Long term build plan, looking for feedback

[CrisisHawk]

Hi, I only recently discovered the channel and forum.

 

I am gradually upgrading my PC as I can afford the parts.

 

I live in Ireland and generally find Amazon UK to be the best place I can source parts from as it's the only site I know of that offers free delivery to Ireland on most items, but I am open to using other sites.

 

My current build is: AMD Phenom X4 9650, MS-7501 motherboard, 4GB DDR2, Radeon HD 6850, Samsung 840 250gb, two ~500gb HDD, 1440X900 and 1366X768 monitors.

 

I plan to carry over the video card, SSD, 1 of the HDD and the monitors to the new build.

 

Parts I already have: zulman z11 plus, Patriot PVI38G186C9K 8GB (2x 4GB), corsair CX600, Western Digital caviar blue 1TB, 

 

Once Haswell releases I plan to get a i5-4670k, undetermined z87 motherboard and maybe a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, I have a budget of 450 euro max for these.

 

In a few months I plan to replace my current monitors with 3 1920X1080 22-24'' monitors to use with eyefinity, I have messed around with eyefinity with my two existing monitors and while I loved the experience for the most part, the obvious issue of bezel in the crosshair was a bit of a deal breaker. I plan to spend 400-500 euro on these.

 

The final part of my current plan is to spend 200-300 euro on a new video card around the end of the year. I don't have any real preference between AMD and Nvidia, apart from whichever has the better eyefinity/surround support.

 

Thanks in advance for any feedback you can provide.

[FloRolf]

why dont you buy the gpu and one 1080p monitor first? The gaming experience will be much better than with ur 1440x900 screen

[CrisisHawk]

My RAM and CPU appear to be bottlenecks in the system (the RAM more so than the CPU) on games like planetside 2 and supreme commander in particular the RAM is maxed out with the CPU sitting at 60-70% and both games performing poorly. but that was just done with the basic windows 7 CPU monitor.

Not sure how well the CPU cores are being utilized, as far as I can tell my current GPU is fine compared to these.

Also when I was messing around with eyefinity I came across a few videos that advised buying the 3 monitors at the same time to avoid issues like different colour balance between the monitors.

edit: and I have been putting off the MoBo, CPU upgrade for over a month already waiting for haswell.

[WoodenMarker]

My RAM and CPU appear to be bottlenecks in the system (the RAM more so than the CPU) on games like planetside 2 and supreme commander in particular the RAM is maxed out with the CPU sitting at 60-70% and both games performing poorly. but that was just done with the basic windows 7 CPU monitor.

Not sure how well the CPU cores are being utilized, as far as I can tell my current GPU is fine compared to these.

Also when I was messing around with eyefinity I came across a few videos that advised buying the 3 monitors at the same time to avoid issues like different colour balance between the monitors.

edit: and I have been putting off the MoBo, CPU upgrade for over a month already waiting for haswell.

Even a terrible cpu will game fine if there's a powerful enough gpu backing it up. Grab a 7950 and say goodbye to your gaming problems.

[CrisisHawk]

Even a terrible cpu will game fine if there's a powerful enough gpu backing it up. Grab a 7950 and say goodbye to your gaming problems.

 

I kept a better record of the load on my PC during planetside 2 this time.

 

http://imgur.com/MRPnsVG

 

This suggests that my GPU isn't even breaking a sweat while my RAM is maxed out and CPU isn't far behind it, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but based on this I really doubt upgrading my GPU will do me any good in this case.

[WoodenMarker]

I kept a better record of the load on my PC during planetside 2 this time.

 

http://imgur.com/MRPnsVG

 

This suggests that my GPU isn't even breaking a sweat while my RAM is maxed out and CPU isn't far behind it, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but based on this I really doubt upgrading my GPU will do me any good in this case.

You're right. Rereading my post, I'm a bit confused as to why I answered the way I did. I must have missed the bit about maxing the ram.

 

On the other hand, I notice your gpu is not overclocked. Why is that?

[CrisisHawk]

You're right. Rereading my post, I'm a bit confused as to why I answered the way I did. I must have missed the bit about maxing the ram.

On the other hand, I notice your gpu is not overclocked. Why is that?

I had not overclocked yet as this is my current rig:

http://i.imgur.com/FuuJ1Si.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ArmTEVq.jpg

The airflow can not be good in that mess, concerned about heat, hence the new case, the one I am using atm wasn't built to handle anything more than the stock parts, video card barely fits, it only has one hard drive bay (and 3 hard drives in there), no cable management and is generally too small to work with.

I plan to put it's stock video card back in and I have other plans for it once I get my new build put together, which I can do once I have a motherboard picked out and order that and the new CPU (and probably a heat-sink).

Trying out the card overclocked now to the max the catalyst software allows, seems to be fine so far, took this shot after running Crysis 2 for about 20 minutes with everything on ultra (without the hi-rez texture pack) http://i.imgur.com/APOheR8.png it ran quite smooth with only the occasional frame rate dip. It had no noticeable affect on Planetside 2.

[WoodenMarker]

I had not overclocked yet as this is my current rig:

http://i.imgur.com/FuuJ1Si.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ArmTEVq.jpg

The airflow can not be good in that mess, concerned about heat, hence the new case, the one I am using atm wasn't built to handle anything more than the stock parts, video card barely fits, it only has one hard drive bay (and 3 hard drives in there), no cable management and is generally too small to work with.

I plan to put it's stock video card back in and I have other plans for it once I get my new build put together, which I can do once I have a motherboard picked out and order that and the new CPU (and probably a heat-sink).

Trying out the card overclocked now to the max the catalyst software allows, seems to be fine so far, took this shot after running Crysis 2 for about 20 minutes with everything on ultra (without the hi-rez texture pack) http://i.imgur.com/APOheR8.png it ran quite smooth with only the occasional frame rate dip. It had no noticeable affect on Planetside 2.

It seems pretty good. I'm guessing you're leaving the overclock on or is the fan noise too bad?

[CrisisHawk]

It seems pretty good. I'm guessing you're leaving the overclock on or is the fan noise too bad?

 

Yea I'll leave it on and keep an eye on it, fan didn't go high enough to be bothersome, should only have to run like this for a few more weeks anyway and the z11 plus should have more space and plenty of airflow so should be no need to be concerned about it then.