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Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2012 10:16 pm
by JustAnEngineer
steel-the-deal wrote:
Would grabbing two GeForce GTX660 cards for SLI be a smart option?
No. SLI is never a smart option. Buy one good GPU that can do what you want.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 1:46 am
by ludi
steel-the-deal wrote:
Yep I'll have my job in 6 months and I'm on a salery so I'll be getting paid during my three weeks off (higher ed). Also, I have a very small family. Everyone is of age and doesn't need much...we usually just exchange gift cards, clothing, and stocking stuffer type items. as for the fine print, I actually just went to new egg and I guess they changed it from $500 to $200 :) ..so that might change things a bit...But I have purchased parts for two full builds using the 12 month no interest plan and never missed a payment. It's actually a great way to build credit. I'm fully aware of how to maintain a budget, I'm 29 and have been doing it since I was in college.

Well, if you have the money available and are just using the credit line to build credit history, that's different.

What you'll find is that a large proportion of the TR forum membership cut their hardware teeth in the 1975-2000 time frame, and also has ten or more years with TR. Age-wise, that puts a significant number of us in the mid-30s to mid-50s with 10+ years at TR and 20+ years in technology purchases and upgrades, along with other major life decisions like cars, houses, and 401(k)s. We've either made, or seen others make, all of the classic mistakes with credit and loans on non-essentials...and are quick to discourage easy credit when someone broaches the topic.

Personally, I think that's one of the best things about TR -- yes, we love the technology, but most of the active forum members are fairly pragmatic.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 2:55 am
by marvelous
DPete27 wrote:
steel-the-deal wrote:
Kind of broke right now and need to capitalize on the 6 month no interest deal from newegg.

Ummm....If you're broke, why are you spending $500 on computer parts?


ahhhhhhh ahhahah

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 5:59 am
by DeadOfKnight
steel-the-deal wrote:
Hello Everyone,

I'm looking to upgrade my 2010 build for around $500.

Here are the specs:
GPU: ati 5850
CPU: Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156
Case: Antec P183
PSU: CORSAIR TX Series 650TX
RAM: Crucial 4GB DDR3
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD4P

I am happy with my case and PSU. I'm trying to run games like BF3, Arma 2 (3 when it comes out), planetside, and other hardware demanding games on high/ultra. What upgrades would you guys suggest?

Just looked at newegg for 1156 socket CPU's and only found one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115221 . is 1156 heading down the EOL path?

Interesting. Your build looks exactly like one I built for a friend.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 3:37 pm
by steel-the-deal
DeadOfKnight wrote:
steel-the-deal wrote:
Hello Everyone,

I'm looking to upgrade my 2010 build for around $500.

Here are the specs:
GPU: ati 5850
CPU: Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156
Case: Antec P183
PSU: CORSAIR TX Series 650TX
RAM: Crucial 4GB DDR3
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD4P

I am happy with my case and PSU. I'm trying to run games like BF3, Arma 2 (3 when it comes out), planetside, and other hardware demanding games on high/ultra. What upgrades would you guys suggest?

Just looked at newegg for 1156 socket CPU's and only found one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115221 . is 1156 heading down the EOL path?

Interesting. Your build looks exactly like one I built for a friend.


Lol, probably because I used the TR sweeter spot build from 2010 :D . It has been a great, solid performer!

ludi wrote:
Well, if you have the money available and are just using the credit line to build credit history, that's different.

What you'll find is that a large proportion of the TR forum membership cut their hardware teeth in the 1975-2000 time frame, and also has ten or more years with TR. Age-wise, that puts a significant number of us in the mid-30s to mid-50s with 10+ years at TR and 20+ years in technology purchases and upgrades, along with other major life decisions like cars, houses, and 401(k)s. We've either made, or seen others make, all of the classic mistakes with credit and loans on non-essentials...and are quick to discourage easy credit when someone broaches the topic.

Personally, I think that's one of the best things about TR -- yes, we love the technology, but most of the active forum members are fairly pragmatic.


