Advice for upgrading!

[Patek92]

Hi guys, I need some advice on upgrading certain parts.

Parts that I intend to upgrade and need advise on models:
1. Mobo (I'm retaining my Chipset) (Budget = $300 below)
2. Graphic cards ($400 below)
3. PSU ($200 below)
4. Casing ($200 below)
5. Maybe add a radiator (Considering the H100i Corsair Cooler)

Current Rig
1. Asus B85 Plus + i7 4770
2. Nvidia GTX 650 1GB
3. Adata X900 512GB SSD
4. WD HDD 1TB
5. CM 625 EX2 PSU
6. CM 412 CPU Cooler
7. 16GB G.skill ddr3 1600 Rams
8. CM Storm Enforcer casing

I have limited budget, reason to upgrade is that my temperature can get to 70 plus when exporting videos.

I'm more concerned about heat issues, I play very minor games like Dota 2 and CSO.

Thank you!

 

[wkweewee]

Hi there. Your initial rig looks quite decent already haha. As for mobo, unless you are looking at alot of usb ports and sata connections, there is no real need for an upgrade. For GPU card, might need to know the maximum resolution of your current monitor in order to advise as you are not really playing super/ultra intensive gpu titles. If your PSU is fine, there is no need for a change as well. If there is a real need to, get a 500-650w gold psu from other brands. Your casing should be fine unless you want to get an overkill full tower haha. H100i is also an overkill for a locked cpu. Anything from H60-H80i should suffice. As for heat issues, do rmb to clean your dust filters, fans regularly and you will do fine after the closed loop installation.

Cheers.

 

[zenniz]

What you only need.

Pay a professional to do a good cable routing and air flow configuration.

Get a good case fans for intake and exhaust.

Get a better graphic card and gold efficiency psu.

 

[Patek92]

Hi there. Your initial rig looks quite decent already haha. As for mobo, unless you are looking at alot of usb ports and sata connections, there is no real need for an upgrade. For GPU card, might need to know the maximum resolution of your current monitor in order to advise as you are not really playing super/ultra intensive gpu titles. If your PSU is fine, there is no need for a change as well. If there is a real need to, get a 500-650w gold psu from other brands. Your casing should be fine unless you want to get an overkill full tower haha. H100i is also an overkill for a locked cpu. Anything from H60-H80i should suffice. As for heat issues, do rmb to clean your dust filters, fans regularly and you will do fine after the closed loop installation.

Cheers.

Hey yo! Thanks for the friendly advise! I can't tell the main difference between motherboards, beside the fact of faster transfer speed, sound and those very minor things. I have friends who recommended me to get the Z87 for editing purposes as they have good reliability and mobo heatsink? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Is there any ways I can check how much power I need? Was planning to grab a seasonic 750w gold but looks like it is a over kill now?

Yeah I keep my filters very clean, hehe! Maybe I will just change my casing, or change to noctua fans?

 

[Patek92]

What you only need.

Pay a professional to do a good cable routing and air flow configuration.

Get a good case fans for intake and exhaust.

Get a better graphic card and gold efficiency psu.

Hey dude, thanks for the sweet and short advise, I think I will do with that.

Do you mind providing me with inputs to these cases of my choice?
1. NZXT H440
2. NZXT Phantom 530/ Phantom 410
3. Fractal Design R4 / R2 XL
4. Corsair 450d

I'm looking at fan flow and also sturdy hdd slots, I heard the phantom series hdd slots are very fragile.

Should I get the GTX 750Ti 2GB or R9 280X?

Thank you so much!

 

[Alternative X]

What games are you playing? There is a large performance difference (and prices) between a GTX 750ti and a R9 280X.

 

[wkweewee]

Hey yo! Thanks for the friendly advise! I can't tell the main difference between motherboards, beside the fact of faster transfer speed, sound and those very minor things. I have friends who recommended me to get the Z87 for editing purposes as they have good reliability and mobo heatsink? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Is there any ways I can check how much power I need? Was planning to grab a seasonic 750w gold but looks like it is a over kill now?

Yeah I keep my filters very clean, hehe! Maybe I will just change my casing, or change to noctua fans?

Hi there! I believe your questions have answers here Read up this page haha.

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/hardware-clinic-2/help-two-gaming-builds-4772841.html

Noctua fans are good fans for cpu air coolers, albeit the colour @.@ normally fans for airflow (those mounted on casings de) are the af (airflow) type with high cpm ratings and they come in 'bling bling' led colours. Radiators/heatsink fans normally are those sp (static pressure) type and these fans do not have the 'bling' factor.

For casing wise, of course if your budget allows then go for a bigger case, if not no point changing also.

 

[royfrosty]

Your rig is perfectly fine. 70deg under load is perfectly fine.

