What is bottlenecking me/What do I need to upgrade next?

[Adyn]

Hey guys I just recently upgraded my rig, and I'm aiming to make it next-gen gaming proof as well as Oculus Rift (more than) capable. I want to make sure nothing is bottlenecking me and to see what I need to upgrade next!
Here's what I got.

i5 3570k
xfx r9 390 8gb (just upgraded 😀)
8gb of generic ram (I'm pretty sure this is what I need to upgrade)
Corsair 600cx psu (I may want to invest into another better one?)
Seagate 7200rpm 2tb hard drive
another 7200rpm small 250gb hard drive
and
Single 1680x1050 monitor (Not sure if this is relevant)

My main concern right now is if anything is bottlenecking. I'd want to fix that first then look to upgrading for something next-gen proof and sturdy for things like Star Citizen ultra 60fps (around there) and as immersive as possible, Oculus Rift vr gaming. I can currently run Fallout 4 ultra settings with 60fps.

 

[Grimwinder]

Look at your GPU and CPU usage while gaming, if they aren't at 100% (same with RAM) then you aren't bottlenecking anywhere. At 1680x1050 you shouldn't bottleneck with those specs. And yes, most will tell you that the CX PSU line from Corsair is less than great for gaming rigs.

 

[blazorthon]

A RAM upgrade might help a little bit, but nothing major unless you're running some very slow RAM like DDR3-1066.

A new PSU wouldn't hurt since the CX series isn't very good, but performance is unlikely to improve much, if at all; there's mostly just a lower chance of failure.

One thing that might help the most is getting a decent SSD and moving Windows over to it, if you can. FPS in games won't increase much, but loading time will be greatly reduced.

Regardless, I would find it hard to believe that you're running into any practical bottlenecks at 1680x1050 with those system specs.

 

[bradley4jacks]

For the biggest noticeable increase in performance get an SSD, it will make load times of any games on it quicker, as well as boot time and just make it feel snappier

 

[Adyn]

A RAM upgrade might help a little bit, but nothing major unless you're running some very slow RAM like DDR3-1066.

A new PSU wouldn't hurt since the CX series isn't very good, but performance is unlikely to improve much, if at all; there's mostly just a lower chance of failure.

One thing that might help the most is getting a decent SSD and moving Windows over to it, if you can. FPS in games won't increase much, but loading time will be greatly reduced.

Regardless, I would find it hard to believe that you're running into any practical bottlenecks at 1680x1050 with those system specs.

How does an ssd decrease loading times? And I'd just put windows onto it and leave my other hard drives as the ones where my games would go on?

 

[blazorthon]

An SSD is a lot faster than a hard drive, especially in random reading, so things that are on it can load much faster (even up to several times faster). SSDs are also extremely well-suited to multitasking because you can have multiple disk operations running simultaneously at a decent speed, unlike a hard drive which slows down to a crawl if you try doing more than one big thing at once.

Putting Windows on the SSD helps because Windows often needs to access itself for things and letting it use the SSD instead of the hard drives will free up the hard drives to focus entirely on their programs/games. However, you could move some games over (depending on the SSD's capacity) for even more of a loading speed boost in games where it might matter, such as World of Warcraft and the like.

 

[Grimwinder]

With an SSD the only improvement in gaming would be in level load times, that being at places where you "zone" from one locale to another, that transition would be faster. For moment to moment gaming (FPS), as Blaz noted, you won't see much difference.