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Hey guys, I'm thinking of upgrading my SSD and GPU so that I could play Dragon Age Inquisition and other new games in high or ultra setting at 2560x1600 resolution. The desktop will served as a gaming machine. Do you guys have any recommendation in term of parts? I'm leaning toward the Radeon 290x for the never settle option and Intel 730 480GB.

Should I upgrade to Windows 8? Is there any advantage in term of gaming performance?

Budget: $600

Current Machine:
CPU: Intel i5-2500K
CPU Cooler: Stock
Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V PRO
Memory: Crucial 12GB (3 x 4GB) DDR3-1333
Graphic: Radeon 5850
Storage: Corsair CSSD-V128 GB
Second Storage: Seagate Barracuda 4TB
Drive: CD/DVD Burner SAMSUNG (Old)
Sound Card : ASUS Xonar DG Audio Device
Network Card :Built in
Power Supply: Corsair TX 550W
Case : Antec P182
Monitor: Dell 3008WFP 30" IN Game at 2560x1600 Resolution
OS: Windows 7 Professional

tombking wrote:

CPU Cooler: Stock

A large aftermarket cooler like the $28 Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo would allow better overclocking of your Core i5-2500K with less noise. Your Antec P182 case is plenty wide enough to accommodate this tall cooler.

tombking wrote:

Should I upgrade to Windows 8? Is there any advantage in term of gaming performance?

There's no difference in gaming performance between Windows Vista/7 and Windows 8/8.1. If you were building a new system, I would suggest 8.1, but since you've already got Windows 7, you should be fine to continue using it.

tombking wrote:

I'm leaning toward the $260 0.48 TB Intel 730

The $190 0.50 TB Samsung 840 Evo or $190 0.51 TB Crucial MX100 would be adequate.

Adorama to teh rescules, again. Probably very time-limited and it may be a while before it ships--I got a 960 in their last sale and it took about a month. These guys must have some *serious* pull with Sandisk because Extreme Pro is only sporadically stocked by the major computer-parts sites and at lush markup. Maybe it's a reward for moving a lot of higher-margin SDHC cards.

GPU wise, I personally would go for the 970 because I like efficiency. A quick trip to the calculator tells me that the ~80 watt load difference equals $14/year in electric bill savings if you play games 4 hours a day. But AMD's bundle is pretty decent, especially if you're not already on board with Star Citizen.

Don't waste your time with Windows 8. It sucks, and more to the point they're about to release a less-sucky OS. Windows 10 is what I'd target if you want to do an OS upgrade. But there probably won't be a good reason to need to upgrade from W7Pro for a while.

edit: Looks like B&H is price matching (or vice versa). Must be a photo-store thing. 240GB is also on sale, 960 is not.