Upgrade help/advice please

[Rod In Oz]

Hi all. Long time viewer of Linus's Youtube channel, recent member of the forum, first time poster.

 

I'm hoping someone can offer me some sound advice regarding an intended upgrade.

 

My current system is AMD based, a little over 3 years old. The system, as outlined below, is used primarily for writing reports with graphs & tables, some graphics editing and rendering, and for relaxation purposes some gaming.

 

Sabretooth 990FX R2.0 Mobo, AMD FX-4170 CPU, 16G G-Skill Ripjaws 667mhz ram, 2 x Powercolor HD7750 gpu's in Crossfire, Coolermaster Hyper 612 CPU cooler and a Coolermaster 690 case. The case is actually about 6 years old.

 

I'm keeping most of the system intact, with the following exceptions. Case - Corsair Obsidian 750D, RAM - fastest DDR3 compatible with the mobo, Cooler - Corsair H110i AIO (my first try at water cooling.) The reason for the change to water cooling is the ambient temp factor. During the summer my apartment can get up to around 40C inside (No A/C)

 

What I need advice on is what to replace my twin Powercolor's with please? I'm not fussed whether it comes from the green team or the red, just want the best bang for my buck. Budget for the GPU is circa $300AUD.

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

Rod

[Mattyp92]

Have you thought about just adding a Quadro or FirePro card to help with the rendering?

[Moonzy]

7 minutes ago, Rod In Oz said:

 

welcome to the forums!

might i suggest you read our general guidelines before u continue your adventure

 

as for your gpu replacement,

how bout something like this?

http://au.pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-strixr9380dc2oc2gd5gaming

 

im not sure if you cpu will bottleneck the gpu though... im not familiar with amd's cpu side of things

[Nalm]

I am quite sure that they made a video explaning that watercooling does not reduce the ambient temperature

 

 

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, Nalm said:

I am quite sure that they made a video explaning that watercooling does not reduce the ambient temperature

pretty sure he means to get a watercooler to make his cpu temp lower

not his room temp because water cooling reduces the difference between atmospheric temp and the cpu temp

[Mattyp92]

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

-snip

I would think his CPU would bottle neck any $300 card which is why I suggested possibly getting a Quadro or FirePro to at least take some of the load off while rendering and keeping the crossfire setup for now with gaming.

[Rod In Oz]

Yeah, I just realized how that sounded. I'm aware that water cooling the PC won't reduce the ambient room temp. 

[Mattyp92]

9 minutes ago, Rod In Oz said:

Yeah, I just realized how that sounded. I'm aware that water cooling the PC won't reduce the ambient room temp. 

What software do you use for editing/rendering?  Any 3D modelling? 

[Rod In Oz]

Gimp 2.8. No 3D modelling involved. 

[Mattyp92]

Just now, Rod In Oz said:

Gimp 2.8. No 3D modelling involved. 

OHHHHH, never mind on the Quadro/FirePro idea then.  Btw, I suggest keeping the RAM you have, RAM speeds don't make a significant difference in performance and DDR3-1333 is fast enough, you should be able to very easily up your RAM's speed to 1600 in the BIOS if you really wanted, likely without even changing timings or voltage unless your ram is super low voltage (at which case set voltage to 1.5V and forget about it).  All you have to do is change the RAM multiplier and on ASUS boards that just means selecting DDR3-1600MHz from the drop down menu and being done with it.  

 

As for your card, I suggest either a GTX 960 (https://au.pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-02gp42962kr) or a r9 380 (https://au.pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-strixr9380dc2oc2gd5gaming).  The two cards trade blows in games so really either one would work, I would suggest upgrading your CPU at least a little bit in the near future to minimize the bottleneck.

[Rod In Oz]

Thanks for the advice. I've thought about upgrading the CPU, but it's pretty hard to find one that's compatible with the mobo that's as fast as the one I have (4.2ghz stock) 

[Mattyp92]

4 minutes ago, Rod In Oz said:

Thanks for the advice. I've thought about upgrading the CPU, but it's pretty hard to find one that's compatible with the mobo that's as fast as the one I have (4.2ghz stock) 

There is more to CPU performance than just clock speeds.  Honestly if I was you and was dead set on keeping that motherboard (good motherboard btw, not a big fan of the 990FX platform as a whole though) I would just upgrade to a FX-8350 or at the very least a FX-6300.  If you haven't purchased your new RAM yet, I would put the money you were planning on spending on that towards a new CPU combined with whatever money you have left with after your GPU upgrade (if you get the 380 I recommended for $290 for instance).  I know things are a little pricier over there but a 6300 should be within your budget if you stretch it enough, maybe try selling your current CPU if you can and seeing if you can maybe even afford the 8350.  On water (even with an AIO and with your ambient temperatures) the FX series chips overclock like champs so I would definitely consider overclocking them if I was you.  Even a first time overclocker could easily hit 4.2GHz (your current chip's speed) with minimal effort on the 8350 and the 6300 that isn't TOO much of a stretch goal and would only be challenging due to your room temperature.

[Rod In Oz]

Thanks again Matt. I just checked my system performance and by using the mobo's OC utility (on auto, me not playing with it) my current chip is running @4.6. Maybe once I water cool it I might start playing around with frequencies, voltages, ram timings etc; but for now, it's more than fast enough. Also, if I hold off a couple of months on the upgrade, I'll have my tax return back and will have the ability (and resources) to do a complete upgrade rather than a partial one.