Upgradin a Computah

[backfire]

So now that I actually have some income, I wanna start makin this old rig of mine not suck anymore. Right now I have an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 downclocked at 3.00GHz for some reason with 4 gigs of DDR2 ram on of them fancy XFX nForce 730i motherboards cause I had in my head I was gunna SLI something at some point (never did). Current GPU's an AMD Radeon HD 6700 with 1GB of VRAM.
As of right now, I want to start off by upgrading my CPU, but since it doesn't get much better for a LGA775 socket I figure I may as well upgrade my motherboard and get some new ram while I'm at it. I've been out of the hardware market for a long whiles and have no idea what's decent or good or whatever, I just wanna run TF2 smoothly.

I'm planning on budgeting about $300 total for the cpu/ram/mobo unless someone convinces me that'd be a bad idea, but since since I already have a decent-ish GPU, harddrive, freakin giant heatskin-fan, I'm thinking that should be enough.

So anyone have any suggestions?

[HeK]

Ah ha ! Another E8400 brother!

$300 won't get you too far, unfortunately. What you can do is overclock the fuck out of your CPU.

The E8400 can do 3.6ghz with the stock cooler and if your mono and ram allow, 4.0ghz with a nice cooler.

I'll post more on the subject once I. Get back to my desktop.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[HeK]

You are at a point in the tech lifecycle where you cannot simply upgrade individual components (save for video). You will need to replace the mobo, ram and CPU (possibly PSU for extra watts) all at once. To get a decent gaming PC you may need to budget $500 - $700, especially if you want it to last you a few years. Current CPUs use the LGA1155 or the new LGA2011 sockets and DDR3 ram, nigher of which are backwards compatible with what you own.

You could upgrade your video, try SLI/Crossfire. You will want to research the crap out of that first.

With your current CPU however, you can squeeze a lot of performance out of it by overclocking. Make sure that you monitor temps with program like CoreTemp. Don't exceed 70 degrees Celsius.
Legion Hardware has a good primer guide to overclocking the E8400. You will see a huge boost at 3.6ghz alone.

[StolenToast]

I'm planning on budgeting about $300 total for the cpu/ram/mobo

HeK is absolutely right.  You will NOT be getting very much of an upgrade for $300.  I don't know much about older CPUs, but HeK seems to believe your CPU right now is fine, but that means you won't be getting a new mobo. 

The best thing I could recommend is try to find two GeForce GTX 460s.  It should easily be under $300 for an SLI set up (I paid $240) and they are such great performance for the money.  I can run TF2 on maximum EVERYTHING including reflect all water, HDR, and 16x CSAA just for kicks without a stutter with this setup.  On a more reasonable AA setting (8x MSAA) the framerate hovers around 300 or so, but I don't know why since thats a lot of wasted effort and heat.  I used the Highest setting details, models, and textures in the original Crysis (which is still a system-breaker, though now for the reason that it was horribly optimized)  and 2x to 4x MSAA with a smooth framerate.

Basically I'm saying the first thing you should upgrade is your graphics.  Since you said you considered SLI (with a Radeon?  Did you change cards at one point?) you should have room, though the GTX 460 is a full sized card and takes up two PCI slots each.

I just wanna run TF2 smoothly.

If that is true just get one 460 (more than enough to run any game smoothly on good settings) and you will have plenty of money left over for some new RAM and an aftermarket cooler if you need one to follow HeK's advice.

[backfire]

I planned for $300 since my roommate said he was able to get a very nice combo for about that much, but I'm up for increasing that if it's that "LOL".

You are at a point in the tech lifecycle where you cannot simply upgrade individual components (save for video). You will need to replace the mobo, ram and CPU (possibly PSU for extra watts) all at once.

