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Upgrading rig on a budget

Californ1a
By Californ1a
in New Builds and Planning
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I have around $600 to use for the next hardware upgrade. My current specs

 

Primary use: Everyday machine; mostly gaming, livestreaming, recording (and a few tens of chrome tabs at any time  ;) ). I do run three 1080x1920 monitors, typically with Nvidia surround enabled.

 

I'm mostly looking at a CPU upgrade because of how taxing livestreaming is on my current one, although considering the socket on my motherboard, the only real upgrade I could do would be an i7 3770 (which I hear has a bad stock cooler, so I'd have to include a new cooler since I'm only using stock fans right now). Transition to looking at motherboards, but I don't really know what to look for (mATX); maybe I should get a larger case as well so I'll have a better selection?

I'm also kind of concerned that my internal drive read/write is slower than my external drive. My boot time is very long (5-10min i think), so I'm also considering an SSD purely to fix boot times, although I don't turn my PC off very often (7 reboots in the past 36 days).

 

Basically I'm just wondering what would be the best upgrades I could do for around $600.

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https://linustechtips.com/topic/262131-upgrading-rig-on-a-budget/
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The reason your system drive is slow booting is likely that it is a 5900 rpm "green" drive.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($256.94 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus H97M-E Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($88.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $545.91
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-02 00:25 EST-0500

80+ ratings certify electrical efficiency. Not quality.

 

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I would save a little more and do something like this 

 
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($218.98 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 KILLER ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card  ($199.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($39.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $637.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-02 00:32 EST-0500
 
The SSD is a little generous, I would probably just go with a 500Gb Barracuda.  The reason I went with a new case is because that is very sketchy in that prebuilt case

i5 4670k| Asrock H81M-ITX| EVGA Nex 650g| WD Black 500Gb| H100 with SP120s| ASUS Matrix 7970 Platinum (just sold)| Patriot Venom 1600Mhz 8Gb| Bitfenix Prodigy. Build log in progress 

Build Log here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/119926-yin-yang-prodigy-update-2-26-14/

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The reason your system drive is slow booting is likely that it is a 5900 rpm "green" drive.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($256.94 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Asus H97M-E Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($88.99 @ Amazon)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($119.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($79.99 @ Amazon)

Total: $545.91

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-02 00:25 EST-0500

Going to have to agree with you on this one.

As far as I can tell this will really give OP the best bang for his buck. He will probably notice a substantial performance boost just from an SSD alone. 

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The reason your system drive is slow booting is likely that it is a 5900 rpm "green" drive.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($256.94 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Asus H97M-E Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($88.99 @ Amazon)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($119.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($79.99 @ Amazon)

Total: $545.91

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-02 00:25 EST-0500

I didn't even realize it had a slow drive speed to begin with. Would it be better to include the 212 EVO or another cooler (assuming it fits in my case) than use the included stock one?

 

 

 

I would save a little more and do something like this 

 
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($218.98 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 KILLER ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card  ($199.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($39.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $637.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-02 00:32 EST-0500
 
The SSD is a little generous, I would probably just go with a 500Gb Barracuda.  The reason I went with a new case is because that is very sketchy in that prebuilt case

 

I have around $600, a bit extra is perfectly fine. Is my current GPU outdated? It is stock overclocked. I'm a bit of an Nvidia fanboy even if AMD cards have better multimonitor support.

 

Something I forgot to mention in the specs, but probably noteworthy, is my PSU which I believe is, without opening the case to check, 550W. Thank you very much for the quick replies.

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I didn't even realize it had a slow drive speed to begin with. Would it be better to include the 212 EVO or another cooler (assuming it fits in my case) than use the included stock one?

 

 

I have around $600, a bit extra is perfectly fine. Is my current GPU outdated? It is stock overclocked. I'm a bit of an Nvidia fanboy even if AMD cards have better multimonitor support.

 

Something I forgot to mention in the specs, but probably noteworthy, is my PSU which I believe is, without opening the case to check, 550W. Thank you very much for the quick replies.

 

Unless one is overclocking or very sensitive to noise the stock cooler will be fine. (The Xeon will not overclock.)

 

The GTX 660 is a bit dated and has performance roughly equivalent to an R9 270 - a bit lower than a GTX 760. With the budget it would be tough to include a better gpu. A good 550W psu should have no problem with most gpu.

80+ ratings certify electrical efficiency. Not quality.

 

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