Need some help with computer stuff

[Ethereal Dragon]

Not anything bad really. I've managed to save up some cash in order to upgrade my PC's graphics card which is majorly outdated (hell you try running the most recent games on the market with a AMD HD 6770 1g and see how well your PC runs the game.) Due to how ancient this gfx card is some of the games I have on my PC won't play due to them being made on the unity engine and well with unity 5.3 and AMD cards that's a very, very bad mix in that the game's crash 99% of the time. I'm going to post my current spec for my PC and hopefully cross my fingers here and see if anyone here is tech savvy enough to help. I honestly don't know if when I upgrade my gfx card that I'll need a new PSU so bear with me.


Motherboard: Z87X-UD4H


PSU: Corsair TX650M 650W


CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K


Ram: G.SKILL TridentX Series 8GB (I got all the Ram slots on the MOBO full.)


CPU Cooling Unit/heatsink: ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-B 135mm


Tower: SilverStone RAVEN RV02B-EW (for those interested to know what kind of tower I have.)


That the basics, I left out the HD and I get the feeling one of you is going to suggest I get a SSD which I plan on at some point but my main focus atm is updating the graphics on my rig and getting any other support that will come with the card to make sure it runs and not makes my Rig melt down. Any help would be appreciated.


Edit: Do note that I wanna limit myself to at least 200-500 $ range.

 

[Woider]

Well first of all, what kinda games do you need to run? 

 

[smut]

For that kind of PC and a medium budget, I would probably consider an AMD Radeon 480 or NV 1060 GTX.


Samsung 850 EVO is a very solid SSD and the 256Gb version is quite cheap now.


Neither of these should give you any trouble with your power supply.

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

Well first of all, what kinda games do you need to run? 

Basically a card that can run a lot of the games on the market currently.


One game I am disappointed that I can't run currently because the game is fucking beautiful is Subnautica, that update to the more recent versions of Unity made it impossible to run the game on my current graphics card an a good decent amount of the current AMD cards on the market that are considered decent and new. Also I worry about how well my PC is going to run once No Mans Sky hits the market in a few days assuming there isn't another delay, I pre-ordered the game after all.


Edit: In all honesty I'd rather choose a Nvidia card this time around over an AMD. AMD game support patches are few and far between compared to Nvidia patches at least as far as I can tell and from what I've read.

 

[muttdoggy]

Your power supply is more than adequate. For more info, check this out...http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/


3.4 Intel quad-core and 8-gig gskill ram will let you run any new game with minimum or better specs.. I go here to figure this out..http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri


I'd use the witcher 3, dragon age inquisition, or even fallout 4 as "benchmark" games. If you run those on minimum settings, you can run anything. I'd shoot for recommended specs, though.


You'd need at least a 2 gigabyte gddr5 to run many of the games out there. Good news is that your power supply should have the connections for pretty much any video card. The only time you're gonna run into power supply issues is running dual graphics cards, hard drives, and dvd burners.


For the graphics cards, I'd go for a sapphire nitro radeon r9 fury or a gigabyte geforce gtx 970. Those are in the $300-400 price range. It can save some funds for the ssd or even get a couple of 8 gig ram sticks to bump up your ram a bit. You can tweak the bios to take advantage of staggered RAM sizes but they have be in either the 1 and 3 OR 2 and 4 slots to do that.


 With your setup, I'd lean towards a gigabyte geforce. There's even a gtx 1060 in that price range closer to $400.


<--- American.

 

[Woider]

Actually, I think it's best if you get American help for this, since it's hard to help you budget when tech varies so much in price.

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

Your power supply is more than adequate. For more info, check this out...http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/


3.4 Intel quad-core and 8-gig gskill ram will let you run any new game with minimum or better specs.. I go here to figure this out..http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri


I'd use the witcher 3, dragon age inquisition, or even fallout 4 as "benchmark" games. If you run those on minimum settings, you can run anything. I'd shoot for recommended specs, though.


You'd need at least a 2 gigabyte gddr5 to run many of the games out there. Good news is that your power supply should have the connections for pretty much any video card. The only time you're gonna run into power supply issues is running dual graphics cards, hard drives, and dvd burners.


For the graphics cards, I'd go for a sapphire nitro radeon r9 fury or a gigabyte geforce gtx 970. Those are in the $300-400 price range. It can save some funds for the ssd or even get a couple of 8 gig ram sticks to bump up your ram a bit. You can tweak the bios to take advantage of staggered RAM sizes but they have be in either the 1 and 3 OR 2 and 4 slots to do that.


 With your setup, I'd lean towards a gigabyte geforce. There's even a gtx 1060 in that price range closer to $400.


<--- American.

Interesting...


