Curious what power supply do you have now? Also when you blow air to clean your unit do you make sure to hold the fans in place?
Unless you're running at least a high end sli/crossfire rig, you likely don't need a $150 power supply.
Well, I did some reading and if I want a GTX 970 (which I plan to get) and upgrade to a more modern CPU...the seasonic 520 would probably be the choice to go with.
My power supply is a seasonic 600 watz, but its older than my current GPU lol. Its almost as old as the motherboard, newer by a year or two and my motherboard is the first generation i5's. My motherboard used to be new when i5's were new :P I'm replacing it with the same one, so its just as old...except it hasn't be used.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
read your posts and i am getting 60-100fps on some of the games you have said. So as someone stated, it could quite possibly be an issue with soemthing else that has not updated properly.
Skyrim is giving me around 50-60fps. I do have a GTX 680 card (EVGA) and drivers have been downloaded from nvidia website.
Curious what power supply do you have now? Also when you blow air to clean your unit do you make sure to hold the fans in place?
Unless you're running at least a high end sli/crossfire rig, you likely don't need a $150 power supply.
Well, I did some reading and if I want a GTX 970 (which I plan to get) and upgrade to a more modern CPU...the seasonic 520 would probably be the choice to go with.
My power supply is a seasonic 600 watz, but its older than my current GPU lol. Its almost as old as the motherboard, newer by a year or two and my motherboard is the first generation i5's. My motherboard used to be new when i5's were new :P I'm replacing it with the same one, so its just as old...except it hasn't be used.
Not entirely sure what you're reading. The Seasonic 520 is a 520 watt, so it would be plenty sufficient considering the make. Also at $140 you're looking at the fanless platinum and if you want to spend your money on it, that is your choice. However you can get a gold fanned PSU at 600w that is equal in manufacturing for much less, I find it highly unlikely you'll ever get your money back on platinum over gold on such low wattage. Unless you really want fanless, which I personally don't trust fanless PSU's but hey it has a 7 year warranty.
no, my current power supply is a 600 wat seasonic, but its the 2nd oldest part of my PC (my motherboard is older). I'm surprised its lasted as long as it has.
What power supply do most recommend then? I looked on tomshardware, and people recommended the seasonic 520...can I get better ones than that?
(edit: Hey! I can play morrowind (no mods) at 40-60 FPS lol...wait, thats still really low for morrowind :P I should be getting 1000s of fps lol. It dropped to 35 at one point and then went back to 40-50. Oh well, at least I have one playable game lol)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
In all my builds, I use SeaSonic if I can buy them at a good price. Gold rated is by far good enough (have to love these inflation on terms; after Platinum what are we going to see lol?!)
However, for the same $139 right now, Newegg has an EVGA 850 SuperNOVA G2 and Corsair HX 850; ergo for the $$ I would certainly pass on the 550 Watt SeaSonic.
Originally posted by Grymmoire In all my builds, I use SeaSonic if I can buy them at a good price. Gold rated is by far good enough (have to love these inflation on terms; after Platinum what are we going to see lol?!)However, for the same $139 right now, Newegg has an EVGA 850 SuperNOVA G2 and Corsair HX 850; ergo for the $$ I would certainly pass on the 550 Watt SeaSonic.The Egg also has an Antec 750W Gold Power Supply for $109.99 and the SeaSonic X-series 650 for $139.Any of the aforementioned would be more than enough for your current and future needs and are all quality units and highly rated.Additionally, these prices are mostly before rebates; have a look and comparison shop.
....or he can buy a PSU for 40-60 USD that will do as good.
As a quick experiment, try turning things to minimum settings. In most games, that puts very little load on the GPU, so if the problem is that the GPU is overheating and throttling back, that should get you your "normal" frame rates or higher. If that doesn't fix your frame rates, then the GPU itself may not be the problem.
Well, since I don't want to risk money on breaking a new GPU
I'll be buying a power supply as soon as I can (I'm going with Seasonic 520 I think it is, its on amazon for 150 dollars)
And I have the same motherboard as a backup, a crappy one...but it has had far less use. If a motherboard is bad, it can supposedly break hardware too. The backup one works fine, and "in case" it is a motherboard issue...I get two birds with one stone so to speak. I can't afford a new PSU+motherboard+ram+GPU all at once. I can only afford one thing...so might as well do safest option, a new PSU. And replace motherboard with same one I already have, in case my motherboard is the problem.
A new PSU could fix a lot of the issues. And a new motherboard could solve a lot of things. Even if not, I need a new PSU anyway and might as well replace the motherboard with my backup one...in case something is wrong with it.
Probably still have issues if it is indeed a GPU...but I don't risk breaking a new 350 dollar GTX 970.
Another point to consider is to ask how much money you want to put into an aging rig. Your CPU and motherboard are presumably about five years old, and unless you've been doing a lot of weird piecemeal upgrades, the rest of the computer might be, too. I'm not saying that you need to throw the current computer in the garbage immediately, but I am saying that if you were considering replacing it in six months or a year anyway, it might be better to just replace it now and be certain to be rid of whatever the problem is.
If you're going to replace the power supply alone, $150 is way too much unless you're really looking for top end quality. You can get something very nice for a lot cheaper than that:
I didn't know Seasonic even made 600 W power supplies. Upon checking New Egg, it looks like they do, but it's just some OEM models without any fancy packaging. While you could have one of those, I'd recommend opening up the computer and reading the label to make sure that it is what you think it is. Sometimes people have thought they had some parts, then upon checking, found out that they had something else.
To me it looks like bugged P9 power state. Try downloading some tool that show current Power state of your GPU. If it shows P9 even while gaming, that is the issue.
To fix it, download nvidia powermizer manager and try setting your GPU to max-performance all the time.
To me it looks like bugged P9 power state. Try downloading some tool that show current Power state of your GPU. If it shows P9 even while gaming, that is the issue.
To fix it, download nvidia powermizer manager and try setting your GPU to max-performance all the time.
I can't find anything on google on this, except just a couple posts. And that link looks REALLY weird. I went to the site (I use adblock/script blocker, so dunno if it has anything bad without those). But, I think I'll skip. I don't want viruses or spyware and that link is too weird. If its legit, they should do a better link :P This looks like I'd download it and end up with a broken computer or GPU lol. There isn't even any tools to show the P9 state of the GPU. There is barely any info on it to begin with.
I'll gladly skip it. That and this guy only has one post...so even more worthwhile to skip it lol. Way too shady.
As for my hardware. My GPU is new (I got it in late 2013), my PSU I think is from 2010 or 2011 or something...don't remember. I had it before I got my GPU. I think I got it when I bought my GTX 260. That lasted 2-3 years, but I overloaded it too much on modern games. Motherboard is first gen i5, for whenever those came out...guess 5 years ago? Ram I think is as old as the motherboard, but the ram is fine.
Its kinda a frankenstein PC, because I've been too poor to buy a whole new one. I can get a cheap crappy one, but I'd rather pay 800-1000 for a good PC that can run any game (even Witcher 3) on max or high settings. and no way can I do that any time soon. If by some chance a 800-1000 dollar PC was on sale for 400 or something, that could run witcher 3 on high/max...I'd do that. Otherwise I don't want a crappy PC or I can't play any of my games lol. And no way would an expensive pc go for 400 :P maybe black friday, but even that is super rare.
The GTX 970 alone is 350 or so dollars, and that is only GPU I'd want to get. So that is pretty much 99% of my 400-450 dollar budget rofl. Maybe I can push to 500, but not anymore than that. And no good quality PC that can also run witcher 3 on high/max is going to sell for less than 800-1000
Also, I overload my PC with Skyrim mods. I use ENB and 2k parallax textures plus tons of other mods...and so a crappy PC can't really run it. Heck, my current PC canbarely run Skyrim with mods. Before my PC was going down in flames, I was only getting 30-40 average FPS in Skyrim. Without any mods it was 60 FPS (I capped it at that). But, I refuse to downgrade my skyrim mods because of my PC :P So I probably overloaded something again. I definitely killed my gtx 260 with skyrim rofl. I overloaded my gtx 260 SO much with skyrim mods (especially ENB is a killer, even with ambient occulsion/depth of field turned off).
So, unless a PC is going for 500 (or very close to it), that is a huge upgrade to my PC...that can also run witcher 3 on high/max (that game is gonna be INTENSIVE)...I'm back to buying frankenstein parts. Which brings me back to, I can only afford 1-2 things at most...which is the PSU and GPU. I can't afford a whole new PC.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Seasonic makes great power supplies, at $150 your getting one of their top-end units.
It's very nice, but also very expensive.