Do not allocate budget to certain parts, this will not be cost effective and may not be able to have a well balance rig.

OPTIONAL to purchase would be,

- A new chassis for a new look and slightly better airflow
- A high end GPU
- A better PSU

1. Swap out the chassis to Corsair Obsidian 450D reason because this is the only Obsidian series that does not have anything to block the front passage for air to channel thru from outside to your GPU and HDD. This allows fresh air to be channel in easily. Apart from that it has a nice look and good finishing.

Prices ~ $169-$189

2. For 1080p gaming, a r9 280x/r9 290 or GTX770/GTX780 would be recommendable.

r9 280x has similar performance with the GTX770 and r9 290 with similar performance of the GTX780.

Brands to look out for and ranking from being the cheapest.

Powercolor r9 290 4gb REF card ~ $399 (Cybermind)
ASUS r9 290 4gb REF card ~ $429
Sapphire r9 280X 3gb OC ~ $428
Powercolor r9 280x 3gb Turbo Duo ~ $438
Sapphire r9 280x 3gb TriX ~ $475
Powercolor r9 290 4gb PCS+ ~ $499 (OOS everywhere, although i saw only 1 in TP just this morning, but probably already OOS by now)
ASUS r9 290 4gb DCUII ~ $519 (OOS everywhere)
MSI GTX770 2gb Twin Frozr ~ $524
MSI r9 290 4gb Twin Frozr ~ $529 (OOS everywhere)
MSI GTX770 4gb Twin Frozr ~ $558
MSI GTX780 3gb Twin Frozr ~ $715

3. For PSU

Go for reputable brands such as

Seasonic S/X/P series
Superflower HX/Golden Green/King series
FSP Aurum S/Aurum Platium series
Corsair AX/HX/RM series

 

[Patek92]

What games are you playing? There is a large performance difference (and prices) between a GTX 750ti and a R9 280X.

Yo, I'm playing Dota 2 and global offensive, and mostly rendering video in Premiere.

Sorry I have a lack of knowledge in comparison on them.

 

[wkweewee]

Yo, I'm playing Dota 2 and global offensive, and mostly rendering video in Premiere.

Sorry I have a lack of knowledge in comparison on them.

Atas software spotted. If that is the case, please go for the higher end r9 r280x. After which you better make use of mercury playback engine and gpu accelerated effects (like scaling and sharpening) bcuz a gpu is massively parallel with lots of parallel processing units. Apart from being faster from certain gpu accelerated effects, the quality will be better as well, when you apply the gradual change of colour to an image/video. All these heavy algo stuff is what a cpu cannot really do due to its limited ppu hahaha. So go for the best card your wallet can afford.

 

[Patek92]

Hi there! I believe your questions have answers here Read up this page haha.

http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/hardware-clinic-2/help-two-gaming-builds-4772841.html

Noctua fans are good fans for cpu air coolers, albeit the colour @.@ normally fans for airflow (those mounted on casings de) are the af (airflow) type with high cpm ratings and they come in 'bling bling' led colours. Radiators/heatsink fans normally are those sp (static pressure) type and these fans do not have the 'bling' factor.

For casing wise, of course if your budget allows then go for a bigger case, if not no point changing also.

Thanks bro! Actually I do not really care about the bling bling. I care more about the performance and silence if possible. Will aim the noctua if money permits, but what other models that are cheaper and offers an alternative to that?

 

[wkweewee]

Thanks bro! Actually I do not really care about the bling bling. I care more about the performance and silence if possible. Will aim the noctua if money permits, but what other models that are cheaper and offers an alternative to that?

Premiere, like most modern editing softwares will create heavy to full load on all the cores of your cpu. Initially I thought you will be doing gaming only, with some light video rendering. I believe your bulk of 70+ comes from video rendering itself, not when gaming when we compare the cpu load for these two tasks. I still advise aio closed loop cooling, as compared to those air cpu coolers bcuz when you render a high reso lengthy video its kind of similar to running a prime95 except for its duration.

 

[Patek92]

Your rig is perfectly fine. 70deg under load is perfectly fine.

Do not allocate budget to certain parts, this will not be cost effective and may not be able to have a well balance rig.

OPTIONAL to purchase would be,

- A new chassis for a new look and slightly better airflow
- A high end GPU
- A better PSU

1. Swap out the chassis to Corsair Obsidian 450D reason because this is the only Obsidian series that does not have anything to block the front passage for air to channel thru from outside to your GPU and HDD. This allows fresh air to be channel in easily. Apart from that it has a nice look and good finishing.

Prices ~ $169-$189

2. For 1080p gaming, a r9 280x/r9 290 or GTX770/GTX780 would be recommendable.

r9 280x has similar performance with the GTX770 and r9 290 with similar performance of the GTX780.

