What would you do with $500 in this situation?

[dholster]

I contemplated this purchase a few months back, but I just could not pull the trigger. So here I am again, wondering what has changed since I last checked.

I am currently running the following system

CPU: E6600 Conroe
MOBO: EVGA 680i LT (socket 775)
RAM: 6 Gigs Corsair DDR2 800
HDD: Crucial M4 128g and Various Mechanical drives
GFX: GTS 450 1GB
Case: Antec P180b
PSU: Antec TP650

Its been a beast, almost 7 years of continuous use with only hard drives and video card being changed out. Last time it was upgraded I added the SSD, and that was a huge change for me, now my system is snappy for the day to day use, but games and video can be laggy.

My dilemma is what to upgrade now. I don't crave record breaking frame rates, nor do I play the latest games. I stick to WoW, Borderlands, and the occasional first person shooters. So half of my mind is to just get a beefier video card, but my current motherboard would waste a lot of its potential, which I am pretty sure my video card is not fully utilized by my motherboard either.

So with that I am currently mulling over the following purchase,

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/9LPE

I could really use some advice, I chose the Maximus mATX because its price to feature ratio seems pretty good. The processor, is basically the most ill ever need (no video editing in my future), and the Memory has good reviews and seems to be good for my gaming/daily task needs. But I really have no clue, there are literally hundreds of 2x4g ram kits.

Or should I just spend a few hundred bucks on a nice video card and wait for the next gen Intel chips to come out?

Thanks ahead for any help/answers/sarcastic criticisms.

 

[dholster]

With prices climbing, it looks like some companies are trying to sell their dregs. I've seen some cheaper RAM turn up lately, but it has CAS11 timings. I'd definitely pay more for CAS9 (or better).

Yeah the mushkins suggested by g-unit111 were only 63.99 at newegg, 1.5v and CAS9, doesnt hurt they are black to match the motherboard and my wiring in the case.

 

[Onus]

Eh, the Trio isn't a bad unit, it just isn't up to modern standards. If you don't stress it, it appears to be okay. Today, anything built by Seasonic (such as the XFX units) will be good. On a tighter budget, the Super Flower-built Rosewill Capstone PSUs are also good.
As to the Hyper212, I wasn't down on its quality, but on the fact that Coolermaster has been proven in competent technical reviews of other products (AND in interviews!) to be willfully dishonest; I won't knowingly give my money to them.

 

[bigshootr8]

I just feel on the cheep though onus you have to admit the EVO 212 is pretty good otherwise you could go into things like the NH-D14, Silver Arrow and so on.

I'd also say that Cooler Master makes stronger cases then they do coolers but that's just my opinion.

 

[dholster]

oh man, that silver arrow extreme looks sweet, i might have to "upgrade" to that one after a while.

I have also considered some of the closed cpu only water coolers, their prices aren't too bad versus some of the higher end air coolers, plus with the antec 180b air flow isn't very good already. How do you guys feel about those units?

 

[bigshootr8]

If you went with a closed cpu cooler you'd have to go with something like the h80i for example. Mainly because you just don't have the two 120 fan grills at the top of your machine. They aren't bad coolers I just have a few complaints about them.

1. Pump noise: sometimes they are more noisy then fans themselves this is true with my h100
2. Fan Quality: Often times they ship you with horrible generic POS OEM fans. And you would want to go to the store and pick up fans like the SP120's/140s or Noctua's Static Pressure fans.

 

[dholster]

If you went with a closed cpu cooler you'd have to go with something like the h80i for example. Mainly because you just don't have the two 120 fan grills at the top of your machine. They aren't bad coolers I just have a few complaints about them.

1. Pump noise: sometimes they are more noisy then fans themselves this is true with my h100
2. Fan Quality: Often times they ship you with horrible generic POS OEM fans. And you would want to go to the store and pick up fans like the SP120's/140s or Noctua's Static Pressure fans.

isn't that what a dremel is for! 😀

 

[bigshootr8]

Also the silver arrow is nice however what I love about noctua is when a socket changes they normally provide you with the new socket mount For free I believe dont quote me

 

[bigshootr8]

And hey if you modded your case sure if you had the clearance to do it and could create 120 fan mounts on top of your case by all means go mod crazy dude.

 

[dholster]

is there a way to choose multiple people as best answer? i feel a few of you have helped me tremendously!

 

[bigshootr8]

There isn't but in the end what matters is your taken care of. So as to that if you were taken care of its been a pleasure for me.

 

[dholster]

Eh, the Trio isn't a bad unit, it just isn't up to modern standards. If you don't stress it, it appears to be okay. Today, anything built by Seasonic (such as the XFX units) will be good. On a tighter budget, the Super Flower-built Rosewill Capstone PSUs are also good.
As to the Hyper212, I wasn't down on its quality, but on the fact that Coolermaster has been proven in competent technical reviews of other products (AND in interviews!) to be willfully dishonest; I won't knowingly give my money to them.