Staying in the Seasonic brand, you could drop to the Bronze rated S12II 620 - that's running for $65 on Newegg right now. It's a nice power supply - it's not platinum rated, it's an older unit, but it's certainly not junk either. And at half the price.
It won a HardOCP silver award when it released - that's no slouch.
That would be what I would recommend right now with a Seasonic label - it's a nice basic unit, no bells and whistles, and without a huge price tag.
Quiz also brings up a good point - your about to sink $250+ into this PC. Any power supply and video card you get now are good for a few years, and could be part of an upgrade path. This is a good time to sit down and think - do I start working on upgrading everything piecemeal or as it breaks (and with a bad power supply in there, the motherboard or RAM may very well be the next thing to go, and soon at that), or do I just start working on an entire new computer in one step.
I think, technically speaking, your in a good position to do either: your current computer won't run without parts, so selling it as a working entire unit (my usual advice) isn't good advice. I think if I were you, I would do the PSU + GPU now, and just plan on piecemeal upgrading it, especially if your happy (or at least satisfied) with the overall performance of the CPU.
Sticking with Intel, a decent motherboard is in the $125-150 range, and the base gaming Core i5 is around $200. They still use DDR3 RAM, which is running about $60-70 for a 8G kit - and then a basic HDD or SSD is going to run around $125. The motherboard/CPU need to come as a combo, everything else can come piecemeal.
Seasonic makes great power supplies, at $150 your getting one of their top-end units.
It's very nice, but also very expensive.
Staying in the Seasonic brand, you could drop to the Bronze rated S12II 620 - that's running for $65 on Newegg right now. It's a nice power supply - it's not platinum rated, it's an older unit, but it's certainly not junk either. And at half the price.
It won a HardOCP silver award when it released - that's no slouch.
That would be what I would recommend right now with a Seasonic label - it's a nice basic unit, no bells and whistles, and without a huge price tag.
Quiz also brings up a good point - your about to sink $250+ into this PC. Any power supply and video card you get now are good for a few years, and could be part of an upgrade path. This is a good time to sit down and think - do I start working on upgrading everything piecemeal or as it breaks (and with a bad power supply in there, the motherboard or RAM may very well be the next thing to go, and soon at that), or do I just start working on an entire new computer in one step.
I think, technically speaking, your in a good position to do either: your current computer won't run without parts, so selling it as a working entire unit (my usual advice) isn't good advice. I think if I were you, I would do the PSU + GPU now, and just plan on piecemeal upgrading it, especially if your happy (or at least satisfied) with the overall performance of the CPU.
Sticking with Intel, a decent motherboard is in the $125-150 range, and the base gaming Core i5 is around $200. They still use DDR3 RAM, which is running about $60-70 for a 8G kit - and then a basic HDD or SSD is going to run around $125. The motherboard/CPU need to come as a combo, everything else can come piecemeal.
Well, my problem is the price of it all.
Any GPU I get is going to automatically be a GTX 970, as at least for skyrim, I really need that 4gb of ram (I use a ton of skyrim mods and my card very often went past its 2gb video ram in skyrim and went right into my regular ram). Plus I want to play witcher 3, and my card won't do that game.
So gtx 970 is 350-400, a huge expense
PSU is going to be 70-100 or so
Motherboard is 125-150 (your estimates)
ram is cheap as hell, so that isn't an issue, lets just say its 50 dollars (its really cheap last I looked at my local store for good quality DDR3 ram)
I already have a new hard drive, just put in my PC as my last hard drive died. So that isn't an issue.
So rounding that up with highest numbers. That comes out to be 700 dollars actually. Which is actually cheaper than what I expected it to be (800-1000)
Do you have any recommendations on what to get for the best prices, but also can play heavily modded skyrim and can play witcher 3 (I know its not out, but my PC right now won't run that sucker at all. Thats coming out like the crysis of today)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
And also run witcher 3 at least on high settings, doesn't have to be max...but witcher 3 might play on lowest/low on my current pc...but that looks so ugly :P I actually want a decent witcher 3 look and like I said, thats coming out to be the crysis of this generation (crysis was a beast back then).
I have a feeling I'm still looking at 700-800 though to upgrade my entire PC. And I can't really do that.
(edit: This week at least, I can't even buy a 70 dollar power supply. But maybe next week (starting tomorrow), and 2 weeks I can start upgrading my stuff. Jobs have been super slow the past week. So any upgrade I do will have to wait till tomorrow/next week (its sunday today) or 2 weeks from now at the most.
Either that, or I have to wait till I get paid on the 1st next month. But, that is kind of a ways from there and any deals going on right now, might not still be running by then)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
If you are going to upgrade the entire PC then you are better off just dealing with what you have now for a month or two and saving enough to do it right. Going cheap now or waiting 8 - 12 weeks and getting something really good..... I would advise waiting. Even if that meant a crappy gaming experience or light gaming during that time.
Or buy a PSU and GPU now, then buy CPU. MOBO, RAM ect. later. Nothing wrong with that option either. As you have a new hard drive already, I assume a decent case, optical drive, ect.
Originally posted by TheScavenger Either that, or I have to wait till I get paid on the 1st next month. But, that is kind of a ways from there and any deals going on right now, might not still be running by then)
There are ~always~ deals running. It may switch from Item ABC to Item XYZ, but something or another is always on sale/rebate/discount/combo/etc.
For what it's worth, your CPU looks like something Gdemami would have picked: two cores for the price of four. And at the time, for nearly the same price as a Core i5 quad core with the same IPC, even. It should be fine for most current games, but if you find something that needs a lot of CPU power, a dual core could struggle.
659 USD for entirely new PC, not including OS. No rebates and shipping.
That leaves some room - you can swap the HDD for 256GB SSD if such storage size is enough to you or you could swap GTX 960 for R290 if you want more performance(about as fast as GTX 970).
Well, I'm still going to upgrade, but now I can have time to save my money.
But, every game is back to normal. I literally didn't do anything either. The only thing I did was I left the PC off most of the day and barely used it.
Does that sound like a heat problem then? Since today I didn't use the PC, turn it on tonight, and every game is back to normal in performance.
I dunno what happened...it was literally not touched all day. What else besides heat would suddenly fix whatever was causing the issue? No new drivers or anything.
(edit: It was a lot cooler today. Yesterday and the day before it felt like Summer! And today being a lot cooler, and PC not being used all day...then I use it tonight and its back to normal. Makes me think its heat and not hardware.)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
When I was putting in the new hard drive, I noticed my monitor cable was kind of loose but seemed fine enough. Well, this morning it was completely out so I fixed it tonight and made sure the cable was in correctly.
If that was actually the issue, I'll laugh so much. That is literally like the easiest and cheapest (free) fix and should have been obvious xD
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
When I was putting in the new hard drive, I noticed my monitor cable was kind of loose but seemed fine enough. Well, this morning it was completely out so I fixed it tonight and made sure the cable was in correctly.
If that was actually the issue, I'll laugh so much. That is literally like the easiest and cheapest (free) fix and should have been obvious xD
That is definitely not the issue, you do have a heat issue though, i would seriously consider renewing the thermal paste on your cpu h/s as i would consider anything over 60 degrees as an issue to be dealt with immediately, as for my own 660 gtx, i've never run it over 60 degrees, and i don't think its ever even hit 50, idling its at 30 with it hitting about 43 when i am running a game such as Skyrim (i use msi's afterburner which tracks temps very effectively). I do wonder if you are just using a 'stock' cooling option for your cpu though, as the temps you reported earlier are crazy high. Stock coolers for cpu's are pretty much trash can worthy, you always replace them with something decent, and if not using water cooling, you definitely want plenty of copper.
although i would personally opt to get rid of the i5 dual core, clock speed is good but really i wouldn't consider anything with under 4 cores these days, and if your going to get decent cooling, you might as well get a decent CPU to go with it
Originally posted by Phry I do wonder if you are just using a 'stock' cooling option for your cpu though, as the temps you reported earlier are crazy high.
There is a significant difference between running a real app and stress test tools such as Prime or OpenGL test I linked above.
In that regard, reported temps are fine, for CPU and GPU.
Originally posted by TheScavenger Well, I'm still going to upgrade, but now I can have time to save my money.
Sure, I was just posting the build to show that you can get a very solid build within 600-700 USD ballpark, there is also no need to replace all parts at once, you can do it piece by piece - if you want to upgrade at all.
Good to hear your performance is back to normal. Computer hw may behave strangely sometimes with no apparent reason and just disassembling and re-assembling the machine fixes the issue.
Comments
Well, I did some reading and if I want a GTX 970 (which I plan to get) and upgrade to a more modern CPU...the seasonic 520 would probably be the choice to go with.
My power supply is a seasonic 600 watz, but its older than my current GPU lol. Its almost as old as the motherboard, newer by a year or two and my motherboard is the first generation i5's. My motherboard used to be new when i5's were new :P I'm replacing it with the same one, so its just as old...except it hasn't be used.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
read your posts and i am getting 60-100fps on some of the games you have said. So as someone stated, it could quite possibly be an issue with soemthing else that has not updated properly.
Skyrim is giving me around 50-60fps. I do have a GTX 680 card (EVGA) and drivers have been downloaded from nvidia website.
no, my current power supply is a 600 wat seasonic, but its the 2nd oldest part of my PC (my motherboard is older). I'm surprised its lasted as long as it has.
What power supply do most recommend then? I looked on tomshardware, and people recommended the seasonic 520...can I get better ones than that?
(edit: Hey! I can play morrowind (no mods) at 40-60 FPS lol...wait, thats still really low for morrowind :P I should be getting 1000s of fps lol. It dropped to 35 at one point and then went back to 40-50. Oh well, at least I have one playable game lol)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
In all my builds, I use SeaSonic if I can buy them at a good price. Gold rated is by far good enough (have to love these inflation on terms; after Platinum what are we going to see lol?!)
However, for the same $139 right now, Newegg has an EVGA 850 SuperNOVA G2 and Corsair HX 850; ergo for the $$ I would certainly pass on the 550 Watt SeaSonic.
The Egg also has an Antec 750W Gold Power Supply for $109.99 and the SeaSonic X-series 650 for $139.
Any of the aforementioned would be more than enough for your current and future needs and are all quality units and highly rated.
Additionally, these prices are mostly before rebates; have a look and comparison shop.
....or he can buy a PSU for 40-60 USD that will do as good.
Another point to consider is to ask how much money you want to put into an aging rig. Your CPU and motherboard are presumably about five years old, and unless you've been doing a lot of weird piecemeal upgrades, the rest of the computer might be, too. I'm not saying that you need to throw the current computer in the garbage immediately, but I am saying that if you were considering replacing it in six months or a year anyway, it might be better to just replace it now and be certain to be rid of whatever the problem is.
If you're going to replace the power supply alone, $150 is way too much unless you're really looking for top end quality. You can get something very nice for a lot cheaper than that:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182073
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I didn't know Seasonic even made 600 W power supplies. Upon checking New Egg, it looks like they do, but it's just some OEM models without any fancy packaging. While you could have one of those, I'd recommend opening up the computer and reading the label to make sure that it is what you think it is. Sometimes people have thought they had some parts, then upon checking, found out that they had something else.
To me it looks like bugged P9 power state. Try downloading some tool that show current Power state of your GPU. If it shows P9 even while gaming, that is the issue.
To fix it, download nvidia powermizer manager and try setting your GPU to max-performance all the time.
http://nvidia-powermizer-manager.software.informer.com/
I can't find anything on google on this, except just a couple posts. And that link looks REALLY weird. I went to the site (I use adblock/script blocker, so dunno if it has anything bad without those). But, I think I'll skip. I don't want viruses or spyware and that link is too weird. If its legit, they should do a better link :P This looks like I'd download it and end up with a broken computer or GPU lol. There isn't even any tools to show the P9 state of the GPU. There is barely any info on it to begin with.
I'll gladly skip it. That and this guy only has one post...so even more worthwhile to skip it lol. Way too shady.
As for my hardware. My GPU is new (I got it in late 2013), my PSU I think is from 2010 or 2011 or something...don't remember. I had it before I got my GPU. I think I got it when I bought my GTX 260. That lasted 2-3 years, but I overloaded it too much on modern games. Motherboard is first gen i5, for whenever those came out...guess 5 years ago? Ram I think is as old as the motherboard, but the ram is fine.
Its kinda a frankenstein PC, because I've been too poor to buy a whole new one. I can get a cheap crappy one, but I'd rather pay 800-1000 for a good PC that can run any game (even Witcher 3) on max or high settings. and no way can I do that any time soon. If by some chance a 800-1000 dollar PC was on sale for 400 or something, that could run witcher 3 on high/max...I'd do that. Otherwise I don't want a crappy PC or I can't play any of my games lol. And no way would an expensive pc go for 400 :P maybe black friday, but even that is super rare.