I have a new account but I have been coming to TR ever since I made the mistake of buying a pre-built PC from Cyberpower in 2005. I am by no means an expert but I do like to dabble. Gaming, building, and upgrading are just hobbies for me. I usually tune out from the latest in new hardware after I'm up to snuff. This has always been my one stop for advice before I make any purchases.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:28 am
by steel-the-deal
JustAnEngineer wrote:
yogibbear wrote:
steel-the-deal wrote:
--I also looked up the Samsung 256GB 830 SSD and they are out of stock at newegg :x
In stock here: http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=74136
And here: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8 ... ERNAL.html
B&H Photo Video is a first-rate vendor.


just looked back at this site and it says that they are discontinued..?

I found this one at newegg, but its a "notebook" upgrade http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820147137

I assume it is the same thing just with a notebook upgrade kit or something?

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:03 pm
by DPete27
steel-the-deal wrote:
I assume it is the same thing just with a notebook upgrade kit or something?

Correct. If you look at the pictures on newegg you can see that the "notebook upgrade" package comes with a SATA to USB adapter.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 5:07 pm
by steel-the-deal
So I've been pulling my hair out trying to decide which card to get. Right now I'm looking at the 7970's ghz ed. and the Gigabyte model is looking like the one Im going to end up with. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125439

The minimum psu requirement is 600watts. Could I potentially be running into a problem running a 650 watt psu if I decide to overclock past the 1100mhz...or even just running it at the stock clocks during a heavy load?

The XFX model is at 1050mhz but only requires 500 watt which is strange. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150632

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 12:10 pm
by DPete27
Use a power supply calculator, don't pay attention to recommended power supply wattages given by GPU vendors.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:07 pm
by steel-the-deal
Not that anyone cares but I just pulled the trigger on the gigabyte 7970 ghz ed, samsung 128 ssd, and 8 more gb of ram. Felt the need to post somewhere to express my glee. :D I guess this thread can be closed. Thanks for all the help guys.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:14 pm
by ludi
Threads at TR don't usually get closed. Instead, they go dormant for 6-60 months, get necro'd by an autobot spammer, and then attract 1-2 days of rapidfire gerbil chatter before anyone realizes that the question and most recent posting history are badly obsolete. Someone finally points it out, and then the thread goes dormant again, waiting for Father Time to blow his trumpet at the end of the Narnian age.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:37 pm
by steel-the-deal
I see, well I guess I'll use the opportunity to ask another question :D I used the calculator at Thermaltake and it looks like with the upgrades I'm just barely making the recommended wattage with my 650 watt PSU. Would it be wise to splurge for a beefier PSU, or wait until I surpass the recommendations?

Specs:
Image

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:01 pm
by MadManOriginal
You'll be fine, that Corsair PSU is quality and those calculators always overestimate power draw to be safe and account for junky PSUs. I'd be surprised if your system draws than 300W from the PSU running Prime95+Furmark simultaneously, which is an artificially high load. Even if you heavily overclock the CPU and GPU you'll still be under 450W.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:10 pm
by steel-the-deal
Good to hear. I will eventually start to build another system, incrementally, and was planning on upgrading the PSU when I get a new CPU and MOBO.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:10 pm
by nerdrage
steel-the-deal wrote:
System Type: 4 physical CPUs

However...
http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/#footnote1 wrote:

System Type: Based on physical processor(s). Multicore CPU counts as a single processor.

If you change that to "1 physical CPU", I'd be willing to bet the power estimate goes down drastically.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:11 pm
by ludi
Thermaltake is yanking your chain for fun and profit (mostly profit). [EDIT: Or see Nerdrage's explanation.] Take a look at the system profile and power consumption in TR's recent comparo of the 7950 vs. 660Ti:

System configuration
Power consumption

The entire system was showing an average peak under 300W. It will have instantantaneous peaks that run higher, a larger PSU will generally tend to handle those situations more gracefully, but there's no way that test system would require more than a 500W PSU. You might get a system to run an average of 450+ using multi-GPU setups and other exotica, but most people aren't in that range, and vendor PSU calculators tend to favor selling more expensive products, as opposed to what the user actually needs.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:12 pm
by steel-the-deal
nerdrage wrote:
steel-the-deal wrote:
System Type: 4 physical CPUs

However...
http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/#footnote1 wrote:

System Type: Based on physical processor(s). Multicore CPU counts as a single processor.

