Upgrade my machine!

[ghostyroasty]

I'm on the fence in upgrading my system entirely, or just adding RAM and possibly a couple other upgrades. I currently use this for Plex Home Theater, mostly light gaming, and soon to be my dvr... But since this summer's Steam sale, I'd like to future proof my system a bit more as some games do not run as well as I would like. My current system specs are listed below:

Thermaltake Black SECC Japanese steel LANBOX Lite VF6000BWS Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

ZOTAC GF9300-A-E LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9300 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Radeon 5870 Gpu

Intel Core 2 Duo E7600 Wolfdale 3.06GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80571E7600

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ

Western Digital WD Green WD5000AADS 500GB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive

Hooked up to my living room TV 1080p.

I was contemplating gutting the system except for the HD and case and going for an amd a10 with some memory, then getting a gpu later on as I would move the 5870 downstairs to my Intel i7 machine (media server). I'm not sure if the a10 would do well for this purpose alone though, so if there is a suggestion of a lower priced card to boost performance a bit, I'm open for suggestions.
I'll be playing Skyrim on it, as it is my next purchase as well as a bit of racing and fps games.. And if suggestions go well enough, I may end up cancelling my PS4 and Xbox One preorders.. Not that I could afford both anyways! As far as budget goes, 500 might be about the limit I can have right now...
Thanks for any help offered

 

[Essence_of_War]

Tough to give detailed advice without knowing specifically what games you're playing in addition to Skyrim.

The 5870 is a respectable gpu, and unless you're gaming on the media server, it seems like a shame to waste it there when it packs quite a bit more graphics punch than an a10. To get better Skyrim performance, my guess is that you need a CPU, mobo, ram upgrade. You look kind of ram light, and Skyrim is often CPU bound as it is only dual threaded.

I think you could upgrade to an ivyB i3 and 8gb of ddr3, or a haswell i5 with same for under 500 and kick your Skyrim up a bunch of notches.

 

[ghostyroasty]

Thanks for responding... I play a bit of everything, from racing to fps. The only reason I would have put the Radeon downstairs is the media server will be doubling as another gaming system in the future.. but by then it'll probably be time to upgrade.

 

[Torn Mind]

The A10s are on par with or slightly faster than the highest end Core 2 Quad CPU-wise but their GPUs are slightly worse than a 6670.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Any specific titles? It might help so that you can compare w/ benches.

So here's something specific:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($239.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling ACFZI30 74.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI Z87M-G43 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($117.86 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $422.82
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-07-16 15:51 EDT-0400)

The RAM is a good price, that's an mATX mobo, and it includes an aftermarket cooler for OC'ing if you'd like. Tell Skyrim where it can stick its CPU bottleneck :biggrin:.

More importantly, you're under 500.

If you want to spend even less:

Here's an ivyB i3 bundle for $284.
Add $40 for an additional stick of identical RAM (yes, ridiculous, but the overall deal is good!) for dual-channel, and that gets you to $324 total. And you get a new HDD to boot.

Either of those would pair nicely with the 5870 in your HTPC/moderate gaming build, and either would allow you to upgrade gpus in the future.

Edit:
One more question, it probably shouldn't be an issue since GPUs are normally the power hog, but what do you have for a PSU?

 

[ghostyroasty]

It's been a while since I ordered it, but I believe the psu is either 800 or 850 watts.. No problem there.

Thanks again! Like I said, this would be the start of a system to replace the ps4 and Xbox one preorders I have now. I usually play games line Call of Duty, Battlefield, Burnout, NFS (Criterion Games editions only as I purchase and play through all of their games), and Unreal Tournament.. but the system I have handles the ut games with no problem.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Yeah, that sounds like Skyrim being CPU bottle-necked.

I think that either of those build I suggested should alleviate that. Especially nice if you're planning on burning 100ish hours on the Skyrim Legendary Edition

 

[riversend]

Can I ask what you are doing with your media server? I assume the i7 machine is doing transcoding, but does it need to be in the server?

And I see you are going to game on it eventually anyway, seems like there may be some mismatched parts in what you already have. Any thoughts to reconfiguring the two systems you have to better optimize their usage?

Just a thought.

 

[mfenn]

Essence of War's build looks pretty good to me. However, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is the hard drive. You have a WD Green drive as the only drive, which is quite slow. I'd strongly consider a new HDD like this Hitachi 1TB for $60 AP. Maybe shift the Green drive down to the media server.

 

[ghostyroasty]

The media server uses Plex to transcode to multiple clients at once. I didn't purchase a gpu for it as the processor does the work. Everything else is storage based. An ssd for the os and a few hard drives for the media storage.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Maybe shift the Green drive down to the media server.

That sounds like a good call! In addition to the Hitachi, you should be able to find 1 TB WD Blue's for ~$60-65 on either amazon or newegg. 7200 RPM drives perform noticeably better than 5400/5900.

 

[ghostyroasty]

Yeah, the HD I could move downstairs.. Tons of room in the case there... Not so much in the Matx case. I had to cut in to it to get the gpu to fit I want to get this all in at once, so I may buy the parts more spread out over the next month or so and then just do a mass upgrade and sell the mobo/ram/cpu to get a little back.

 

[Essence_of_War]

I wouldn't recommend buying CPU, MoBo, RAM spread out over a month.

You really want to put them all together at the same time to make sure they work w/in any reasonable warranty/RMA timeframes.

Especially if you have a known working GPU, PSU, and HDD, that can help with any troubleshooting that comes up.