Need help upgrading my rig

[Ekayrouz]

Hey there everyone,
I am new to these forums so forgive me if I have made any mistakes
I have a gaming pc that has been up and running for 2 years now. I built this rig myself with a little help from a friend.
Now I have a Asus GTX 560 ti Graphics card, which I am thinking of upgrading. I have an i5 2500k 3.30 Ghz CPU, 8 GB of internal RAM
and an Asus motherboard. I am considering to upgrade my Graphics Card to an Asus GTX 760. However that left me wondering will that bottleneck
my CPU then? As I cannot afford to upgrade my CPU also.

If you guys could give me some suggestions on which Graphics Card to upgrade to that will be great.

 

[bigmck]

Hey there everyone,
I am new to these forums so forgive me if I have made any mistakes
I have a gaming pc that has been up and running for 2 years now. I built this rig myself with a little help from a friend.
Now I have a Asus GTX 560 ti Graphics card, which I am thinking of upgrading. I have an i5 2500k 3.30 Ghz CPU, 8 GB of internal RAM
and an Asus motherboard. I am considering to upgrade my Graphics Card to an Asus GTX 760. However that left me wondering will that bottleneck
my CPU then? As I cannot afford to upgrade my CPU also.

If you guys could give me some suggestions on which Graphics Card to upgrade to that will be great.

You have a good rig now and I don't think a better Graphics card is going to bottleneck an i5. If you really want to speed up your PC, get a SSD. They probably won't help that much for games, but for general work, nothing speeds up your PC like an SSD. Check them out.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

As previously mentioned don't worry about an upgraded GPU bottle-necking your i5. Do you know the speed of your ram? I second the SSD for a dramatic speed change but it's only about booting in and out of windows and all programs loaded to it.

You could also consider a cheaper way out and that's to SLi another 560 ti?

 

[csjag]

The GTX 760 would be a small increase in speed over your 560 TI, and being 2 generations newer, it would run cooler and consume less power. Your I5 has plenty of headroom and the 760 GTX will not hamper it at all.
I would, like the previous suggestions, go with an SSD. You get an instant speed increase in everyday activities, although it will not help your gaming FPS.

 

[madcratebuilder]

I think the best bang for the buck is to add a second Asus GTX 560 ti in SLI. What PSU do you have? If it's 650-700 watts you should be GTG. A used 560 is around $100 USD, you may have enough for a 120-240gb SSD. Your cpu and memory are fine, no bottleneck.

 

[Ekayrouz]

Hey there everyone,
I am new to these forums so forgive me if I have made any mistakes
I have a gaming pc that has been up and running for 2 years now. I built this rig myself with a little help from a friend.
Now I have a Asus GTX 560 ti Graphics card, which I am thinking of upgrading. I have an i5 2500k 3.30 Ghz CPU, 8 GB of internal RAM
and an Asus motherboard. I am considering to upgrade my Graphics Card to an Asus GTX 760. However that left me wondering will that bottleneck
my CPU then? As I cannot afford to upgrade my CPU also.

If you guys could give me some suggestions on which Graphics Card to upgrade to that will be great.

You have a good rig now and I don't think a better Graphics card is going to bottleneck an i5. If you really want to speed up your PC, get a SSD. They probably won't help that much for games, but for general work, nothing speeds up your PC like an SSD. Check them out.

Thanks for the quick reply! My pc is generally slow on booting up, so installing an ssd will help that? Will I also need to reinstall windows 7 if I install an 120 GB SSD in my computer?

 

[linnemeyerhere]

YES and yes, but with the new found speed that you'll clean install it will make it worth the upgrade. You'll revel in the speed that it will boot and close but opening photoshop for the first time will sell you alone on the upgrade and you'll never look back !

 

[Ekayrouz]

As previously mentioned don't worry about an upgraded GPU bottle-necking your i5. Do you know the speed of your ram? I second the SSD for a dramatic speed change but it's only about booting in and out of windows and all programs loaded to it.

You could also consider a cheaper way out and that's to SLi another 560 ti?

What I find most annoying about the 560 ti (factory overclocked) is that it's a really noisy card, and that's what makes me want to change it most. It runs on a fairly cool temp but is REALLY loud. Maybe a 780 will cure that problem? I also have no idea what speed my ram is. I forgot the name but I know that it's corsair.

