power, there are just some games out there that don't run as well on it - you can generally get "good" performance out of them, but not MAX ULTRA MAX, and to some people that isn't good enough.

    A $120US AMD7770 (or nV 650, which tends to be a bit slower on average, but some people prefer nVidia) would be a fairly appropriate video card upgrade for that system, but aside from an SSD, I wouldn't do much else past that - the system was a nice system when the parts where new, but it is pretty much a 4 year old rig, and that's pretty decent for that system. Another couple of years with these upgrades would be all I would really expect to get out of it -- assuming you want to keep playing "new releases", because they don't get any less hardware demanding. A 7770 isn't quite twice as fast as a 5770, but it will bring new releases up to about the same visual quality and performance that you were seeing when your 5770 was newer.

    With that in mind, you may want to consider just throwing your entire budget at the new PC, and maybe just throwing the 5770 for sale to see what you can get, and I bet it can cover the lion's share of a new 7770...

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,412

    Honestly there is not much you can do to make the system better then it currently is.  You can stick in a FX8350 into this mobo with a bios flash more than likely.  Considering the FX8350 is a socket AM3+ it should be a simple drop in and flash bios.  However, for gaming purposes an FX8350 should not make a difference in performance.  Right now only a couple games really push the processor, and your processor should be able to handle those.  The processor outside of typical game usage only becomes a factor when your trying to push graphics on multiple displays and pushing graphics to the point where the user has multiple video cards.  I have not seen a review that has the phenom II such a bottle-neck that it becomes an issue for most consumers.

    On Memory, even if you get higher speed sticks; they will still downclock to 1333mhz because thats what Phenom II supports.

    Now the only 3 areas I can see there to be improvement for gaming on your system is the videocard,  an SSD, and peripherals like a good monitor or speakers.  With Videocards I would look at an HD7870 if I were to upgrade it.  The 5xxx to 6xxx was not really a major jump, so going from a 5770 to a 7770 is not a major leap either.  In order to see a sizable enough increase to warrant upgrading, I would definetly look at the 7870 or GTX660 as a minimum for an upgrade until the next generation of video cards are out.

    The Western Digital black series for me has been absolutely magnificent in performance and quitness for a storage device.  The times of using an HDD for running programs has passed though.  The biggest bottle-neck on a system has been the 120mb/s transfer rate from an HDD to memory.  So getting a good SSD like the Samsung 840 series to run your OS and programs is a good idea.  I would still keep the HDD to store files on as an SSD is not durable or affordable enough at this point to be used for file storage.  Also if you do get an SSD, I would upgrade to Windows 8 Professional 64-bit.  Not alot of people like its new interface, but it still is where the OS is going.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Ridelynn

    Also, don't forget to ebay/craigslist your older hardware. You can often get a surprisingly high amount for them, and can feed that back into your builds. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get enough out of your 5770 to afford a 120G SSD, and that will make a dramatic difference in the way your computer feels.

    Aside from that comment, depending on the game, it's difficult to tell if your video card or your CPU is causing you lag issues - some games really don't like those AMD CPUs for whatever reason (be they poorly coded or not, as Quiz likes to say, it's just a fact of life and at least I tend to pick games that I think are fun, rather than on the merit of their coding ability). A GPU upgrade will get you better performance, no doubt, but there are certain games where you could throw $1000 in GPU at it, and you'll never get away from some amount of lag simply because of that Deneb CPU - it is a 4+ year old design now, and that's ancient for a CPU. I'm not saying it's bad, it has plenty of power, there are just some games out there that don't run as well on it - you can generally get "good" performance out of them, but not MAX ULTRA MAX, and to some people that isn't good enough.

    A $120US AMD7770 (or nV 650, which tends to be a bit slower on average, but some people prefer nVidia) would be a fairly appropriate video card upgrade for that system, but aside from an SSD, I wouldn't do much else past that - the system was a nice system when the parts where new, but it is pretty much a 4 year old rig, and that's pretty decent for that system. Another couple of years with these upgrades would be all I would really expect to get out of it -- assuming you want to keep playing "new releases", because they don't get any less hardware demanding. A 7770 isn't quite twice as fast as a 5770, but it will bring new releases up to about the same visual quality and performance that you were seeing when your 5770 was newer.

    With that in mind, you may want to consider just throwing your entire budget at the new PC, and maybe just throwing the 5770 for sale to see what you can get, and I bet it can cover the lion's share of a new 7770...

