Upgrade my gaming-experience

[WAUZZZI]

Hey LTT-Forums!

 

TL;DR: What would you choose? A mechanical keyboard and a soundcard or a new IPS-LED-Monitor?

 

Here's my situation:

 

I currently have a Core2Quad Q8200 with an Katana 3, 65°C under load, a Palit Geforce GTX 460 with a sewed off Accellero S1 (looks kinda ghetto and even with removed heatspreader I will get almost 90°C under full load) 4gigs of RAM, 640GB WD-Caviar Green and a crappy case with bad airflow and also a PSU that makes me wanna buy a fire-extinguisher, just in case. I also have a 2 year old "Trust GXT 15"-mouse that had many cable-breaks and looks very used (color worn off and stuff) and also I have a Dell Multimedia membrane-keyboard (which is quite okay though) in front of me I have a 22" Samsung SyncMaster E2220 which somehow doesn't have DVI so I plugged it in via VGA. TN-Panel, crappy colors and viewing-angles.

 

I have 6 weeks of holidays now and I found a job where I can work 2 weeks (hopefully more but they said unlikely) that will give me 560€ (I'm from germany)

 

So I thought about buying those things:

 

new CPU-Cooler, I thought about the successor of my current CPU-Cooler, the Katana 4

new GPU, I thought about the XFX R7870 Double Dissipation 2GB

SSD, Samsung 840 120GB

Red sleeved cables, a white bitfenix shinobi and white bitfenix spectre Fans

Logitech G500 since Slick loves it and I played with it several times at a friends home and I also like it

and a new PSU, Corsair CX500M

 

Now I can' decide between two things, my budget is relatively limited so not everything fits in it:

 

I can either buy a CoolerMaster QuickFire Pro Mechanical Keyboard and a Xonar DG PCI-Soundcard (atm I'm using onboard of my ASUS P5KPL AM-SE)

or an LG 22EA53VQ-P 22" IPS-LED-Monitor

 

Both would have their benefits and the SyncMaster VGA-Crap would make an outstanding secondary-monitor but I also recently bought me new headphones (Superlux HD681B, best 20€ I've ever spent, they sound better than some 80€ "Gaming-Headsets"..) so the soundcard would be good and also I don't like the Dell-Keyboard that much, the keys are way too light to press, I misspell many things or hit 2 keys at the same time accidentally so the keyboard with the wider spaced keys and Cherry MX-Reds and back-light would be really really nice.

 

 

Tell me what you think and if the stuff I listed above would be good to enhance my gaming-experience. I also thought about buying a whole new board, CPU and RAM but for this money it's better to keep the board and CPU and RAM and make the best out of it.

 

Already thanks for your time!

[Pnede4]

If you buy a new board, I should also upgrade your CPU. If you do so get the i5 4670(k) and the MSI z87-G45 Gaming, awesome combination

[WAUZZZI]

I would if I had the money to do this^^

[Pnede4]

I would if I had the money to do this^^

hahaha, I live in the Netherlands, you can buy it there. Pretty cheap. www.Alternate.nl

I think shipping (<---- bit weird now but okay) is like 30 to Germany

[WoodenMarker]

What's your current psu?

 

Get an ssd first.

Then video card/psu or display. What comes first will depend on what games you play.

New mouse/keyboard.

Case last.

[WAUZZZI]

Some Sharkoon 450W, don't know what exactly (I removed the sticker because it was ugly, genious..)

 

I already ordered the case with money I got for building a PC for a friend so that's excluded from the budget.

 

Why should I make it step by step? there is no way I will get more than 560€, I asked around everywhere, nothing is available :/ Since I will get the money in one piece after finishing work I will order everything in one piece.

 

the games I play, well, here's a Screenshot of my RocketDock:

 

http://gyazo.com/07ff636b55e3528cab95bf8119045b46.png

 

I also plan to buy BF4.

 

don't worry, I'll upgrade CPU and RAM and Board when Star Citizen comes out :p But the Q8200 should be enough for the next couple of games.

[WAUZZZI]

Any other opinions? :p

[NeutronGTX]

First upgrade would definitely be the GPU, i think buying a new CPU cooler is kind of a waste of money if you already have an aftermarket cooler, as for the keyboard and sound card vs the monitor rather get the monitor, I recently got the quickfire pro and a Xonar DS while i think it makes a big difference I cant see it making a bigger difference then a good monitor

[WAUZZZI]

I bought this cooler as I bought this PC, it was meant for a Core 2 Duo, on a hot summer day (or when I simply close the case..) I hit that 71°C mark which is really really high, considering that Intel says that the max temp for this thing is at 71.4°C..

and for 20 bucks it's well worth the money when the processor stays below 60 under load, I intend to use it for at least one more year.

 

Good point, maybe the screen really makes the bigger difference, for a newbie definetly I mean if my brother would play here, he wouldn't even know what a mechanical keyboard is..

 

I think I'll go with the monitor for now, Maybe I can work a couple days more and buy everything, that would be perfekt but I doubt that this will happen.

 

Anyway, thanks for your help!

[GamerDude]

In all honesty, fastest way to level up on the gaming experience is to buy a new GPU. Granted, that Q8200 is a rad long in the tooth, but I believe if you were to OC it to, say, 3.3ghz or higher, it'd be able to handle most newer games. Just don't expect very high framerate, but as long as it is playable, it should not matter. but in order to OC, I'd suggest a new CPU cooler....perhaps the CM Hyper 212. Next, GPU, the HD 7870 would be a very good upgrade from the GTX460, and should be able to max most games in OP's list. May require a change of PSU depending on how good or bad that Sharkoon PSU is.

 

I'd suggest you put the SSD on hold, yes, it'd help boot up to desktop faster, and load games faster, but will not improve the gaming experience. A new sound may help you enjoy gaming and music more than what a new SSD would.

[WAUZZZI]

I can't overclock higher than 2.8 because if I raise the FSB more than 410 my SATA-Controller stops working (bug with this specific board, no fix available, awesome! -.-)

 

Throwing out the SSD to buy all the other stuff, haven't thought about that!

 

lulz if I don't buy the SSD I can buy the monitor, the sound card and the quickfire, it fits. Barely. But it fits :D

 

Interesting idea, I'll think of this but my Caviar Green is really old and slow and I had a Vertex 2 once which then had the sandforce-controller-bug that it wouldn't recognize it in BIOS but even this thing was fast as hell in comparison to the HDD.