Hey all, So I'm basically looking for a bit of upgrade advice for my partners computer. She uses it pretty much for gaming all the time so that's the direction we are going with it. She's recently got a new graphics card and HDD when her brother visited from the US. The spec at the moment is; Intel Core i7 920 4.00 GB Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz (7-7-7-20) ECS X58B-A NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 1TB WD Black I'm going to get her a 120GB SSD (prob Samsung Evo) to help speed up the machine a bit and some games, but I am not 100% sure what the next or best next upgrade would be. Ram seems likely considering the specs and amount according to speccy. But it seems to have ramped up in price since I last bought some. Any advice or recommendations of parts at all would be greatly appreciated.
Still a pretty capable machine. SSD is always good. How do you have 4GB in triple channel? 6GB triple channel would probably be good, though it's still not that necessary for strictly gaming with most existing titles being 32bit. How about keyboard, mouse, display, audio? Probably be most worthwhile to spend money there for experience improvements.
SSD seems a solid step, one which i will be taking also. Maybe an overclock if the SSD doesn't give you the required boost http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/06/overclocking-intel-core-i7-920/1 maybe a new cpu cooler to keep temp down.... h100i http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cooling/2012/12/05/corsair-h100i-review/1 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08/16/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-2gb-review/10
The Ram is x4 1GB sticks of some v generic brand when the machine was used for folding originally by her brother I believe.
New ssd maybe some ram. Not much needs touching. Save the money and take the missus out somewhere nice
Cool, Ram and SSD it is then. Anyone know much about Mushkin memory? Seems like a good deal on amazon for this; http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004G7XQD6/?tag=pcp0f-21 Other Triple Channel seems alot more expensive (even for less GB)
I've never used Mushkin RAM, but lots of folk on here do and like it a lot! That's out of stock though
Mushkin ram is pretty sweet. I've been using it for years now (Radioactive then Blackline) and it's always been hassle free They offer a lifetime warranty too IIRC but I've never had any fail on me.
As a you use the system mostly for gaming I would recommend you use 8GB of memory - 16GB of memory. Someone said earlier that games are 32 bit and he is correct however with the OS being 64bit (to use more that 3GB) the whole system will benefit and have better speed through the memory. I would recommend 1600Mhz memory. The SSD is also a good choice but please remember that it will only make a difference to loading time, you will not get any extra fps.
Dou't the Gpu is holding much back, 4 gb of ram would be a touch limiting. Ssd makes the system feel much more responsive even if its not a benefit for games. New ssd is a more noticeable upgrade than a CPU in most peoples cases.
If reports are correct and next gen games are all 64 bit then 4gb will be even worse. 64 bit apps and programs are slightly larger than 32 bit so will use more ram on system idle,leaving you even less to play with. 8gb really is becoming a sort of minimum now, but, with any luck due to the way next gen consoles are it should stay good for a while. It totally sucks how much ram has gone up
Going to pick up the SSD and more Ram. I don't expect super fixes, just tweaking and improving loading times and performance where possible, so will possibly replace the generic Cooler and overclock as well a little thanks all for the advice, it certainly does suck that Ram has suddenly gone up in price. Anyone know why? I know HDDs were due to the flooding a few years back but they seem to have come back down in cost again.
Ahh bugger out of stock. I could go for one of these 2: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005LDLP3C/?tag=pcp0f-21 http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005LDLP0A/?tag=pcp0f-21 I'm not really sure which would be better. The CAS of the 1333 is 9 but the 1600 is 11. Why's Ram so expensive now!
