I want to upgrade and I can afford it but is now the right time? I know Haswell is still about a year away but for normal gaming I am sure a 3570 Ivy Bridge is more than enough. I am wondering if we are going to see any price surges or even price drops after xmas? I am a little worried about the state of various economies affecting the price of components. Anyone has any thoughts on this? Stat wise, if I upgraded I'd get: Ivy Bridge 3570 Neutron SSD Xclico 1000 Asus P8Z77 Blue Ray Player A new cpu fan 16 gigs, 1600 corsair vengeance ram I already have a good psu and will keep my gpu for the moment, or use it in SLI.
The time is right when the current PC doesn't satisfy your needs. New hardware is always around the corner and you can't delay forever. And the longer you wait, the more your current hardware loses resale value. Coming from a dual core that is coupled with a 560 Ti, now is definitely a good time to upgrade. Your GPU should be somewhat bottlenecked. What monitor do you have? Do you overclock? Do you need wireless? If you already have a good Corsair PSU, why are you looking to get an Xclio 1000W? Xclio sucks honestly, and your current PSU is already overkill in terms of wattage. If you only game at 1080p and have no plans to go 1440p, you don't really need a SLI board. Going SLI on the 560 Ti is a bad idea, it'd just increase heat, noise and power consumption needlessly. You can get £100 for it sold second hand, use that to get a 7950 3GB or a next-gen card if you don't need an upgrade yet. The 1GB VRAM of 560 Ti would be limiting for SLI, and it is already limiting with a single card in some special circumstances. If you don't do anything involving heavy RAM use (gaming doesn't count), you're fine with 8GB. Don't get a Neutron SSD, get a 128-256GB Samsung 830.
Some good points. I was looking for reviews of the Xclico cases and couldn't find any, I felt that was a good case but as you're the first person to give an opinion and it was negative; maybe I'll rethink the case option. I was wondering about the power of SLI 560's compared to a 660 or higher and would have asked that question before upgrading my gfx options. Yes I think you are right, my gpu is held back by a comparatively weak cpu and I think my mobo cannot process the amount of data my card can so that also slows it down. I cannot overclock because my mobo is crap, I bought it cheap and made the mistake of buying a ATX when I have a big stack, error. The overclocking functionality seems to be missing, otherwise I'd be cranking my E8400 as I hear they OC well. I preferred the Neutron because it was Corsair and because I dislike Samsung products, my last Samsun drive, a normal HD failed and then got replaced and then the replacement also failed, all within 3 months. If I get a SSD it won't be a Samsung. Regarding the right time to upgrade, I could upgrade now or wait. I want to upgrade now but have moved away fromt he game that caused me to want an upgrade; GW2, I had to run it at medium settings. I am stuck into XCOM atm and it runs smooth. I am more worried about the prices rising and then getting lumbered with a larger bill to upgrade. Do you think prices will rise in the run up to xmas naturally and then drop after, or rise and stay up?
My monitor is a 1920x1200 ASUS VK266H, maybe 25.5 inch screen; a very nice piece of kit. I am currently hardlined into the internet as my pc is set up next to it, I have a dongle for when I do use wireless but I feel that mobo's with wireless utilities are a fancy gadget that is taking up space when you could run it through a normal dongle. Am I wrong, or are they better?
Yah, I didn't imediately notice the mistake above, the Xclico is a case. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/xclio-1000-black-titanium-flagship-large-tower-case-w-o-psu
Oh, right. Law, I don't have an opinion on that case really (it's XClio not XClico), except that it's super expensive and you don't need it. I think you're fine with the CM690 as long as it's in good condition. If it's not, there are plenty of sub £100 cases that will serve you well.
The mobo doesn't have anything to do with it really, it's the CPU holding you back. You can test for CPU bottlenecking easily. Run a game at a lower resolution, e.g. 1600x900 with vsync turned off. If your framerate doesn't increase, it means you're CPU bottlenecked at the native 1080p resolution. It doesn't, however, tell you exactly how much of an increase a faster CPU would get you on 1080p. So, another thing you can do is monitor GPU usage with MSI Afterburner. The more it is below 100%, the more your CPU is bottlenecking it. While I respect your brand preferences to a degree, the fact is that Samsung's SSD's are better than Corsair's, and probably the best on the market. If you're not willing to consider Samsung, get Crucial M4 or Intel 330. I'll post back with more specific parts recommendations in a moment
Ok, I'll have a look at the Crucial and Intel SSDs. I know the Corsair Neutrons are relatively new tech and do it a little bit different ...
Here are the parts I'd recommend, priced at Amazon.co.uk i5-3570K £169 Hyper 212 Evo £25 Asrock Z77 Extreme4 £110 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 £32 Crucial M4 128GB £77 Lite-On Blu-ray £44 = £457 If you need a new case, this is really nice: CM Storm Scout 2 £86
Looks good, as that is significantly cheaper than what I was looking at, maybe I'll revisit the idea of an upgrade. I guess all I wanna change is a larger SSD so I can put games on there without worrying too much about filling it to quickly. Thanks for putting in the time to link those.
The larger SSD is a good idea, I'm stuck at 128GB myself and with only 5400RPM storage disks, loading up a game from one is an occasional pain. Crucial M4 256GB £145