Apparently I have been wrong all along, my psu is the TruePower 2.0 500, which I think according to the nets is one of the bad ones with bulging caps and frying mobos and stuff. But I guess im lucky and it has been fine since February 2007, should I replace it before hooking my new stuff up? If so what wattage do you recommend I get based on my new set up, a few hard drives, and a gfx card around the likes of a 650ti boost (so far looks like will fit my needs the most). I am assuming I will probably never need more than a 500W-650W, and I will most likely never do a dual card setup.

Microcenter sells the corsair CX series and the 500 and 600 are not a bad price, and they don't seem to have many negative reviews around, how do you feel about them? If only someone local would carry the seasonic or rosewill units, I would love to be able to pick something up and not wait for more shipping!

In other news, my motherboard/ram/cooler are both delivering tomorrow! (I chose the free 5-7 day newegg option to give myself time to buy the CPU, but looks like free 2 day shipping is what I got

 

[Onus]

The True Power 2.0 was a CWT unit, and used some inferior capacitors. Unfortunately, the Corsair "Builder" units are similar. They are also made by CWT, using some Samxon capacitors from a line known to fail early, especially when heated. It doesn't suck (e.g. like a CM), but there are much better units out there.
Some of the PC Power and Cooling units are Seasonic. For a GTX650Ti Boost, a good 400W PSU is sufficient, although 500W may give you some longevity.

 

[dholster]

so i finally remembered to look at my psu, and its a true power trio 650w after all, so thankfully i can hang on to it a little longer, with my current crappy video card i feel safe continuing its use. ill replace it with a seasonic when i order a higher power card in the near future.

 

[dholster]

Well its all put together now. its a bit messy, but its running smooth as butter right now.

Now just to replace that "slug" gts450, its destined for my HTPC im putting together as well. And yes, I know my optical drive is not hooked up, its in there blocking the hole until I find the cover for the slot.

thanks for all the help guys

 

[bigshootr8]

What did you end up upgrading in the end? And its okay with the optical drive bay cover I have that happen with my cases as well you misplace them or they end up somewhere where you cant remember.

 

[dholster]

I picked up the ASRock Extreme 6, an 8gig kit of Mushkin Blackline, and the 3570k

in an effort to spread the expenses out im trying to force myself to wait a few weeks to upgrade the GPU, im getting 40+fps in WoW with all settings maxed right now with that GTS450, but I know those kinda settings wont carry over as soon as I load any other modern game. I will probably get the GTX 660 MSI Twin Frozr, that one looks nice.

I seem to be getting good temps right now as well, nothing much over 52 celcius has show up yet. What is a good idle temp (Currently around 31) and what is a good max load temp?

Thank you,

 

[bigshootr8]

Well when overclocking I would saying temps in the 60's are normally good and then I normally set a max threshold for 80. So I would say you have some headroom there. And yea you'll do fine with a 660 with wow. In fact from what I recall WoW does really well with Nvidia cards and sometimes struggles with AMD cards I'm not quite sure why. I never had any issues and I was using a 5770 back in WoTLK.

 

[dholster]

Yeah, that game seems to be very light on the graphics need.

 

[bigshootr8]

Oh trust me it is. Nothing improves performance more in WoW then a solid SSD and a good CPU.

 

[dholster]

yeah when i added an ssd to this rig it was night and day, even on sata ii of my old mobo, now its just amazing. im flying around some zones never knowing they looked how they do lol.

you got any suggestions for some newer games that wont be too hard on the gts450? but will run great once i get the 660?

 

[bigshootr8]

Well a gts450 probably does fine with a ton of games although your FPS games will suffer hard core. You can honestly probably get away with Bioshock Infinite with somewhat decent settings the game isn't all that demanding. Also, I recently picked up LA NOIRE for PC through steam got the game with the dlc content for 7 dollars sweet deal. Starcraft 2 probably pretty decent settings as well.

 

[dholster]

Well a gts450 probably does fine with a ton of games although your FPS games will suffer hard core. You can honestly probably get away with Bioshock Infinite with somewhat decent settings the game isn't all that demanding. Also, I recently picked up LA NOIRE for PC through steam got the game with the dlc content for 7 dollars sweet deal. Starcraft 2 probably pretty decent settings as well.

Yeah i can attest to starcraft 2! whats funny is when perusing around the webs the other day i discovered an advertisement for the gts450 being a great budget card for those wanting to get into starcraft 2.

I am currently playing the new neverwinter on full settings (another cpu heavy game) I highly recommend any Multiplayer RPG fans to check this game out, it is one of the most intuitive games i have ever come across, the combat is pretty amazing to me, much more fluid than games with similar styles like Tera.

Anyways, I also have steam downloading a few super discount games from the past few years to try out.

once again, thanks everyone for all their help in brainstorming my upgrades! I am currently running at 4.2 with no hiccups and enjoying my boot times nearly as fast as my LCD warm up time.

 

[bigshootr8]

Good! Yea as a note in the future I would look towards the graphics card for your upgrade path. At that point you can take on more demanding games and push the settings up for the candy.