System Upgrade Direction / Troubleshoot

[pavlos94]

Hi all.

 

Afraid this is going to be a long post but please stick it out.

 

I am hoping for some advice on which direction to go with my system and I want some views to help me decide. I have saved up some money to upgrade and I have 2 options in mind. I am thinking about buying an extra GPU to crossfire with my MSI HD 7970. However my system is over 4 years old (which I appreciate isn't too old) so alternately I am thinking of upgrading the CPU, MB, and memory instead for reasons below.

 

My current system is:

• Intel i7 930 (LGA 1366)
• Asus Rampage II Gene (X58)
• OCZ 6GB (3x2GB) 1600MHz DDR3
• Intel 520 120GB SSD (OS Drive)
• Seagate 1TB (contains all my documents, games, etc.)
• OCZ 600W PSU semi-modular (which I will have to upgrade with I decide to crossfire)
• CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler (which is rubbish)
• Thermaltake Armor Revo Gaming Case (looking to buy a Corsair 350D to replace it)
• MSI HD 7970 Lighting Boosted Edition

 

The GPU I would buy is the MSI HD 7970 Lightning as it is cheaper than the boosted edition buy over £100. However I am considering upgrading my system so wanted some thoughts as to which would be the best direction to go and provide the best performance. The reasons for upgrading my CPU, MB, & memory are a few. My X58 chip on my motherboard runs very hot (60-70C at idle, no overclock) and restricted me when overclocking my CPU as I didn't want the temperatures to go much higher. Reading online the X58 seems to run hot normally.

 

I tried to solve this issue by zip-tying a 40mm fan over it which did help to bring the temps down a bit. However I have now had to remove it since I moved my GPU card to the other slot, thereby preventing it to fit. I moved my GPU because where it was it was covering a SATA connector which I needed. I was bending the connector preventing it from working and I didn't want any permanent damage so thats why I moved the GPU. (If I buy another card, I will have to no longer use that sata connector).

 

Also there is no USB 3.0 support, the PCI-E lanes are 2.0 and I believe something is failing in my system ( I have put the information about it at the end of this post because it is quite long and not everyone may want to read it. Any help about it will be greatly appreciated. )

 

The parts I am thinking about buying if I do upgrade my system are:

• Intel i7-4770k
• Gigabyte Z97MX - Gaming 5 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard
• Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (4x4GB) 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit
• Corsair Hydro H80i Cooler
• Keep everything else (therefore stick with 1 GPU)

The question I have is which would be a better performance; buying another graphics card and crossfiring or upgrade my system? I mostly game and do lot of video converting through handbrake. I recently bought Watch Dogs and I've noticed that has much greater system requirements than any other games I own so my thought is many new games to be released may be similar so the system upgrade may be worth it?

 

If you guys are still with me, please read below about my hardware issues.

 

 

My Potential Hardware Issues

 

So I think some of my hardware is beginning to fail. I am running some test nows but maybe someone here might have some thoughts as to what it is. I have been getting quite a few BSOD (ID: 2057). They are not consistent when I am getting them, but it is when I start to push my system. Far Cry 3 commonly crashes my system with Assassin's Creed IV also doing it occasionally. I overclocked my CPU about a year ago from 2.8GHz to 3.2GHz (not ground breaking I know but it was my first overclock). Anyway it seemed stable. I had run prime95 for 24 hours no problem. Multiple IntelBurnTest no problem. I had played many games and no issue at all. It seemed to be running very stable. However last January my secondary HDD failed and Windows 8 wouldn't boot. It kept going into a repair boot loop (which seems to be a common issue). I just bought a new HDD and started from scratch, reinstalled and staying with Windows 7. At that time I installed Hackingtosh as well, but OS X was never stable. After running a few tests I found that my overclock was no longer stable even in windows and crashed....a lot. I thought it was very strange how my overclock went from being pretty stable for 6 months without a single crash to being very unstable. I'm at university and I had a lot of work and no time so I just returned my BIOS settings to default removing the overclock and it seemed to run fine for a while. Since easter however I found that it was crashing a lot and after running prime95 my computer always gets BSOD (always ID: 2057) or the following errors for both worker #5 & #6:

"FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4"

"Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file"

"Worker Stopped"

Sometimes this can occur 5 mins after starting or 5 hours. (I am unable to find any stress.txt file as well)

I ran two Memtests with 0 errors (4 hours and 12 hours). Anyone have any thoughts as to what it may be?

 

 

This was quite a long post so thanks for sticking with me. Any thoughts or suggested improvements on which direction to go on my system upgrade would be much appreciated, along with what may be tripping my current computer. 

 

Thanks in advance for all your replies.  
 

 

 

[Silver Knight]

@pavlos94

 

-What is your upgrade budget

 

If i was you, i'd go with CPU, Mobo and RAM (Why go with 2400MHz when you can go with 1600/1866MHz, especially if you're gaming a lot?) upgrade (you already said you have some OC problems with your CPU), and then i'd save money to buy an 280x to crossfire with that 7970

[pavlos94]

@pavlos94

 

-What is your upgrade budget

 

If i was you, i'd go with CPU, Mobo and RAM (Why go with 2400MHz when you can go with 1600/1866MHz, especially if you're gaming a lot?) upgrade (you already said you have some OC problems with your CPU), and then i'd save money to buy an 280x to crossfire with that 7970

 

Thanks for your reply. Thats a fair point about the RAM. I had no reason for selecting the faster speed. I shall have a look at other options. I think that that is what I am leaning towards - upgrading the system and then save up for a another GPU. 

 

My budget is £500-600

 

 

Yes it is quite a large amount of text my friend. There's nothing more depressing than when you post and you haven't yet had anyone view it or reply to your thread, so for that reason I'll give it my best shot.

 

Haha yeah thanks for reading through it. I thought it be best I try to explain it all, besides someone has to post something very long once in a while. I thought I would.

 

 

Regarding system upgrade vs crossfire

Both options will have their advantages. On the one hand CPU bound applications such as gaming (recent titles) and editing will be affected by an older generation of CPU, on the other hand adding crossfire will boost your gaming performance.... but if the CPU does not have the horsepower than you'll receive a bottleneck and your system will perform perhaps worse than if you only had a single graphics card.

 

That's a fair point. I think I will future proof it as I can always add another card later. Like Silver Knight said I can save up later and buy an 280x. 

 

I'll start the thread later today and hopefully I will find the cause.

[Silver Knight]

@pavlos94

With that budget, i'd go with something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£233.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£25.24 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: MSI Z97-GAMING 5 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£113.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£116.69 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£89.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £579.87
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-01 16:02 BST+0100)

You don't really need liquid cooling, especially if you don't plan on going crazy with OC'ing.
MSI and Corsair are both reputable brands, so you don't have to worry too much.
And Samsung EVO is a nice addition (even if you have one 120Gb one, this one can be for games ), or you could not buy it, and save the money for a new GPU

[pavlos94]

That build looks good. I agree that the watercooling is a bit of an over kill. I will save money not getting it as well. 

I'll probably go for a micro ATX board as I want a compact system. I'm at uni in a tiny room so won't something small. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion