Upgrading

Remove all ads!

Thanks a ton for all the help guys. It has given me a lot of food for thought - as I already said, I'm probably not making this purchase until January anyway. One more question though, seeing as how I'm already at $1000 anyway, for $100 more I can go with this processor:

Intel® Core™ i7-2600K 3.40 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1155

Is there any reason I wouldn't want this as opposed to the i5 on the previous one?

 

Beside the price? No. it adds up. see: http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i5-2500k-and-core-i7-2600k-review/ It is a good one.

Make sure that it has windows7 installed. Unless you happen to have a disk that fell of a truck.....

 

As Merlanni says, the I7-2600k isn't worth the extra money. Check the comments on both here, and in particular:

You're much better off putting the extra $100 into a better video card (say a 6950 instead of 6850, or 560 instead of 550).

And I didn't notice that the build doesn't come with a default O/S. I know when I bought my computer from NCIX, W7 was included.

 

Do you need a desktop or would a laptop work for you? You can get a decent gaming laptop for around $1,000. This would provide you portability and the ability to game. I bought the Best Buy G74 model for $1,099 back in September. It comes with an Intel I7 2630QM processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 2x 500GB HD, a 1600x900 screen resolution, and a 560m GTX video card (128bit version), etc... This laptop blew the doors off my triple core Phenoem with 4GB of RAM and a 8800 GS card, which I believe is much faster than the system you are currently using.

I'm glad I bougth the laptop I did. I plan to upgrade my RAM to faster speeds soon enough. The overall deal I got in my laptop blows my mind. The components are a bit slower than the desktop counter parts but the price and portability of the overall package made it worth my wild. I would in fact wait for AMD and Nvidia to release the updated 600 and 7000 series; this way you get the latest mobile graphic processing power, and who knows if intel and amd will also release their newer CPU by 2nd quarter next year.

However, as I tell my wife and as it is with technology, as soon as you walk out the door with your purchase it is out dated.

Actually, best buy has a slightly faster model than the one I bougt, it has the faster intel quad core chip and faster ram installed and is the same price as the one I bought.

I would go mobile as you now can get the almost the same components and have the portability if needed.

 

I want to get an iMac.

 

Correct, and since I am about to buy a new one after my old on failed, with very recent and up to date counsel from my trusted shop, make sure it has high amperage (20+ ampere) on the 24V lines, since it is that what powers your GPU (really good PSUs have up to 50 ampere, important if you consider using dual GPUs). Also, a 14cm fan is nice and quiet.

 

I don't need a desktop, but seeing as how the only time I have available for gaming is when I'm in my house (the only other place where I spend a lot of time is work, and obviously I can't game there), I don't really see any reason why I would NEED a laptop.

 

Bear in mind that, with a laptop, you're paying a premium for portability, so to get the same power as you'd get in a desktop, it'll cost you more. Also, because of size limitations and cooling restrictions, desktops can be made more powerful than laptops (although I don't know whether that restriction would apply to the kind of system you're considereing). Lastly, AFAIK you can't really open up a laptop to upgrade things like RAM, GPU, etc. (or if you can, it's trickier).

 

That was kind of my point. It seems the main selling point of a laptop is portability, and there really isn't any time that I'm not at home where I'd be able to game, so for me, the portability aspect is moot - the only thing it would allow me to do is to play in whatever room of the house I wanted.

 

24 volts? You sure?

 

My new iMac turned up yesterday. It's awesome. I love how it only has one cord (a power one). Compared to my old PC which had a spaghetti mess of cables. My desk is so much neater now.

 

OK, after an unexpected home repair set me back $1,600, the new PC had to be put on hold for a bit. But now that the tax returns are done, I'm back in business. From what I've been looking at, this doesn't appear to be the WORST thing in the world. While hard drive prices have climbed in the last couple of months, it would appear that the same PC I would have purchased in December will cost somewhat less now, as with the new year we got some new models available.

 

But they're cheaper! Here's the one I'm considering:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_Z68_Configurator/

The changes I'm considering are:

Memory 16 GB (4x4) DDR3/1333MHz Dual Channel Memory - Corsair:

Doubling my memory for $40 seems like money well spent.

Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB 16x PCle

??? I notice I have options for Video Card 1, 2, and 3. One is enough, right?

Power supply: There seems to be a bunch of options here, all for around the same price.

There was the originally recommended 600W Cooler Master Silent Pro 80 Plus.

But for the same price (within $20) there is also:

650W Corsair CMPSU-650TXV2 80 Plus

800W Standard Power Supply - SLI/Crossifre X ready (and this one is about $20 less - WTF?)

Total price ~$900.

Any comments/suggestions welcome...

 

You definitely dont need any extra video cards.

I would stick with the 600W Coolermaster PSU. Its a pretty good one, and honestly anything over 600W is overkill for you. Heck even 500W probably is. The thing to remember is that the quality of the PSU is more important than the watt rating. Not that the rating is not important, just that cheaper PSUs are rated using less reliable means. Like they are usually rated in terms of peak power, whereas expensive PSUs are rated in terms of mean/average power. Plus expensive PSUs have all sorts of protection built in so that your expensive components do not leak their magic blue smoke and stop working (they give a +5 to saves vs magic blue smoke leaking!).

Other than that it looks good. 16GB of RAM is probably overkill unless you really multi task extremely heavily.

 

Thanks for the PSU advice. The only reason I checked the box for 16GB RAM was because cyberpower tells you next to each component the change in the price for picking that component. It came with 8GB RAM. Next to the 16GB RAM upgrade, it had (+$41). And I thought, hell, so long as Corsair makes decent RAM cartridges, it seems foolish to not double up on it for a measly $41.

 

I would hold off for a while. The hard drive prices will come down shortly.

 

One more question on the RAM - because upgrading from 8 GB to 16 GB for $41 sounds fishy to me. It says that they are Corsair DDR3/1333 MHz Dual Channel Memory (4x4).

I understand that the 4x4 means that it will have 4 separate RAM cartridges, each with 4GB of RAM, but what's all that other stuff mean? Is that an appropriate type of RAM for the PC I'm looking to purchase?

Example: They also offer a Kingston HyperX RAM, that's DDR3/1600 MHz for an additional $86, as opposed to $41. I assume the bigger MHz means it's faster, but is that a difference I'm going to notice?

EDIT: One more.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 2GB 16X PCIe Video Card (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)

Price difference: $66. Worth it?