That was the plan. My video card at the moment is decent, but my CPU is what's really bottlenecking me. I know I have to upgrade all three which is why I figured I'd start by swapping all those out (and yeah I know at this point it's essentially a new computer anyways) and saving upgrading my GPU for later. I bought the cpu with overclocking in mind, which is why I got that large heatsink-fan (sorta looks like the one they mention in the article, but with an extra fan on the back) though I never seemed to have too good of luck with overclocking. They mentioned they were able to reach 37C with at 3.6, but that's the temp I'm at stuck idling at 3.0. At one point I tried reapplying the thermal gel to see if that'd help, and I only got a 2C drop, so I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong here. As for my PSU, it's 700w (did say I originally planned for SLI) so I should be fine there.

with a Radeon?  Did you change cards at one point?

I originally bought a 9800GTX+ 1GB with the intention of buying another in another month or so and SLI'ing them, but that card went out of production right after I bought it, and everywhere I looked told me that buying even the same model card with different ram was so much of a pain anyways, eventually I just stop bothering. I had to swap out that card a few months ago because of this random glitch that'd happen in a few games where my video would just shut off and wouldn't let me do anything. Hek should know what I'm talking about, since that's why I crashed out of so many Highlander matches. I swapped to this card my roommate got (and he immediately upgraded from) and everything seemed to work fine.

I figure what I can do now is try and figure out how to overclock this thing without melting my computer, then just waiting another few weeks to save up for a better combo. I didn't exactly want to upgrade purely for TF2 to run smoothly, but because of all these newer games coming out that'll surely crush this old rig. Alan Wake alone leaves me fumbling around at 10-15 at 1080p on max settings, so I'm just looking to build a rig that makes that not happen.

Edit:
Just to clearify, $300 was my "ballpark range" and I'm totally cool with going past that. If someone has a good idea for semi-budget hardware that would last me a good whiles, I'm all ears.

[Vlambo]

Ah ha ! Another E8400 brother!

$300 won't get you too far, unfortunately. What you can do is overclock the fuck out of your CPU.

The E8400 can do 3.6ghz with the stock cooler and if your mono and ram allow, 4.0ghz with a nice cooler.

I'll post more on the subject once I. Get back to my desktop.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I'm interested in this guide, as I have a E8400m and wanna OC it

[WaR1761]

I use these sites to gauge as to what is current: Maximum PC does monthly updates 3 builds (Baseline, Deluxe, and Ultra). Toms Hardware does a best bang for the money per month for parts June CPUs, June GPUs.

[backfire]

Okay, so I asked some others. I got this list.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819103960
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813157280
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820231311

About $330 in total. So why is it that my original budget was so awful again? This is a huge upgrade from what I have now so I'm pretty happy with it... unless everyone else just runs on these incredible machines I can never hope to afford.


Seriously, what is the baseline here?

[Didzo]

WHEN DID SHIT GET SO CHEAP.

[StolenToast]

WHEN DID SHIT GET SO CHEAP.

-> AMD
-> Asrock


That list looks good to me but its not going to give you any better graphics performance...

[backfire]

[quote author=Didzo link=topic=6412.msg249004#msg249004 date=1341592668]
WHEN DID SHIT GET SO CHEAP.

-> AMD
-> Asrock


That list looks good to me but its not going to give you any better graphics performance...
[/quote]

I already said I wasn't looking for a GPU upgrade. My system's being bottlenecked by my cpu, so I wanted to upgrade that first before I buy a new gpu in a few weeks.

[Didzo]

[quote author=StolenToast link=topic=6412.msg249019#msg249019 date=1341604489]
[quote author=Didzo link=topic=6412.msg249004#msg249004 date=1341592668]
WHEN DID SHIT GET SO CHEAP.

-> AMD
-> Asrock


That list looks good to me but its not going to give you any better graphics performance...
[/quote]

I already said I wasn't looking for a GPU upgrade. My system's being bottlenecked by my cpu, so I wanted to upgrade that first before I buy a new gpu in a few weeks.
[/quote]

I'm running an AMD Phenom 965, which is now around $120. It's still serving me well.