Help me decide on some new upgrades!

Discussion in 'New Build / Upgrade Advice' started by AJScott755, Mar 11, 2014.

  1. AJScott755

    AJScott755 Geek Trainee

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    Hey guys, new to the forum! Looking for some advice, I currently have a semi decent PC and I am looking to upgrade, here at my current specs:

    CPU: i7-860 @ 2.8Ghz with stock cooler
    RAM: 6Gb 1333mhz Kingston
    GPU: MSI Gtx 660 Ti
    Motherboard: Dell own brand (Can't remember model)
    PSU: Novatech 750Watt PSU
    HDD: 2 x 1Tb Seagate Barracuda's.
    OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
    Case: Cooler Master ATX case.

    So, this PC is actually from a Dell XPS 8100. About 6 months ago I bought myself the MSI Gtx 660Ti along with a bigger PSU to power it, the Dell case was not big enough to hold these so I bought a new case and moved everything over, this took me some doing but I eventually did it! Now some time has passed since then and I have got some money together and it is time to upgrade I think. My hard drives have started to take longer to load, there's been a few hiccups recently. Such as booting up Windows and then once I've logged in taking about a minute or so to actually show up all my icons etc. All the hardware except for the GPU and PSU is about 3 or 4 years old and considering that I have given it some very heavy use in those years it has served me well.

    I'm looking for some advice on what to upgrade to, I have some ideas but I'm not sure what models/brands to go for! I've just bought myself a Seagate Expansion 3Tb external drive because it was on offer (£50, not bad eh?)

    I do a lot of gaming and work a lot with audio (mixing and recording). The audio work is mainly dependant upon RAM and plenty of hard drive space as all files are recorded in .wav format, however I do have my 3Tb external drive now.
    If you guys on this forum could help me out that would be great! I'll list what I want to upgrade:
    (Budget of about £500/600)

    Upgrades:
    OS
    : A newer version of Windows, maybe Windows 7 Professional?

    CPU: At least a quad core at 3.2Ghz. Would prefer to go with Intel, temperatures are important as it will get heavy use and I would prefer to use the stock cooler and not an aftermarket one. I don't plan to overclock.

    Motherboard: This is the most important I think. Must have USB 3, and 2 x PCIe 16 lanes, so I can attach another MSI Gtx 660Ti at some point and run them in SLI.

    HDD: A single 2 or 3Tb hard drive. Not bothered about a SSD. 7200RPM with a 64mb cache. Reliability is the most important factor to me, as it will get heavy use.

    RAM: Not sure how much RAM to go for, 6GB has served me well however I've seen the Corsair Vengeance RAM at 1666Mhz (is that right?) with heat sinks on. Are these required for such high powered sticks?

    If you fine people could recommend me some products to look at in these areas, stated above, that would be much appreciated! I use to be quite clued up on what hardware was brand new etc however I just haven't been keeping up to date with new technologies etc. Thank you!
     
  2. Wicked Mystic

    Wicked Mystic Big Geek

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    Any reason for this? Use Windows anytime upgrade anyway.

    Well, Intel Haswell processors are much hotter than AMD processors. Also Intel Haswell stock cooler is absolute crap. CPU will likely throttle using it.

    With LGA1150 you cannot get dual PCI Express x16. x8 is enough however. Also I see no sense using GTX 660 Ti SLI anyway.

    Seagate (cheap) or Western Digital Black then.

    Memory heatsiks are useless. That 6 GB is 3*2GB or 1*4+1*2 GB?
     

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