But I see several issues here in what you posted.


1. My mobo only supports 16 gigs of ram


2. I've maxed out my ram. I'm running said 16 gb of ram, hence the "I got all my ram slots full." thing on the OP.


3. Eagh... If I went dual card set up (which I think is what your suggesting with the 2 gigabyte gddr5.) yeah I'd definitely have to get a new power supply.


Hmm 970 or a 1060, I know the 1060's were released fairly recently so shouldn't the price for the 900 series of cards have dropped a significant amount in cost?


Further note I wanna point out. Person who helped me with my current build minus the graphics card lives in Australia   He suggested the parts and the tower since he builds rigs for a living and before anyone suggests I contact him I haven't been able to get into contact

 

[muttdoggy]

Thought you had only 8gb ram total. With 16 gb of ram, you have plenty of ram so no need to upgrade it. Just get a 970 or a 1060 and hopefully you can find one in the $300 range. The prices have dropped some but I suggested the Gigabyte cards since they are good quality (not crap cards will only last a few months and have no support) so they are made with better materials and are still in demand. People still use those cards to do animation, 3d art, video editing, movies, etc. Not to mention that I know people who have bought those just to play the Witcher 3, modded Grand Theft Auto 5, Dragon Age Inquisition, and Fallout 4 on their TV screens via HDMI.


If it was me.. I'd get a GTX 1070 if at all possible. Look on Newegg and Amazon. Might get one for 425-450 and those are absolutely killer cards.

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

Okay narrowed down to three choices from searching around on Newegg listing them cheapest to most expensive.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125840


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125685


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA57X4NR8800

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

Think I decided on the 1060 in the last link I posted in my previous post. But I'm still reluctant, maybe there's a better option there but I am not sure, can anyone offer any other suggestion/advice?

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

Might just go with that card, I found it on amazon and can reserve it for when they have it in stock again. Helps to also have prime so free 2 shipping. Since I cut the price down I managed to snag myself a new screen for under 200. Now to look for a decent SSD I can get later.

 

[Kei]

Your best bet really is the 1060. It clocks much better then the 970 currently does in pretty much every aspect.

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

That's what I went with and I got it 50$ cheaper on Amazon than I would have at Newegg. Though I'll get the card on the 11th I can wait another week


If I had the money, or if I was willing to spend the money I would have totally rebuilt my PC from the ground up with current up to date tech. If I did this I'd be set for another few years before having to update parts on that.

 

[OnyxDrakkenblade]

I can't really chime in on the VPU, but as far as SSDs go I have to agree with @smut Samsung has treated me VERY well. I have had ZERO corruption over nearly 4 years, and is quite snappy in response times.


This http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147192 is the one I got. There may be many like it but this one is mine there may be upgrades now.

 

[muttdoggy]

That's a great choice in graphics cards. After getting the SSD, I think the only thing I'd save for to make your system a game killer is to stick on a i7-4790k and you've have a system to drool over.  erfect:

 

[Ethereal Dragon]

Well I can say I am quite happy with my choice, playing several games I haven't been able to play on max graphics is extremely gratifying xD

 

[Charm]

Unity Engine recently had issues with AMD/ATI graphics boards. So if you had some trouble there, the fast fix for it is to grab an nVidia GPU. They hopefully will have it resolved soon, in particular, any titles that use tessellation will completely bork on AMD/ATI under Unity.


Other than that,follow your bliss. Typically, and historically, ATI GPU's are king of speed and rendering accuracy under DIrect-X enabled titles.


nVidia gets the edge on OpenGL enabled titles. So build where the majority of your gaming needs are met.


Either will run much better at what they do if you have a strong foundation. E.I. Adequate PSU, solid multi-threaded CPU, etc. Having 2x the dedicated video RAM of either make in physical RAM on your motherboard is of huge benefit.So If your Mobo tops out at say, 16GB, grab any card with 8GB of graphics ram. Plan accordingly for SLI and Crossfire builds if you decide to go multi-GPU. Beef up RAM, PSU capacities and make sure that there is enough physical room to stack your cards up into the slots.


I just got through with a rebuild myself, opting to go with an AMD CPU based system clocked at 5+ GHz, 32 GB system ram and a pair of Zotac Amp Extreme GTX 1070's blasting off a Sabretooth R2.0 mobo. It's all fired off a PC Power&Cooling TurboCool 860 watt PSU and I could not be happier. Everything runs on Ultra modes, no hassle, no fuss, and oddly, no heat.I overbuilt the cooling, employing liquid coolant loops as well and at stock speeds, the system idles through most titles, tasks, even benchmarks. But I had to get VERY creative with a Dremel tool to get it all to work. :/


Good luck, happy gaming!