The GTX 970 alone is 350 or so dollars, and that is only GPU I'd want to get. So that is pretty much 99% of my 400-450 dollar budget rofl. Maybe I can push to 500, but not anymore than that. And no good quality PC that can also run witcher 3 on high/max is going to sell for less than 800-1000
Also, I overload my PC with Skyrim mods. I use ENB and 2k parallax textures plus tons of other mods...and so a crappy PC can't really run it. Heck, my current PC canbarely run Skyrim with mods. Before my PC was going down in flames, I was only getting 30-40 average FPS in Skyrim. Without any mods it was 60 FPS (I capped it at that). But, I refuse to downgrade my skyrim mods because of my PC :P So I probably overloaded something again. I definitely killed my gtx 260 with skyrim rofl. I overloaded my gtx 260 SO much with skyrim mods (especially ENB is a killer, even with ambient occulsion/depth of field turned off).
So, unless a PC is going for 500 (or very close to it), that is a huge upgrade to my PC...that can also run witcher 3 on high/max (that game is gonna be INTENSIVE)...I'm back to buying frankenstein parts. Which brings me back to, I can only afford 1-2 things at most...which is the PSU and GPU. I can't afford a whole new PC.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Seasonic makes great power supplies, at $150 your getting one of their top-end units.
It's very nice, but also very expensive.
Staying in the Seasonic brand, you could drop to the Bronze rated S12II 620 - that's running for $65 on Newegg right now. It's a nice power supply - it's not platinum rated, it's an older unit, but it's certainly not junk either. And at half the price.
It won a HardOCP silver award when it released - that's no slouch.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/05/18/seasonic_m12ii620_power_supply_review/9#.VOEOD_nF8Xw
That would be what I would recommend right now with a Seasonic label - it's a nice basic unit, no bells and whistles, and without a huge price tag.
Quiz also brings up a good point - your about to sink $250+ into this PC. Any power supply and video card you get now are good for a few years, and could be part of an upgrade path. This is a good time to sit down and think - do I start working on upgrading everything piecemeal or as it breaks (and with a bad power supply in there, the motherboard or RAM may very well be the next thing to go, and soon at that), or do I just start working on an entire new computer in one step.
I think, technically speaking, your in a good position to do either: your current computer won't run without parts, so selling it as a working entire unit (my usual advice) isn't good advice. I think if I were you, I would do the PSU + GPU now, and just plan on piecemeal upgrading it, especially if your happy (or at least satisfied) with the overall performance of the CPU.
Sticking with Intel, a decent motherboard is in the $125-150 range, and the base gaming Core i5 is around $200. They still use DDR3 RAM, which is running about $60-70 for a 8G kit - and then a basic HDD or SSD is going to run around $125. The motherboard/CPU need to come as a combo, everything else can come piecemeal.
Well, my problem is the price of it all.
Any GPU I get is going to automatically be a GTX 970, as at least for skyrim, I really need that 4gb of ram (I use a ton of skyrim mods and my card very often went past its 2gb video ram in skyrim and went right into my regular ram). Plus I want to play witcher 3, and my card won't do that game.
So gtx 970 is 350-400, a huge expense
PSU is going to be 70-100 or so
Motherboard is 125-150 (your estimates)
ram is cheap as hell, so that isn't an issue, lets just say its 50 dollars (its really cheap last I looked at my local store for good quality DDR3 ram)
I already have a new hard drive, just put in my PC as my last hard drive died. So that isn't an issue.
So rounding that up with highest numbers. That comes out to be 700 dollars actually. Which is actually cheaper than what I expected it to be (800-1000)
Do you have any recommendations on what to get for the best prices, but also can play heavily modded skyrim and can play witcher 3 (I know its not out, but my PC right now won't run that sucker at all. Thats coming out like the crysis of today)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
If I can knock that 700 dollar estimate to a 600 dollar PC (with rebates or whatever)...I can upgrade my entire PC.
Is that even possible though?
It would need to run this
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/497979/?
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/497978/?
With a lot of other mods.
And also run witcher 3 at least on high settings, doesn't have to be max...but witcher 3 might play on lowest/low on my current pc...but that looks so ugly :P I actually want a decent witcher 3 look and like I said, thats coming out to be the crysis of this generation (crysis was a beast back then).
I have a feeling I'm still looking at 700-800 though to upgrade my entire PC. And I can't really do that.
(edit: This week at least, I can't even buy a 70 dollar power supply. But maybe next week (starting tomorrow), and 2 weeks I can start upgrading my stuff. Jobs have been super slow the past week. So any upgrade I do will have to wait till tomorrow/next week (its sunday today) or 2 weeks from now at the most.
