Upgrading

[Jayfaas]

I havent upgraded in quite a while...but I used to pride myself on always knowing what to get when stuff came out and always having top of the line stuff. Now im a little older(29) and dont really care to have THE BEST stuff, but I want to upgrade to something that will last me a few years before being extremely obsolete. Here are my current specs:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
DFI Lanparty UT P35-T2R
2x2GB PC2-6400 sticks of G.skill ram 5-5-5-15
WD Raptor 10,000 RPM hdd
PC Power and Cooling 750W Silencer PSU
Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS-512
Soundblaster X-Fi

As you can see this is all pretty outdated stuff. I am looking for something now to let me play the new Counter-Strike:Global Offensive without a problem. I dont overclock, so I dont need anything where I have to pay extra to have the abilities of opening the FSB and running the multiplier up to 900 haha. Since my last upgrade, I have basically fell off the map when it comes to knowing hardware. Of the system I have right now, I would really like to upgrade all but the PSU and sound card. Would anyone be willing to be able to point me in the right direction as to my selections? I can find the prices and all myself, unless there is also sites out there I should look for for the best deals. Between Intel and AMD, Im not really biased but I know in the past I chose Intel because it ran cooler, but I was experimenting with overclocking then. As far as hard drive I was looking at one of the Intel SSD drives but then again I figured Id ask here in case there is something wrong with those. Any ideas? Thank you in advance.

[Jayfaas]

Any suggestions?

[Jayfaas]

Im not really looking to do extreme overclocking, but I do want something that is going to be stable and last long. Im going with a Samsung 840 Pro 128GB hard drive. Thats what i have picked out so far.

[Budwise]

I'm pretty similar to you in my needs and have been doing this for a long time.

My Recommendation:
Asus Z77 Board (P8Z77-V or V Pro are best bang for buck)
i5 3570K (unless you want to spend another Benjamin on an i7 3770K, performance difference isnt much in most situations)
2X4GB of DDR3 1600, anything faster yields little to no gain and unless you need more 8GB is plenty. Gskill/Corsair is what i stick to and 9-9-9 timings 1.5v.
Your SSD choice is spot on
Your PSU is already fine
For video its all about money. 7950/GTX 670 are probably the best price points.
Sound Blaster Z is the new creative card/s. I just upgrade my XtremeMusic to it and its really nice.

[Jayfaas]

Thank you so much for that. Been waiting a few days to see what recommendations I could get. I started looking at people's sigs but im sure theres a high percentage of people here that got what they have so they could OC it and im not really into that TOO much. I may go in there and fool around but nothing extreme.

[zanzabar]

I'm pretty similar to you in my needs and have been doing this for a long time.

My Recommendation:
Asus Z77 Board (P8Z77-V or V Pro are best bang for buck)
i5 3570K (unless you want to spend another Benjamin on an i7 3770K, performance difference isnt much in most situations)
2X4GB of DDR3 1600, anything faster yields little to no gain and unless you need more 8GB is plenty. Gskill/Corsair is what i stick to and 9-9-9 timings 1.5v.
Your SSD choice is spot on
Your PSU is already fine
For video its all about money. 7950/GTX 670 are probably the best price points.
Sound Blaster Z is the new creative card/s. I just upgrade my XtremeMusic to it and its really nice.

i think that the asrock extreme 4 is a better deal than the asus boards, and i do not think that the sound blaster Z is a good idea. for the same price as a lower mid range MB and that sound blaster Z you can get a maximus 5 gene that will overclock better, and it has a nice amp/sound card built in. the sound on the gene i think is almost as good as my old SBA2plat pro and that was the best sound creative has ever done (maybe the a4plat pro was as good but they were basically the same.) if you do not need the amp i do not think that a sound card would make a difference to most people.

Thank you so much for that. Been waiting a few days to see what recommendations I could get. I started looking at people's sigs but im sure theres a high percentage of people here that got what they have so they could OC it and im not really into that TOO much. I may go in there and fool around but nothing extreme.

do you live near a microcenter, that will save you some money. on the OCing, i think it is worth having the option since the K edition is not much more money (they are cheaper sometimes since they go on sale as a loss leader,) and overcliocking is really easy now. i really like changing the turbo to 40 and setting it to synchronous so all cores do the same turbo at the same time. i have never seen a chip that will not do it on stock voltage and it does not really increase the wattage much.

tiger has the 3570k for $200 right now http://www.tigerdirect.com/email/wem...-email_wem3537

[Jayfaas]

Which one should i get? One says ivy bridge and the other doesnt.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&sku=I69-3570K
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115233

[zanzabar]

they are the same but the one on tiger can be overclocked, so get that one. if you live near a microcenter they have the 3570k for $190, and $50 off a MB, and $15 off the SSD, but they are in store only. you only want a K edition.

[BlindFreddie]

Interesting ...
Tip:
The Asrock 1155 boards have mounting holes for 775 coolers, so your existing TRUE can go on without needing to buy TR's later universal Bolt-Thru Kit ("BTK"), which is the one that comes with the later TRUE Venomous X.
When I put my 775 TRUE "X"-style backplate on an Asrock Z77 Extreme4-M board, I drilled a hole thru 1 leg of the "X" to accommodate the end of one of the screws that sticks out of the backplate of the Foxconn CPU socket. I also filed a notch into the side of another leg of the "X" to clear 1 other Foxconn screw.
But I bought a BTK anyway because I changed to an Asus P8Z77-M Pro board that doesn't have 775-holes.

The BIOSes on both of those boards are a bit of a joke. It's almost impossible or impossible to turn off "turbo", throttling back of multiplier & voltage when idle, and unauthorised fiddling with the bclk frequency. The Asus in particular has a zillion RAM timing settings, most of which are undocumented and which no-one in their right mind would play with. The CPU multiplier, which you do want to alter? Buried 2 menus deep! And if you alter the multi, it automatically re-enables throttling. Just great if you're seeking a stable overclock - not.

If your existing CPU has enough grunt for your gaming, but you'd like better graphics, you might consider upgrading your graphics card now and deferring your CPU & board purchase until Intel's next-gen Haswell is released - see Haswell threads in XS News forum.

If you were running the machine 24/7, I'd look at the efficiency of your PSU & consider upgrading to one that's 80+ Bronze rated, but if the machine is only running a few hrs/day, keep what you have.

[zanzabar]

the asrock you set the max multi on the 1st page and disable speed step if you dont want it to change, with the asus you have to go into advanced then cpu and disable speed step/c1e, then reboot, then you can change the multi on the main overclocking page (atleast with my M5E, and the sabertooth.) i see no reason to turn turbo off if you are not benching though as it does not make things less stable unless you want to under volt it when using air or liquid cooling. you can set a higher minimum or 100% only in windows and it will never throttle down and only turbo up if you wanted to do that as well.

[Jayfaas]

Well as I have said before guys, I am not really into overclocking. If I can throw all that stuff in there and run my game fine and not have heating issues, ill leave the BIOS mostly as is and run the stock cooler. The only reason I want to upgrade is because im still running a 2.4(sig says 2.7 but its not) and im having random restart problems that I believe is caused by the motherboard. Ive done every check I can and even bought a new PSU with no success. I figured if I upgrade the motherboard(since LANParty boards arent made anymore ) Ill just go ahead and do a full upgrade. Havent done a full upgrade in like...5-6 years.

[dr_sharp]

Your current machine will run CS:GO just fine.

[Jayfaas]

I know it will but right now I have the problem with random reboots and I've basically ran out of options as to what it can be other than the motherboard itself, and if I am going to be upgrading the motherboard, ill just go ahead and do a full upgrade to last me the next few years.