PC upgrades or overclocking? - help with suggestions.

[korialstraz]

Hey everyone. It's time to upgrade my computer! When I bought the current one, I got tons of helpful tips from people here, and since then the only thing that's been upgraded is the GPU, since the old one died on me. So I find myself with a system that has a GPU that's more than overkill compared to the other parts. But let's get down to what is currently in the machine!

Motherboard: Asus P5Q3
GPU: GTX 580
CPU: Intel E8500 3.16 GHz Dual-Core
RAM: 4 GB DDR3 (I think, a little unsure)
Audio: Creative X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty
HDD: SSD Crucial RealSSD 300 128 GB
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silence(r?) 750w

Case: Antec 1200

Now since the RAM and CPU is what's holding me back the most, I'm looking at either overclocking, or getting one of those closed watercooling loops for the CPU and overclock it to hell and back again, so to speak. :P I don't have that much experience with overclocking, but even so I can't imagine with such an old CPU that it will last a whole lot longer than it has. Currently it runs at near 100% load during most newer games (Skyrim, BF3 etc). The RAM is also quite often in the high 60-70% if I run too many applications at once.

What I'm looking at upgrading is the motherboard, CPU, RAM, possibly the audio card

After looking at some motherboards, I realized just how out of touch with the new hardware I've become, and this one is probably going to be among the biggest headaches. It needs to support DDR3 RAM obviously, looking at socket 1155, and ofc USB 3.0.

Since the audio card has an IDE cable that runs from the card itself to the front mounted control panel (which seriously restricts airflow), I'm looking at a replacement. The audio card needs to support RCA connections, since I run the audio from my xbox through the PC speakers. But I'm open to other solutions if you know any!

I'd like to keep at the very least 3.16 GHz on the CPU or higher, while increasing from 2 cores to 4.

Upgrading RAM to at least 8 GB, but won't mind higher. Although for the moment I think anything above 16, or even 12 GB might be overkill for pure gaming.

As for the PSU, I'm considering switching to a modular one, with 750w which should still suffice given the upgrades. The reason I'm switching to a modular one is due to easier cable management. I recall last time I was building my computer, I was advised not to get a modular, due to loss of power or some such (memory is a bit fuzzy). But does the modular PSUs really make that much of a difference? Is it going to be even noticeable, unless you're really pushing the performance to the absolute maximum?


Anyway on to which parts I've looked at.

Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V DELUXE
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 3.3 GHz
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz 16 GB kit (4x4GB)

The motherboard I don't really have a good reasoning for, apart from it receiving some decent reviews, and people saying it's aimed at gaming. CPU is basically a rather cheap upgrade, considering it has higher clock speeds and double the cores of my current CPU, and the RAM, well they were cheap, good speed and for about 17USD extra, I got 16 GB over 12. And they can hopefully be used during the next upgrade, but who knows.


My old parts will go towards building a relatively cheap gaming computer for my brother if he's still interested by the time I can buy the upgrades.


Also one last request, which is entirely unrelated to the PC upgrades. I've got an old case, nothing fancy, just a standard more or less workstation like case from Acer, which I'm thinking of putting some cheap parts in and setting up as a file server. Does anyone here have experience with setting up a file server, and got some helpful tips?

[BobCox2]

I don't bother to over-clock anymore.

Even the cheap stuff is fast now.

I prefer AMD over a Celeron Myself.

Get SATA3 etc and SSD Drive for the OS if you want to turn it up a bit more.

[Pixie]

The 2500-k's what you'd want to get if you were going to OC the cpu'n it's only ~$10 more than the standard 2500. Both of the i5-2500s're solid priceerformance cpus though. I don't think a dual-core cpu's worth upgrading around for high end gaming, these days. I didn't think I'd need to OC, but I cap cpu p. frequently on Tera + a few other games that don't seem to rely on gpu as much as others do.

The wiki chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155 has a good breakdown of the differences btw mobo types (Z68 or Z77 probably ideal for you). Beyond that, it's just a matter of filtering out boards based on features you'd like & then by reviews. I went with a P67 board, but they're phased out pretty much now (or getting there), simply because I didn't need on-board gpu support or ssd caching. No point paying for features you don't need, yeah?