Either that, or I have to wait till I get paid on the 1st next month. But, that is kind of a ways from there and any deals going on right now, might not still be running by then)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Ugh....why? Those expensive cards have terrible value ratio.
If you are going to upgrade the entire PC then you are better off just dealing with what you have now for a month or two and saving enough to do it right. Going cheap now or waiting 8 - 12 weeks and getting something really good..... I would advise waiting. Even if that meant a crappy gaming experience or light gaming during that time.
Or buy a PSU and GPU now, then buy CPU. MOBO, RAM ect. later. Nothing wrong with that option either. As you have a new hard drive already, I assume a decent case, optical drive, ect.
I would just do the PSU and GPU now - that's what you need to get up and running. It will play Skyrim no problem.
Witcher 3 isn't out yet. Worry about that after it ships, and you see if you need to actually upgrade the motherboard/CPU/RAM.
That's my advice about that.
There are ~always~ deals running. It may switch from Item ABC to Item XYZ, but something or another is always on sale/rebate/discount/combo/etc.
Not really. The Radeon R9 290X has gone up in price a bit lately and now starts at $360--$30 more than the GTX 970.
That said, I'd sooner get this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161459
Not much slower than the GTX 970, but it is $80 cheaper.
For what it's worth, your CPU looks like something Gdemami would have picked: two cores for the price of four. And at the time, for nearly the same price as a Core i5 quad core with the same IPC, even. It should be fine for most current games, but if you find something that needs a lot of CPU power, a dual core could struggle.
Thanks for proving my point.
If your budget is 700 USD, I would go with something like this:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/hKgy3C
659 USD for entirely new PC, not including OS. No rebates and shipping.
That leaves some room - you can swap the HDD for 256GB SSD if such storage size is enough to you or you could swap GTX 960 for R290 if you want more performance(about as fast as GTX 970).
Well, I'm still going to upgrade, but now I can have time to save my money.
But, every game is back to normal. I literally didn't do anything either. The only thing I did was I left the PC off most of the day and barely used it.
Does that sound like a heat problem then? Since today I didn't use the PC, turn it on tonight, and every game is back to normal in performance.
I dunno what happened...it was literally not touched all day. What else besides heat would suddenly fix whatever was causing the issue? No new drivers or anything.
(edit: It was a lot cooler today. Yesterday and the day before it felt like Summer! And today being a lot cooler, and PC not being used all day...then I use it tonight and its back to normal. Makes me think its heat and not hardware.)
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Wow, for a second there I almost thought you were recommending a Nvidia card, don't scare me like that.
I think I know what the issue actually was.
When I was putting in the new hard drive, I noticed my monitor cable was kind of loose but seemed fine enough. Well, this morning it was completely out so I fixed it tonight and made sure the cable was in correctly.
If that was actually the issue, I'll laugh so much. That is literally like the easiest and cheapest (free) fix and should have been obvious xD
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
That is definitely not the issue, you do have a heat issue though, i would seriously consider renewing the thermal paste on your cpu h/s as i would consider anything over 60 degrees as an issue to be dealt with immediately, as for my own 660 gtx, i've never run it over 60 degrees, and i don't think its ever even hit 50, idling its at 30 with it hitting about 43 when i am running a game such as Skyrim (i use msi's afterburner which tracks temps very effectively). I do wonder if you are just using a 'stock' cooling option for your cpu though, as the temps you reported earlier are crazy high. Stock coolers for cpu's are pretty much trash can worthy, you always replace them with something decent, and if not using water cooling, you definitely want plenty of copper.
something like this for example;
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/cooling/cpucoolers/multicpucoolers/rr-212e-16pk-r1.html
although i would personally opt to get rid of the i5 dual core, clock speed is good but really i wouldn't consider anything with under 4 cores these days, and if your going to get decent cooling, you might as well get a decent CPU to go with it
There is a significant difference between running a real app and stress test tools such as Prime or OpenGL test I linked above.
In that regard, reported temps are fine, for CPU and GPU.
Sure, I was just posting the build to show that you can get a very solid build within 600-700 USD ballpark, there is also no need to replace all parts at once, you can do it piece by piece - if you want to upgrade at all.
Good to hear your performance is back to normal. Computer hw may behave strangely sometimes with no apparent reason and just disassembling and re-assembling the machine fixes the issue.