    A GeForce GTX 650 wouldn't really be an upgrade over a Radeon HD 5770.  A Radeon HD 7770 would be a slight upgrade, but not really enough to justify the cost.

    The 7770 has 640 GCN shaders, as compared to 800 VLIW5 shaders on the 5770.  That's actually a slight advantage for the 7770, but not by much.  They both have 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs.  The 5770 actually has more memory bandwidth than the 7770, as they're both 128-bit GDDR5, but the 5770 memory is clocked higher.  The 7770 is clocked higher than the 5770 (1 GHz versus 850 MHz), which is where most of its advantage comes from.  But that's not enough to justify buying a new card.

    -----

    Most graphics settings don't put much additional load on the processor.  If you have poor frame rates in a game, you can try turning everything down to hard minimum graphical settings.  See if you're happy with the frame rate at minimum settings.  If that makes the game run great, then your processor is probably fine, and your video card doesn't like the higher graphics settings.

    The most notable exception is the handful of games with GPU PhysX, which is intended to overwhelm a CPU if you try to do the same computations on the CPU instead.  That it runs poorly on the CPU is working as (Nvidia) intended, since the whole point of GPU PhysX is a marketing stunt to convince people that they need an Nvidia video card.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Cleffy

    On Memory, even if you get higher speed sticks; they will still downclock to 1333mhz because thats what Phenom II supports.

    .....

    The Western Digital black series for me has been absolutely magnificent in performance and quitness for a storage device.  The times of using an HDD for running programs has passed though.  The biggest bottle-neck on a system has been the 120mb/s transfer rate from an HDD to memory.  So getting a good SSD like the Samsung 840 series to run your OS and programs is a good idea.  I would still keep the HDD to store files on as an SSD is not durable or affordable enough at this point to be used for file storage.  Also if you do get an SSD, I would upgrade to Windows 8 Professional 64-bit.  Not alot of people like its new interface, but it still is where the OS is going.

    While 1333 MHz is the maximum clock speed that the Phenom II memory controller supports, you can overclock it and run memory higher.  Can, but shouldn't.  The reason it only supports 1333 MHz memory is that that's plenty enough to feed four Phenom II cores unless you're running something that gets very little use out of CPU cache, such as a synthetic memory benchmark.

    SSDs are great, but when you need to build one computer and upgrade another and keep the whole thing inside of $900, they don't really fit the budget.

  • KankanKankan Member UncommonPosts: 55

    Hey I just wanted to say thanks for all the replies and great information. I think what I am going to do is just throw the $900 bucks to the kid's PC, my kids are pretty damn good and have been without a PC for a couple of weeks. I'll just wait another 4months till I get another bonus check and then worry about my PC.

    I have a question about SSD, so I want to run my OS and then any of my main games off that drive and then everything else off the other drive?

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383


    Originally posted by Kankan
    I have a question about SSD, so I want to run my OS and then any of my main games off that drive and then everything else off the other drive?

    Yup.

  • miagisanmiagisan Member Posts: 5,156

    I have the almost identical build, and i dont really need an upgrade at the moment. My vid card is agin (GTX 260) but the phenom 965 kicks butt. I can play almost everything on High settings (cant hit ultra on games like skyrim of BF3) but its a decent build even to this day (i built mine in 2010).

    If anything, i would say get a SSD for the boot drive, and 8 gbs of RAM...but otherwise a solid build.

     

    This is my exact build and its a good gaming rig for relatively cheap costs.

    Pixxo CG-8402 Black SECC 0.6mm ATX Mid Tower Computer Gaming Case

    ASRock 870 EXTREME3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

    Antec EarthWatts EA750 750W Continuous Power ATX12V version 2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified ...

    AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

    G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL8D- (have since upgraded it to 4 x 2 GB)

    Western Digital WD Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (i have a 2nd 500gb drive for media)

    Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G - OEM

     EVGA GTX 260 896-P3-1260-AR

    Gotta get me a SSD also, but i play Skyrim heavily modded on high graphics, tweaked to max out view ranges and such, no issues, or BF3 on high (cant handle ultra).

     

     

     

    image

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by miagisan

    I have the almost identical build, and i dont really need an upgrade at the moment. My vid card is agin (GTX 260) but the phenom 965 kicks butt. I can play almost everything on High settings (cant hit ultra on games like skyrim of BF3) but its a decent build even to this day (i built mine in 2010).