Re: audio, you can pick up cheap creative sb cards for ~$40 ish. If you're looking for something a little more quality, asus xonars're around $100-110 I think? As for the RCA, pick up some cheap component parts off Amazon. I route my ps3 rca into the line-in on my sound card. You just need a female RCA to male 3.5 stereo adapter, shouldn't cost more than a few dollars.

PSU's the one thing you don't wanna skimp on. Look for active PFC, 80+ silver at least. here's a decent faq: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=287485
I prefer corsair, even if they're slightly more expensive, simply because they've been reliable in my xp & have a solid warranty. I don't know enough modular vs non modular, to say what's myth or not, but that cables are very easily routed behind the mobo tray & zipties're cheap. Modular seems to jack the price up by about $20-30 dep on model.

Ram's so cheap, might as well get 4x4. my gskill 4x4 1600s only cost ~$26 last summer. I don't imagine the price has fluctuated that much. Sure you probably won't max out 16gs very often, but in the times that you do, for the miniscule price difference, it's just like.. why not?

[korialstraz]

I don't bother to over-clock anymore.

Even the cheap stuff is fast now.

I prefer AMD over a Celeron Myself.

Get SATA3 etc and SSD Drive for the OS if you want to turn it up a bit more.

Thanks. Yea I've not really had any need to OC except for doing it just to say I have an OCed comp. Which isn't worth it. >_>

Honestly I don't really have any experience to base my decision between ADM/Intel on, I just seem to prefer Intel.

Aye SATA3 is a must, seeing as I already got an SSD for OS and games.

The 2500-k's what you'd want to get if you were going to OC the cpu'n it's only ~$10 more than the standard 2500. Both of the i5-2500s're solid priceerformance cpus though. I don't think a dual-core cpu's worth upgrading around for high end gaming, these days. I didn't think I'd need to OC, but I cap cpu p. frequently on Tera + a few other games that don't seem to rely on gpu as much as others do.

The wiki chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155 has a good breakdown of the differences btw mobo types (Z68 or Z77 probably ideal for you). Beyond that, it's just a matter of filtering out boards based on features you'd like & then by reviews. I went with a P67 board, but they're phased out pretty much now (or getting there), simply because I didn't need on-board gpu support or ssd caching. No point paying for features you don't need, yeah?

Re: audio, you can pick up cheap creative sb cards for ~$40 ish. If you're looking for something a little more quality, asus xonars're around $100-110 I think? As for the RCA, pick up some cheap component parts off Amazon. I route my ps3 rca into the line-in on my sound card. You just need a female RCA to male 3.5 stereo adapter, shouldn't cost more than a few dollars.

PSU's the one thing you don't wanna skimp on. Look for active PFC, 80+ silver at least. here's a decent faq: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=287485
I prefer corsair, even if they're slightly more expensive, simply because they've been reliable in my xp & have a solid warranty. I don't know enough modular vs non modular, to say what's myth or not, but that cables are very easily routed behind the mobo tray & zipties're cheap. Modular seems to jack the price up by about $20-30 dep on model.

Ram's so cheap, might as well get 4x4. my gskill 4x4 1600s only cost ~$26 last summer. I don't imagine the price has fluctuated that much. Sure you probably won't max out 16gs very often, but in the times that you do, for the miniscule price difference, it's just like.. why not?

Thanks!

I'll look into the 2500-k series, and might even go for it, if the price difference isn't too big. As for overclocking, I actually meant if I should OC my current CPU, to squeeze out a little extra power and time before upgrading, or not bother with it. But looking at the price of the 2500, I doubt I'm going to bother with overclocking.

I'll look into using the line in instead of a dedicated RCA. Might not even need to switch out the current sound card, as I'm quite happy with the quality. And IIRC it has SPDIF, so there's still room for upgrading the speakers without switching out the sound card.

Definitely don't want to skimp on the PSU! Although looking at the price currently for a Z77 MB, 2500-k and 16 GB RAM, and I might wait with changing the PSU. Most of the cables are already hidden behind the mobo tray, and what isn't is zip-tied into a small bulk of cables resting at the bottom next to the PSU. But you mentioned the PSU having at least 80+ silver, what's the difference between having silver or gold? I'd guess gold is better?

