Upgrading help!

[randomone]

Okay so my pcspecialist PC is nearly 3 years old now and it's getting fairly out dated. As a result of being in university for the past 4 years I've not really had the money to upgrade any components, however now that I'm finished my studies and have a full time job I've finally got the income I need to bring my computer back to life!

I'm aiming to have my computer upgraded for the release of Battlefield 4 as well as a few other games that are releasing later this year. Obviously with games such as Battlefield high fps is fairly important and as such I'd like to have a machine that can cope with the newer games later this year easily.

I'd like to upgrade over the next few months step by step buying parts that will see this computer at least for another few years before I have to upgrade again/build a new one. As for my budget I can afford to spend a fair bit on these upgrades however I do want to make the most of my investment so value for money is a big thing here.

Current Specs are as follows:


Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-950 (3.07GHz)

Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI

Memory (RAM)
6GB SAMSUNG DDR3 TRI-DDR3 1333MHz (3 X 2GB)

Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
640GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)

Power Supply & Case Cooling
CORSAIR 850W PSU (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET

Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EXTREME DIRECT TOUCH COPPER CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)


Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

 

[vanthus]

I would upgrade the graphics card and possibly add a second hard drive,other than that it looks a pretty good system.

 

[randomone]

Any suggestions as to which graphics card to get? I've been looking at the 700 series, not entirely sure if i want a 770, 2x760s or just a 760. Would i be able to just slot a new card in without doing any further upgrades? Will my PSU be able to support the newly cards?

 

[vanthus]

Any suggestions as to which graphics card to get? I've been looking at the 700 series, not entirely sure if i want a 770, 2x760s or just a 760. Would i be able to just slot a new card in without doing any further upgrades? Will my PSU be able to support the newly cards?

850W should be plenty,personally I would go for the one graphics card,the 760 or 770 are both very good cards and should be able to handle any games for a while yet.

 

[randomone]

Awesome cheers! I think i can justify going for a 770.

What would you recommend hard drive wise? I'm currently full up on space with my 640GB so I really need to get a new hard drive as soon as possible.

 

[vanthus]

What would you recommend hard drive wise? I'm currently full up on space with my 640GB so I really need to get a new hard drive as soon as possible.

I would recommend the 1TB WD Caviar Black.
Only thing I'm not sure about is if your processor will cause any "bottlenecking" with such a high end card,but the graphics card is the main component far as gaming goes,not that many games are CPU intensive.

 

[randomone]

What about SSDs? It's been recommended to me that i get a 120GB SSD for games and then a 1/2TB HDD for everything else - is this a good idea or perhaps overkill?

 

[vanthus]

What about SSDs? It's been recommended to me that i get a 120GB SSD for games and then a 1/2TB HDD for everything else - is this a good idea or perhaps overkill?

An SSD isn't essential,it will cut a few seconds off boot times and load applications faster,if that's important to you then go ahead as your motherboard has SATA 6.0GB/s so you should get the full benefit.Personally I don't think they're worth the money but I'm never in that much of a hurry.

 

[Karnor00]

I would recommend the 1TB WD Caviar Black.
Only thing I'm not sure about is if your processor will cause any "bottlenecking" with such a high end card,but the graphics card is the main component far as gaming goes,not that many games are CPU intensive.

The CPU should be fine for most graphic intensive games without bottlenecking. It's still a very reasonable CPU.

 

[randomone]

Thanks for the advice guys! I reckon I can get maybe another 9-12 months out of my CPU, it seems to be doing fairly well at the moment and hopefully a new GPU won't change it's performance too much.

I've decided I'm going to buy a new 770 in the next few days, however I'm not entirely sure which 770 to go with. Do you have suggestions as to which one to buy? I've got around £300-£400 to spend on it, and as its a fairly important part of the setup i'd like it to be the best it can be for the money.

Also is there anyway I can be 100% certain that the GPU I choose will be compatible with my motherboard and also that it will fit (these are my main worries)

 

[vanthus]

You could check if you still have the upgrade option with PCS.
On the main page click on "upgrade your existing pc specialist PC",then log into your account,or give them a call.

 

[randomone]

Oh nice! i didn't even know this feature existed that's excellent! I've checked and the GTX 770 is compatible with my current system

One question though, i know PCS state that the majority of their nvidia cards are Palit cards, is there any way i can confirm this? Also would you suggest the 2GB or 4GB version of the card?

 

[vanthus]

2GB will be fine unless planning on gaming on 3 screens or something like that.
You would need to phone PCS to get a definite answer as to the make of GPU.