    If anything, i would say get a SSD for the boot drive, and 8 gbs of RAM...but otherwise a solid build.

     

    This is my exact build and its a good gaming rig for relatively cheap costs.

    Pixxo CG-8402 Black SECC 0.6mm ATX Mid Tower Computer Gaming Case

    ASRock 870 EXTREME3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

    Antec EarthWatts EA750 750W Continuous Power ATX12V version 2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified ...

    AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

    G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL8D- (have since upgraded it to 4 x 2 GB)

     (i have a 2nd 500gb drive for media)

    Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G - OEM

     EVGA GTX 260 896-P3-1260-AR

    Gotta get me a SSD also, but i play Skyrim heavily modded on high graphics, tweaked to max out view ranges and such, no issues, or BF3 on high (cant handle ultra).

    The problem with your build is that it isn't 2009 anymore.  It might have made sense when you bought it, but it certainly doesn't make sense to buy it new today.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Kankan

    Hey I just wanted to say thanks for all the replies and great information. I think what I am going to do is just throw the $900 bucks to the kid's PC, my kids are pretty damn good and have been without a PC for a couple of weeks. I'll just wait another 4months till I get another bonus check and then worry about my PC.

    I have a question about SSD, so I want to run my OS and then any of my main games off that drive and then everything else off the other drive?

    In that case, the easy choice is to not get a video card for your own computer, but instead, add an SSD to the above build for his.  Take your pick:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-227-706

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226236

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147188

    SSD prices seem to have gone up lately, as it used to be under $100 for that capacity.  Maybe NAND flash prices went up.

    You want to put the OS and your main programs on the SSD, and bulk data like videos, music, and pictures on the hard drive.  Main programs doesn't just mean games; browsers benefit considerably from the speed of an SSD, too.  I'd put small programs on the SSD as well, as they might benefit and don't take much space.

    If you don't need that much capacity, you could also just skip the hard drive entirely and get a larger SSD in its place.  If it really is just for gaming and you're not the type to accumulate dozens of games without being willing to uninstall anything, then a larger SSD and no hard drive might be plenty of capacity for you.  In that case, take your pick:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147186

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233398

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231614

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249025

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-148-449

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167128

    For what it's worth, I'm not just linking SSDs at random.  I'm picking out the "good" ones, and then linking the cheapest ones at a given capacity.  You could get a 256 GB Crucial V4 for a lot cheaper than those, for example, but it's not very good.

  • miagisanmiagisan Member Posts: 5,156
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by miagisan

    I have the almost identical build, and i dont really need an upgrade at the moment. My vid card is agin (GTX 260) but the phenom 965 kicks butt. I can play almost everything on High settings (cant hit ultra on games like skyrim of BF3) but its a decent build even to this day (i built mine in 2010).

    If anything, i would say get a SSD for the boot drive, and 8 gbs of RAM...but otherwise a solid build.

     

    This is my exact build and its a good gaming rig for relatively cheap costs.

    Pixxo CG-8402 Black SECC 0.6mm ATX Mid Tower Computer Gaming Case

    ASRock 870 EXTREME3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

    Antec EarthWatts EA750 750W Continuous Power ATX12V version 2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified ...

    AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

    G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL8D- (have since upgraded it to 4 x 2 GB)

     (i have a 2nd 500gb drive for media)

    Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G - OEM

     EVGA GTX 260 896-P3-1260-AR

    Gotta get me a SSD also, but i play Skyrim heavily modded on high graphics, tweaked to max out view ranges and such, no issues, or BF3 on high (cant handle ultra).

    The problem with your build is that it isn't 2009 anymore.  It might have made sense when you bought it, but it certainly doesn't make sense to buy it new today.

    oh i agree....i am just saying it was an excellent build for its day (even stated i made it in 2010)

    image

  • BarbarbarBarbarbar Member UncommonPosts: 271
    Originally posted by Benezetta
    My first priority would be to get new RAM.  It doesn't matter what components you have, your system will always suck if you have only 4 gigs of lower speed RAM (my apologies but I'm telling it like it is).  I would recommend going to Newegg and getting 16 gigs of 1600.  Secondly I would get a 240 GB  SATA drive and move the operating system and the main games to it and use the remaining harddrive for the rest of the programs and storage that you need.

    WOW bad advice.

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