Thanks for the reply

 

[Ekayrouz]

YES and yes, but with the new found speed that you'll clean install it will make it worth the upgrade. You'll revel in the speed that it will boot and close but opening photoshop for the first time will sell you alone on the upgrade and you'll never look back !

That's a bummer. I recently reinstalled windows 7 so I have to actually do it again now :/
Also, I know this is a bit off topic but when I reinstalled windows 7, when I boot up my pc I actually find 2 windows 7. Is the other one the old windows I had? I don't dare to click on it in fear I will loose all my data.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Well likely it's 1333 or 1600, that being said you can make things snappier with higher speed ram but you will want to re-visit the mobo spec's for it's limit. Unfortunately ddr3 has not been going down in cost it's been going up but watching for a sale will help. I just scored 2x8gb of 2400Mhz. from Team and it was cheap and I have to say it's top flight stuff.

 

[Ekayrouz]

I think the best bang for the buck is to add a second Asus GTX 560 ti in SLI. What PSU do you have? If it's 650-700 watts you should be GTG. A used 560 is around $100 USD, you may have enough for a 120-240gb SSD. Your cpu and memory are fine, no bottleneck.

The PSU that I have is 650 WATTS. As I said in another post though, the Asus GTX 560 ti is a really loud card. Of course it's factory overclocked.

 

[Ekayrouz]

The GTX 760 would be a small increase in speed over your 560 TI, and being 2 generations newer, it would run cooler and consume less power. Your I5 has plenty of headroom and the 760 GTX will not hamper it at all.
I would, like the previous suggestions, go with an SSD. You get an instant speed increase in everyday activities, although it will not help your gaming FPS.

What about an ASUS 770?

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Asus 770 needs 300 watts alone, you'd be smart to do the math with the free PSU calculator and then bump it up 15-20%. You may want to consider a new PSU in the 850 range?

 

[linnemeyerhere]

For sure you want to back up all important data then completely wipe this hdd drive then I would clean install W7 to a ssd and all the software and games then use the spinner for data.

 

[bigmck]

Thanks for the quick reply! My pc is generally slow on booting up, so installing an ssd will help that? Will I also need to reinstall windows 7 if I install an 120 GB SSD in my computer?

If your current C: partition is under 120 GB, you can just transfer the data from the HDD to the SSD. It is a very fast process. There are two ways to do it. One that calls for a lot of different commands and one that calls for you to spend $20 and things are done for you. Check this out. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html
== Just to give you an idea of how fast a SSD is, your PC boots in about 25 seconds and a program opens in one second. It's fast.

 

[Ekayrouz]

Thanks for the quick reply! My pc is generally slow on booting up, so installing an ssd will help that? Will I also need to reinstall windows 7 if I install an 120 GB SSD in my computer?

If your current C: partition is under 120 GB, you can just transfer the data from the HDD to the SSD. It is a very fast process. There are two ways to do it. One that calls for a lot of different commands and one that calls for you to spend $20 and things are done for you. Check this out. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html
== Just to give you an idea of how fast a SSD is, your PC boots in about 25 seconds and a program opens in one second. It's fast.

Thanks for the reply, but when I boot up my computer there are 2 windows 7 tabs I can select in the start up menu. Do you know what's that all about?

 

[Ekayrouz]

For sure you want to back up all important data then completely wipe this hdd drive then I would clean install W7 to a ssd and all the software and games then use the spinner for data.

Which SSD do you recommend?

 

[Ekayrouz]

Asus 770 needs 300 watts alone, you'd be smart to do the math with the free SPU calculator and then bump it up 15-20%. You may want to consider a new PSU in the 850 range?

I'm talking about removing my current graphics card and replacing it with the 770.

 

[Ekayrouz]

This is how my current hard drive look like.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

For sure you want to back up all important data then completely wipe this hdd drive then I would clean install W7 to a ssd and all the software and games then use the spinner for data.

Which SSD do you recommend?

I would say look to Samsung, Intel, Crucial, Corsair, Kingston. 128gb will give lots of room for growth and updates. Place all software and the best big file games on it, all else can go to spinner ! You just won't believe what you've been missing.....it's a crazy upgrade.