I bought and built my system in the very beginning of 2012, and the major components consists of:
Intel I7-2700k
Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z Micro Atx Mobo
HIS IceQ Turbo HD 6970
GSkill Ripjaw X PC3-12800 8gb (2x4gb)
OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 128gb SSD
All this is housed in a Fractal Design Arc Mini running off Antec EarthWatts 750w PSU, playing on a 27" Acer LED Monitor. I mainly use this for playing WoW, D3 (less often), and SW:TOR (rarely anymore though). Running Win7Ultx64, with OS & priority programs on SSD, and secondary programs running and users set to run off a 2TB HDD.
Currently nothing is manually overclocked, but I have set the mobo BIOS to boost the CPU to 3.9GHz.
Lately I have been recording my WoW raiding sessions and also streaming to Twitch so guildies not currently in the main group can watch (and learn from my mistakes LOL). I have noticed that during these streaming/recording sessions that my FPS has been dropping pretty low (~30 fps) and the graphics on the stream/recordings have some serious pixelation, mostly on the ground artwork. My character, the boss, and most of the other characters look fine, but the surrounding environments tend to look like you're watching through a piece of opague textured glass.
I'm looking at a few seperate upgrade options, and wondering what each would do in terms of making the stream/recordings look better:
Add a duplicate of my existing RAM - $65 (newegg)
With WoW, Mumble, the streaming software, and occasionally a chrome browser (or two), I tend to be running in the ballpark of 5.5-6.5 GB of the available ram. I don't think that I'm currently maximizing the amount of ram that I have, but more is never bad, and I've got 2 free slots. Moving to 32GB (4x8GB) would be overkill IMO.
Add a duplicate of my existing GPU - $150 (used, ebay)
This is questionable, as from what I've read on streaming/recording, won't help much other than upping my frame rates while raiding. I do believe that my PSU can handle the addition, and there's room on the mobo as well.
Sell my GPU, and get a newer upgraded version - >$400 (newegg)
Replace my HD 6970 with at least a GTX 590/680 or HD 7970, although I'm unsure of how either of these cards at ~$400-600 are going to perform better than the previous option of 2 6970's.
Upgrade from air cooling and OC the CPU - $100
Newegg special on CM Seidon 240M Water Cooler. Was something that I wanted to do from the get-go but went with a more economical CM Hyper 212 Evo air cooler. This plus the ram upgrade is really about where my preferred budget rests, or the second 6970 VC, assuming I can find one in good shape in this price area.
Open to other thoughts - I'm putting this together at work on lunch so I don't have other specifics.
Thanks in advance for the advice.
Intel I7-2700k
Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z Micro Atx Mobo
HIS IceQ Turbo HD 6970
GSkill Ripjaw X PC3-12800 8gb (2x4gb)
OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 128gb SSD
All this is housed in a Fractal Design Arc Mini running off Antec EarthWatts 750w PSU, playing on a 27" Acer LED Monitor. I mainly use this for playing WoW, D3 (less often), and SW:TOR (rarely anymore though). Running Win7Ultx64, with OS & priority programs on SSD, and secondary programs running and users set to run off a 2TB HDD.
Currently nothing is manually overclocked, but I have set the mobo BIOS to boost the CPU to 3.9GHz.
Lately I have been recording my WoW raiding sessions and also streaming to Twitch so guildies not currently in the main group can watch (and learn from my mistakes LOL). I have noticed that during these streaming/recording sessions that my FPS has been dropping pretty low (~30 fps) and the graphics on the stream/recordings have some serious pixelation, mostly on the ground artwork. My character, the boss, and most of the other characters look fine, but the surrounding environments tend to look like you're watching through a piece of opague textured glass.
I'm looking at a few seperate upgrade options, and wondering what each would do in terms of making the stream/recordings look better:
Add a duplicate of my existing RAM - $65 (newegg)
With WoW, Mumble, the streaming software, and occasionally a chrome browser (or two), I tend to be running in the ballpark of 5.5-6.5 GB of the available ram. I don't think that I'm currently maximizing the amount of ram that I have, but more is never bad, and I've got 2 free slots. Moving to 32GB (4x8GB) would be overkill IMO.
Add a duplicate of my existing GPU - $150 (used, ebay)
This is questionable, as from what I've read on streaming/recording, won't help much other than upping my frame rates while raiding. I do believe that my PSU can handle the addition, and there's room on the mobo as well.
Sell my GPU, and get a newer upgraded version - >$400 (newegg)
Replace my HD 6970 with at least a GTX 590/680 or HD 7970, although I'm unsure of how either of these cards at ~$400-600 are going to perform better than the previous option of 2 6970's.
Upgrade from air cooling and OC the CPU - $100
Newegg special on CM Seidon 240M Water Cooler. Was something that I wanted to do from the get-go but went with a more economical CM Hyper 212 Evo air cooler. This plus the ram upgrade is really about where my preferred budget rests, or the second 6970 VC, assuming I can find one in good shape in this price area.
Open to other thoughts - I'm putting this together at work on lunch so I don't have other specifics.
Thanks in advance for the advice.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram