What should i upgrade first?

[sohankpatel]

I have a gaming PC and my birthday is coming up, so i was wondering what would be my best bet to upgrade.
MSI Z97-G45
G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB
EVGA GTX 760 SC ACX
Samsung 840 EVO 128GB
WD Blue 1TB
i5-4670K
Stock CPU cooling (I don't plan to overclock for a while longer)
Corsair SPEC-02
CX600M (I dont plan to use more than one GPU, so this works for me)

This PC is a little over a year old now

 

[Anarkie13]

Best Gain I could suggest would be the GPU. Move up to a 970 or if possible 980. Or if AMD is an option, a 390X.
Second best option would be doubling the RAM (And going to a higher clock, if possible)

 

[HEXiT]

doesnt really need an upgrade but if you insist then the gpu could do with a bump. but it wouldnt be worth much unless you go to the 970 minimum.

 

[mudpuppet]

Graphics card would see your biggest gains. If you live near a Microcenter you may still be able to snag an in store only GTX 980 for under $250 (tax may still apply). Open box deals work as I bought my 970 FTW edition from Amazon as open box ~305$ a few months ago, and it works like a charm (Prime has it's perks with quick shipping and replacement if something goes wrong from the start). If you are running 1600 with your ram, I would say you are fine in that department and then second option for an upgrade would be the addition of another/larger SSD. You obviously know what it's like to have one, but lets face it, games are getting bigger, so another drive for your most played games is never a bad thing! I love the Samsung drives too.

 

[KKAW]

Best Gain I could suggest would be the GPU. Move up to a 970 or if possible 980. Or if AMD is an option, a 390X.
Second best option would be doubling the RAM (And going to a higher clock, if possible)

Doubling RAM will gain no performance increase for a gaming pc. Games only use around 4 GB ~ 5 GB of RAM, 8 GB is more than enough. Also the higher frequency makes 0% ~ 1% performance increase. 1600Mhz is fine.

Also if he were to purchase the R9 390X, the PSU would be a concern. R9 390X has a minimum PSU requirement of 700W tier 2. His PSU is tier 4 & 600W.

I would recommend you to go for a GTX 970, you will see a noticeable performance increase. Also the GTX 970 overclock's like a wonder & will give you even better performance.

Recommendations:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-gtx970gaming100me
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-gtx970gaming4g
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42978kr
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvn970wf3oc4gd

 

[spdragoo]

If you plan on any future upgrades, replacing the PSU is probably a must -- Corsair's CX series apparently has a "less-than-ideal" reputation.

Beyond that, a GPU upgrade would be good (which would go more smoothly with a new PSU). RAM might bring a little bit of performance improvement, but not a whole lot. The improvements from boosting the speed, as pointed out, are pretty low; however, games are starting to list 8GB of RAM as their "recommended" level, as well as requiring a 64-bit version of Windows (i.e. one that usually needs 4GB to run "minimally acceptable"). So, going to 16GB can give a slight boost to your performance (but nowhere near a doubling).

 

[sohankpatel]

Graphics card would see your biggest gains. If you live near a Microcenter you may still be able to snag an in store only GTX 980 for under $250 (tax may still apply). Open box deals work as I bought my 970 FTW edition from Amazon as open box ~305$ a few months ago, and it works like a charm (Prime has it's perks with quick shipping and replacement if something goes wrong from the start). If you are running 1600 with your ram, I would say you are fine in that department and then second option for an upgrade would be the addition of another/larger SSD. You obviously know what it's like to have one, but lets face it, games are getting bigger, so another drive for your most played games is never a bad thing! I love the Samsung drives too.

I do have a Microcenter near me, but a GTX 980 for $250? how is that even possible?

 

[mudpuppet]

Graphics card would see your biggest gains. If you live near a Microcenter you may still be able to snag an in store only GTX 980 for under $250 (tax may still apply). Open box deals work as I bought my 970 FTW edition from Amazon as open box ~305$ a few months ago, and it works like a charm (Prime has it's perks with quick shipping and replacement if something goes wrong from the start). If you are running 1600 with your ram, I would say you are fine in that department and then second option for an upgrade would be the addition of another/larger SSD. You obviously know what it's like to have one, but lets face it, games are getting bigger, so another drive for your most played games is never a bad thing! I love the Samsung drives too.

I do have a Microcenter near me, but a GTX 980 for $250? how is that even possible?

Coworker received an email from them about the deal. Microcenter is 3 hours away from us so he took the email to staples who I guess price matched it. There were a few people on pcpartpicker that seem to have mentioned the same deal. In discussion, the one guys in particular on the site said they also had 970s on sale for about 150$ a few months back. They were all reference cards, so you wouldn't get a FTW edition probably, but it's something to keep your eyes open for, or actually call and ask. It's a hard limit one per customer, so they may still have some, I just don't know if that was a deal from last week, or is still current.

 

[HEXiT]

at that price mate you could add a 3rd party cooler and still save money. not only would you save a few bux you would get a card with a seriously quiet cooler.

 

[velo3100]

I would say that your system looks very balanced. Unless you plan on doing heavy gaming in which case you may want to upgrade the gpu I would focus on other components like the cooling system.

 

[sohankpatel]

Just want throw out there that I do some decent gaming and I love to run my games at super high settings, I also keep my games on the hdd not ssd.