Spring Upgrades

[Pyrothrillah]

Going to be ordering upgrades for my current rig next week and just wanted some input or possibly better deals than what I have selected currently. Mostly just want to do a motherboard+CPU upgrade as well as slap in a SSD drive.

Here is my current system:

MOBO: GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3
CPU: AMD FX-8350 (8-core)
GPU: GTX 780
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
PSU: Corsair AX850 Professional Series Gold
CASE: Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower
HDD: 1TB Seagate 7200 RPM
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Here is what I'm looking at getting thus far:

MOBO: Amazon.com: ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO DDR3 2800 LGA 1150 Motherboard socket for 4th Generation Intel Core i7/ i5/ i3/ Pentium / Celeron Processors: Computers & Accessories

CPU: Amazon.com: Intel Core i7-4770K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.5 GHZ 8 MB Cache BX80646I74770K: Computers & Accessories

SSD: Amazon.com: Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 6.0 Gb/s Solid State Drive SH103S3/120G: Computers & Accessories

Heatsink: Amazon.com: Corsair Hydro Series Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler H80i: Computers & Accessories


Kind of on the fence between the Maximus VI and ASUS Sabertooth. Not sure really what I want to go with here, the Sabertooth is quite a bit more money, but not really sure to be honest if it's really worth it.

I almost wanted to just go ahead and go with the 4930k, but between that CPU and Motherboard I'm looking at around 350 more dollars I believe to go with that. I do a lot of multitasking and CPU intensive gaming, however I think the 4770k will be just fine.

As far as the budget, I'm *trying* to keep everything under $1000.

 

[PP Mguire]

The 8350 is fine, why exactly do you want to upgrade that already?

As to the motherboard, there isn't a warrant to go with such an expensive motherboard, ever, unless you do extreme OCing where the upgraded VRM comes into play. That, or if you do 3 and 4 card GPU solutions. The rest is all bling. So never do I recommend to somebody anything over say 175 bucks.

This SSD over the Kingston any day.
Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE120BW: Electronics

 

[Pyrothrillah]

The 8350 has been a great CPU, however lately I've been getting less and less FPS in-games, slower file transfer speeds...etc. I have a feeling it's not operating at 100% and sadly it's only a year old.

I don't currently plan to do any "extreme" overclocking, however I will be putting a mild overclock on the 4770k. I usually like to get a high-end motherboard to put my mind at ease when OC'ing the CPU.

 

[PP Mguire]

The 8350 has been a great CPU, however lately I've been getting less and less FPS in-games, slower file transfer speeds...etc. I have a feeling it's not operating at 100% and sadly it's only a year old.

I don't currently plan to do any "extreme" overclocking, however I will be putting a mild overclock on the 4770k. I usually like to get a high-end motherboard to put my mind at ease when OC'ing the CPU.

I doubt it's the CPU. When was the last time you've done a cleanup or format?

You don't need a high end motherboard to do mild OCs. I have a midend board and have ran my 3960x at 5GHz before. The times have changed that basically besides the stuff I mentioned before you get extra "stuff" and bragging rights. It's why I recommend the ASRock boards so much. Same functionality, same OC ability, same warranty usually, less price. My friend is running 2 780ti's and a 4.6GHz clocked 4770k on the ASRock Extreme 4 without issue. Although even though nobody listens, OCing these chips is not and will not be necessary for quite some time. I haven't had an OC on my 3960x for almost a year now.

 

[Pyrothrillah]

Haven't formatted in quite some time actually. Some of the games I play and programs I use are honestly just taking more and more CPU usage, also I stream a lot to Twitch and between playing certain games and encoding frames I just really don't have the CPU to do it efficiently. Hence the reason I was toying with the idea of the 4930k because the program I use for encoding utilizes multi-threaded optimizations.

What board would you recommend for a mild overclock? I'm not looking for bragging rights and any time I can save money I'm all ears.

 

[PP Mguire]

What program is that? I personally use Handbrake but only on certain file formats and settings does it utilize all 12 threads on my CPU, and no other program does this for transcoding. For gaming the 4770k would be faster than the 4930k but it would be up to you to figure out which performance is more enticing. Transcoding speed (the equivalent of a few minutes on a 100GB+ video) or FPS in games due to better single threaded performance of the 4770k.

I stream Twitch, record vids on Fraps, and transcode using Handbrake and I can't imagine utilizing 100% of an 8350 considering most things I do with the 3960x barely take 40% CPU at the most. And that's when I'm really trying. That's why I was suggesting see what is really the problem. Don't want you to drop all this cash and still have the same problem later.

 

[Pyrothrillah]

I use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) for Twitch. Between playing something mild like WoW + Encoding via OBS I'm looking at anywhere between 80-90% usage with nothing more running besides a few light weight programs like Spotify, Raidcall...etc. Also that is with OBS running on it's "very fast" preset which is one of the lighter CPU intensive options it has.

Just running WoW by itself, nothing else utilizes 25-30% by itself and that's using "Good" settings, shadows turned off...etc

 

[PP Mguire]

That's the same setup I use except not very fast. Hmm. If you got some free time I suggest making an image to backup with and try a fresh install. If that doesn't work then proceed with upgrade.

For board.
Amazon.com: AS Rock LGA1155 DDR3 SATA3 USB3.0 Quad CrossFireX and Quad SLI A GbE ATX Motherboard Z77 EXTREME4: Computers & Accessories

Although, I don't see one with Prime.

 

[Pyrothrillah]

I considered getting the SSD first and just do a fresh install on of Windows on it since I will be using that SSD for my OS and some of my most used programs/drivers while doing a clean wipe on my current HDD, but if I end up getting a new motherboard I think it will be kinda counter-productive since I'd have to wipe my current motherboard drivers..etc from it anyway.