Brands to look out for and ranking from being the cheapest.

Powercolor r9 290 4gb REF card ~ $399 (Cybermind)
ASUS r9 290 4gb REF card ~ $429
Sapphire r9 280X 3gb OC ~ $428
Powercolor r9 280x 3gb Turbo Duo ~ $438
Sapphire r9 280x 3gb TriX ~ $475
Powercolor r9 290 4gb PCS+ ~ $499 (OOS everywhere, although i saw only 1 in TP just this morning, but probably already OOS by now)
ASUS r9 290 4gb DCUII ~ $519 (OOS everywhere)
MSI GTX770 2gb Twin Frozr ~ $524
MSI r9 290 4gb Twin Frozr ~ $529 (OOS everywhere)
MSI GTX770 4gb Twin Frozr ~ $558
MSI GTX780 3gb Twin Frozr ~ $715

3. For PSU

Go for reputable brands such as

Seasonic S/X/P series
Superflower HX/Golden Green/King series
FSP Aurum S/Aurum Platium series
Corsair AX/HX/RM series

Hey, awesome information there.

The 450D has great air flow but I realized their HDD storage drives compartment is quite fragile as compared to other cases. Will consider this model!
I heard the R9 280 price has dropped to $330 now. Wonder if SLS has revised this changed.

Should I get a additional sound card as I'm intending to get a Audio Engine A5+? Haha.

 

[Patek92]

Premiere, like most modern editing softwares will create heavy to full load on all the cores of your cpu. Initially I thought you will be doing gaming only, with some light video rendering. I believe your bulk of 70+ comes from video rendering itself, not when gaming when we compare the cpu load for these two tasks. I still advise aio closed loop cooling, as compared to those air cpu coolers bcuz when you render a high reso lengthy video its kind of similar to running a prime95 except for its duration.

Yeah, most of the time during rendering and exporting. However lately, my playback is quite laggy, wonder what is the issue. Could either be the file too big or 16gb ram is insufficient. Haha.

So the H100i is a suitable cooling system for me?

 

[royfrosty]

Hey, awesome information there.

The 450D has great air flow but I realized their HDD storage drives compartment is quite fragile as compared to other cases. Will consider this model!
I heard the R9 280 price has dropped to $330 now. Wonder if SLS has revised this changed.

Should I get a additional sound card as I'm intending to get a Audio Engine A5+? Haha.

That is r9 280 NON x.

280x is still around $388 (on promo). If not is at sub $400 range.

 

[wkweewee]

Yeah, most of the time during rendering and exporting. However lately, my playback is quite laggy, wonder what is the issue. Could either be the file too big or 16gb ram is insufficient. Haha.

So the H100i is a suitable cooling system for me?

Haha you can try to transcode to apple prores and work from there 1st. Actually I find 16gb ram decent but when you are doing editing/rendering that time do try to keep background tasks running to a minimal. Don't tell me you game when you render @.@- you will find your cpu and gpu screaming for their lives with your current rig specs haha. Anyway to check for bottleneck, one way is to open the windows task manager>performance tab side by side with your premiere. When you do a playback/do something which suddenly lags, see which item in the task manager which surges all of a sudden like an impulse.

H100i is abit too big and an overkill for a non k cpu! Anything from H60 to H80i should be fine.

 

[Ark Law]

That is r9 280 NON x.

280x is still around $388 (on promo). If not is at sub $400 range.

Yeah. 7950 cost like $400 1.5yrs ago

280 = 7950 Boost Ed
280X = 7970 GHz Ed

Hierarchy: 7970GE/280X > 7970 > 7950BE/280 > 7950 > 7870XT > 7870/270X

 

[deepblue_82]

i feel GTX is better at photoshop...

 

[wkweewee]

i feel GTX is better at photoshop...

Haha the amd r9 series have been added to the openCL supported gpu list from Adobe for more than half a yr ago le. Though cuda has a long history with Adobe... the disparity is not that great for normal users. Can't say the same for professionals... as certain things are still optimised for cuda.

 

[Patek92]

Haha you can try to transcode to apple prores and work from there 1st. Actually I find 16gb ram decent but when you are doing editing/rendering that time do try to keep background tasks running to a minimal. Dont tell me you game when you render- you will find your cpu and gpu screaming for their lives with your current rig specs haha. Anyway to check for bottleneck, one way is to open the windows task manager>performance tab side by side with your premiere. When you do a playback/do something which suddenly lags, see which item in the task manager which surges all of a sudden like an impulse.

H100i is abit too big and an overkill for a non k cpu! Anything from H60 to H80i should be fine.

Thanks dude! Anyway, how do you check bottle necking of PSU?
What are your opinions on Audio engine A5+? Worthy for the price? Hehe.