Short and sweet--Have some extra cash, was looking to upgrade some parts on my rig, bought it in March last year, any suggestions on what should be upgraded and upgraded to would be appreciated...

System Configuration:
Case: Corsair 800D
Internal Lighting: Accent Lighting (Green)
LED Fans: LED Performance Fans (Green)
Processor (CPU): Intel Core i7 960 3.2GHz (Quad Core)
Motherboard: EVGA X58 3X SLI (Intel X58 Chipset)
System Memory: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Corsair Dominator DHX Performance Series
Power Supply: 1250W Enermax Galaxy EVO
Video Card(s): 1x ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
Hard Drive Storage Set 1: 1x (1TB Seagate/Western Digital (7200 RPM) (32MB Cache)
Dedicated Sound Card: Motherboard Audio
CD Optical Drive 1: Blu-Ray Player/DVD Writer (Play Blu-Ray and Burn DVDs)
Wireless Connectivity: Linksys Wireless-N 300Mbps
CPU Cooling:Asetek Liquid CPU Cooler 240mm Radiator
Display: Acer 24 inch (Widescreen) (Black Color)

Umm...sound card? lol

Whatever game you're playing probably won't be improved by a soundcard. The only reason to dump an excess amount of money into a sound card and not a receiver/hdmi setup is if you really want to listen to music on a headset, which is absurd to me. Sound from a headset cannot sound as good as sound from a legitimate sound system.

My recommendation? Don't upgrade. Instead dump your money into a surround sound system and a receiver. Your computer runs fine as is, and playing into the forced obsolescence game is ridiculous and a waste of money. Sound lasts forever, good speakers will last you 30 to 40 years. And women F*CKING love awesome sound systems.

Don't have speakers, just use the head phone jack in my keyboard...

@Hooker: Any suggestions on quality speakers and sound card?

Thanks!

honestly my suggestion wasn't serious. i just couldn't think of anything that you really needed to upgrade, but yeah Hooker nice suggestion lol

Solid state HD or a 10k RPM drive.

Right now the bottleneck on your system is the HD, a 1TB drive is slow. Put your OS on the solid state, and whichever game you want the best performance for. Reformatting the drive and moving the OS is going to be a bitch though.

The only thing I could think of would be the memory but it wouldn't be a necessary upgrade just something to rub our noses in a bit more. lol!

Noted, the 10K RPM drives run $400+ on Newegg, can I get a better price elsewhere or is this low as it comes? (i.e. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148627&cm_re=10k_RPM_HD-_-22-148-627-_-Product)



Could Upgrade memory to 12gbs, what about graphics card, upgradable to SLI? worth it? Haven't had too many graphics problems but with games like Crisis 2, elder scrolls skyrim, witcher 2 coming out you never know...

Per acid rain: If you're updating the hd you want anything with extended read times (read: games) on a 10k rpm drive because ssd slows down over extended reads. The only real strength they have is random reads, such as your OS, otherwise they are a waste of money, and the difference between the ssd and the velociraptor boot times is minuscule.10s vs 20s. I bought the velociraptor on my system for like 250.

As for my sound system suggestion, you would need to tell me whether you're going to use hdmi or not. If you're using hdmi you have no need for a sound card, so you can put more money into the actual sound system.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322
Another suggestion is just grab another 5870 for e-peen but I would go with hooker's suggestion. Also do not get a sound card if you are to get a receiver. It is redundant. What you do when you have a receiver is you plug HDMI from your 5870 to the receiver then another HDMI from receiver to monitor.

I recommend this system here http://www.amazon.com/Onkyo-HT-S7300-7-1-Channel-Theater-Receiver/dp/B003OQUIIG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301420913&sr=8-1 I have it and enjoy it thoroughly

Yep.

The soundsystem bleep just posted is easily the best deal you'll find on a sound system. That system is fantastic, its the best you'll find for under a grand. If you're trying to spend over a grand I can accommodate that too, but then you're getting into audiophile type shit - and its expensive and usually overkill for the average listener.

Dude, get a Dell!

I notice you have an intel Nvidia Sli chipset With an Ati Card. I would Get an Ati Crossfire compatible chipset for future upgradeability

That WD HD looks good and not that expensive. And the sound system looks perfect for me since I'm not a DJ and don't need overkill. So if I get the sound system do I just plug it through my motherboard sound jacks? If you could refer me to a step by step somewhere, don't want to bother you if its a long process.



Yea, it was a cheap deal but definitely at the end of this year I'll upgrade for sure...

Thanks all for your ideas and help!!

[quote="Hooker"]Whatever game you're playing probably won't be improved by a soundcard. The only reason to dump an excess amount of money into a sound card and not a receiver/hdmi setup is if you really want to listen to music on a headset, which is absurd to me. Sound from a headset cannot sound as good as sound from a legitimate sound system.

You couldn't be more wrong. Now-a-days, it's a great idea to get a really decent sound-card, like PCI-E bus-types. Many new sound cards can handle higher bitrates, frequencies, and best of all, change every single option it has available depending on what you're listening to. In addition, ANY game you play these days is greatly improved by having a good sound card. Just as a GPU would work, the processor on a sound-card takes heavy loads off the CPU. Instead of the CPU being called by the process to queue and play a sound, the load is directed to the sound card, giving the potential for less bottle-necking. I hear things on my headset that I never hear in my truck when I play music. Coming from a musician, I can tell you that I wish my vehicle had a "sound-card". So I can do more than simply change the EQ. Also, you're gay.

Acid, I knew you would post. And in response to your answer, I suppose I should've clarified, Hdmi shoots out a raw soundfile, which is then decoded by the soundcard within the receiver. By having a soundcard on your system and trying to run your hdmi through that then the receiver, you're decoding, encoding and decoding again, which is in short, redundant and lossy.

His system wouldn't bottleneck on sound, saying that it would slow down under heavy load? Slightly. As for your car vs your headphones, again, I suppose I should have clarified, the onkyo that I knew bleep would post blows out any headphones on the bass quality alone, and don't even get me started on the 3d sound imaging. Nothing, I repeat nothing, you could get in a headset will top the quality of a mid range sound system, such as aforementioned onkyo. I apologize if you thought I was being short, but for most people how I said it would be enough of an explanation.

You are entitled to your own opinions, I know. But as a double major in mechanical engineering with a specialty in vibrations, signal transfer and electro acoustics, I eat this shit for breakfast.

Also: your car has a shitty soundcard with no job other than to encode and decode bandwidths and cd information. Saying it doesn't is wrong.

Also: F*CKING with the eq is F*CKING with how the artist wanted it to sound, as a fellow musician I would figure you would be against this.

Also: you're gay. AFRICAN AMERICAN.

You eat shit for breakfast?!

THIS IS ME NOT FORUM BANNING YOU FOR YOUR LONG PARADE OF USELESS FORUM POSTS THAT CONTRIBUTE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO THE CONVERSATION.

continue to ignore the guidelines that members much newer than yourself, take for granted and respect and that might change.

for the love of god at least try to be a little amusing.

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