RAM is indeed cheap, unless you're in Norway I guess. Almost the cheapest I could find (with quick search of only 1 Norwegian online retailer" was around 130-140USD for 16 GB. >_< But maybe it's just expensive in general, since the CPU is going for almost 300USD. But not having looked up prices that much, those don't seem unreasonable, having grown up here and all. =P

Total price for the 3 parts mentioned earlier is 750USD. So need to look up prices elsewhere, and wait until I can afford it, which hopefully is this month.

[nurman]

Also one last request, which is entirely unrelated to the PC upgrades. I've got an old case, nothing fancy, just a standard more or less workstation like case from Acer, which I'm thinking of putting some cheap parts in and setting up as a file server. Does anyone here have experience with setting up a file server, and got some helpful tips?

http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

I use it, I love it.

What is it?... it's file sharing
... it's webserver
... it's open source
... it's free
... it's guaranteed to contain no malware

Features
Download and upload
Virtual file system
Highly customizable
HTML template
Bandwidth control
Easy/Expert mode
Log
Full control over connections
Accounts
Dynamic DNS updater

PM me or ask here should you start using it, I've used it enough to know the ins-and-outs of it.

[korialstraz]

http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

I use it, I love it.



PM me or ask here should you start using it, I've used it enough to know the ins-and-outs of it.

Thanks for the suggestion. I only took a brief look at it for now, but was thinking of something a little bit more advanced. I've been playing with the idea of a file/media server that's running a server OS (so to speak), and was aiming at it being Windows based, since that's the platform I got the most experience working with. I'll keep this in the back of my mind though!

[nurman]

Thanks for the suggestion. I only took a brief look at it for now, but was thinking of something a little bit more advanced. I've been playing with the idea of a file/media server that's running a server OS (so to speak), and was aiming at it being Windows based, since that's the platform I got the most experience working with. I'll keep this in the back of my mind though!

True, it's more for now-and-then use than professional-grade FTP, but it works with any OS (on the non-host end, it can be hosted through Linux through wine or on windows) because it's web based.

[korialstraz]

True, it's more for now-and-then use than professional-grade FTP, but it works with any OS (on the non-host end, it can be hosted through Linux through wine or on windows) because it's web based.

Might look into using this as a temporary solution, seeing as what I want to do eventually will be a rather big project, relatively speaking!

Didn't see anything about running it on Windows OS, and that definitely makes it more attractive for me. ^_^

[Tilitoon]

If you are not currently using an aftermarket cooling solution then I wouldn't recommend buying one simply to overclock your cpu for a few weeks, it'll cost you a bit too much for the performance gain imo (the E8500 isn't the best overclocker and is not as easy to overclock as the new x-bridge platform).

I'm not sure you mentioned what you are planning to do with your new computer, I'm guessing it'll be mostly for gaming, no Adobe Premiere or CAD work ? If that's mainly for gaming, a Z77 board with a 2500K is probably your best bet for the money. Add a good cooler on that, it'll be easy to overclock and you'll get a very good performance / price ratio (you could also go for Ivy but I'm not sure if it's really worth it). 8GB+ of memory is good enough for gaming, but since it's so cheap you could even get away with 16GB for a little over $110 US.

The difference between Bronze / Silver / Gold / Plat is the efficiency, but imo if you get Bronze it's already good enough, if you don't mind the price then you can get higher certification. Anything from Corsair/Seasonic / Antec is good. Again, in theory modular cables decrease the efficiency, but so little, the convenience + additional airflow is more important, unless your electricity bill is absurdly high.

[korialstraz]

Thanks for the input Tiliton. Atm I'm using the stock cooler for the E8500, which is why I was considering getting a closed watercooling thing.

It's for gaming yes, but might look into some Adobe programs at some point. Always meant to, but never got around to it. Might try some recording/streaming too if the opportunity presents itself. But so far it looks like Z77 and the 2500k are good options for sure.

Ahh makes sense. Never really got into PSUs aside from going for a good brand with good reviews, and the recomendation I got last time. Another reason I was considering switching PSU was so my brother could get my current one too, meaning he'd only need a GPU and case for a working gaming rig.