If you change that to "1 physical CPU", I'd be willing to bet the power estimate goes down drastically.


Yes it does, it takes it down to 426 Watts. But underneath the drop down for Physical CPU it reads:

-Attention: Dual or Quad Sockets means you have more than one
physical CPU (AMD 4x4 for example, or server board with 2 or more processors).

So that means 4, no?

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:17 pm
by nerdrage
steel-the-deal wrote:
But underneath the drop down for Physical CPU it reads:

-Attention: Dual or Quad Sockets means you have more than one
physical CPU (AMD 4x4 for example, or server board with 2 or more processors).

So that means 4, no?

In this case, physical CPUs = physical sockets. I'm assuming your motherboard only has one CPU socket, so in that case you only have one physical CPU.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:19 pm
by steel-the-deal
Ahhh I see, nope I just have one. Wow, so for a basic mid-high end gaming rig >700 watts is basically overkill?

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:22 pm
by nerdrage
Yes, 700W is absolutely overkill. Check out ludi's post for some solid data on real-life power consumption.

As a side note, the system in my signature runs on a 450W PSU.

You really want to focus on quality of the PSU, rather than the quantity of watts on the label.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:25 pm
by DPete27
You'd be amazed at what a 430W PSU can power.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:29 pm
by steel-the-deal
Thanks for the advice, I spent the extra coin for the Corsair model in 2010 based on the build guide here at TR, glad I did.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:44 pm
by MadManOriginal
A good PSU is like a good monitor - it's worth spending more and getting quality because it won't be obsoleted in a few years and will last through many upgrades.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 5:53 pm
by killadark
half a "titan" for 500 ? :D

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:14 pm
by steel-the-deal
Well I got home and decided to get more details about the card and something occurred to me that for some reason I didn't think of before clicking the submit button to complete my purchase. Will it fit? Well after looking around I found out that it wont fit unless I remove one of Hard Drive bays.... :( On the upside it will look sexy with my matching blue mobo though.

Image

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:18 pm
by Captain Ned
Rockin' the P182. Still rockin' mine. Have a short card so I can run the double fans in that HD bay.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:25 pm
by JohnC
steel-the-deal wrote:
Well I got home and decided to get more details about the card and something occurred to me that for some reason I didn't think of before clicking the submit button to complete my purchase. Will it fit? Well after looking around I found out that it wont fit unless I remove one of Hard Drive bays.... :( On the upside it will look sexy with my matching blue mobo though.

Image


Pfft... If it won't fit - remove the tray and use the one below it. If you have a lot of HDDs - get an external HDD enclosure, with USB 3.0 or eSATA (if your motherboard doesn't have these ports - buy a cheap PCIe expansion card), problem solved! :wink:

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:50 pm
by steel-the-deal
Captain Ned wrote:
Rockin' the P182. Still rockin' mine. Have a short card so I can run the double fans in that HD bay.


Oh yeah man, I love this thing. Actually, if I decide to do a full upgrade, I just might buy another one for my old parts :) Oh and I had no clue what those clips were for that came with the case until I watched the youtube review today. I would have been running the double fans this entire time.

JohnC wrote:
Pfft... If it won't fit - remove the tray and use the one below it. If you have a lot of HDDs - get an external HDD enclosure, with USB 3.0 or eSATA (if your motherboard doesn't have these ports - buy a cheap PCIe expansion card), problem solved! :wink:

Im cool for now, I just have one HDD and I'll be adding the SSD to the bottom bay when it gets here, which by the way shipped today :D I love newegg.

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:57 pm
by JohnC
P182 is not available anymore... But P183 v3 still is, at least from some places (like Amazon), so get it while you still can! :wink:

Re: 500$ budget, what to upgrade

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:06 pm
by steel-the-deal
It'll be a sad day when they retire this case...not only is this thing super quite but I just love the subtle look to it. I'm not a big fan of the flamboyant "I'm a gaming nerd" look of most cases. Quality cases like these are hard to come by for the price.