What to upgrade, new:ish PC

[Taurentony]

Hello there.
So i bought a new computer about 5 months ago and i put it together all by my self (my very first computer i ever built, adult lego!)
But here's the thing. I feel it is not really up to par with the performance i expected.

So i was wondering what i should upgrade for the biggest performance increase?
Here my spec:

QuadCore AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 965, 4100 MHz (20.5 x 200)

ASRock 970 Extreme4 (2 PCI, 2 PCI-E x1, 3 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR3 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)

x4 Corsair Vengeance LP CML8GX3M2A1600C9 4 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (9-9-9-24 @ 666 MHz) (8-8-8-22 @ 592 MHz) (7-7-7-19 @ 518 MHz) (6-6-6-16 @ 444 MHz)

AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series (2048 MB)

SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series SATA Disk Device (SATA-III)
ST1000DM 003-9YN162 SATA Disk Device (1000 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-III)

Running it all on windows 7 home premium

please do tell if i've missed anything

[Dizey]

It really depends on what you're using the system for, but for the most part, there isn't really anything you should dump more cash into for upgrades. You could upgrade to a piledriver core Vishera CPU, and possibly faster memory, but you'll be disappointed in your investment considering what you already have.

[Taurentony]

All i really use it for is to play wow with a fps around 50-60 (capped it at 60) think it's around the 100's without the cap but in raid settings it drops really low and in some areas outside raiding aswell.
I'd like a PC that can handle raiding while frapsing.

---------- Post added 2012-12-15 at 04:20 PM ----------

bumping this now

[Taurentony]

So any suggestions at all on this? Also for some reason i keep getting blue screen of death at random intervalls. Is there any way i can figure out what is causing it?

[Deleted]

So any suggestions at all on this? Also for some reason i keep getting blue screen of death at random intervalls. Is there any way i can figure out what is causing it?

try to make a pic of the error code it provides.
also in regards to upgrades wow likes cpu power but going intel platform is a costly upgrade. (+-$350)

[Taurentony]

try to make a pic of the error code it provides.
also in regards to upgrades wow likes cpu power but going intel platform is a costly upgrade. (+-$350)

Can i even take a screenshot while in blue screen?
Hmm thats a lot for just a single piece!

[Deleted]

Can i even take a screenshot while in blue screen?
Hmm thats a lot for just a single piece!

screendump should work.
also it is 2 pieces (intel cpu and motherboard) basicly AMD cpu's don't mix well with wow.

[Taurentony]

screendump should work.
also it is 2 pieces (intel cpu and motherboard) basicly AMD cpu's don't mix well with wow.

Ah ok. I will try and get a screenie next time it happens. It's so random. It can go days without and then i can have 3-5 in the hour. Without doing anything in particular!

[vesseblah]

Basically your problem is that PhenomII x4 965 is from 2009, and it simply can't compare with Intel's offerings in any MMORPGs. There are no easy upgrades available that would make significant difference, only thing to achieve that would be swapping whole motherboard and processor to Intel side.

So any suggestions at all on this? Also for some reason i keep getting blue screen of death at random intervalls. Is there any way i can figure out what is causing it?

Bad overclocking? Did you run proper stress-testing (Prime95 at least)?

[Taurentony]

That makes sense to me.

Don't know about the overclocking, it was my cousin who did it for me. He understands the technical stuff more than i do. But that could maybe be the problem very well. (No idea about stress-testing or Prime95!)
Bad overclocking? Did you run proper stress-testing (Prime95 at least)?

[vesseblah]

Don't know about the overclocking, it was my cousin who did it for me. He understands the technical stuff more than i do. But that could maybe be the problem very well. (No idea about stress-testing or Prime95!)

You should check it out from him.

Basically, first step of overclocking is getting the computer to boot to windows desktop without bluescreening.

After that the second step is making sure the computer will not bluescreen under any normal use. Prime95 is a program designed to hit the processor and RAM usage to maximum, far higher than games do. Usually badly overclocked computers that can run games for hours will crash within 30 seconds of running Prime95. It could be that your cousin didnt run the stress test to see if the processor can handle full load for extended lenght of time. Most people run Prime95 overnight to make sure the overclocking is 100% stable.

And yes, it's realistic that the CPU can be used at 100% load for hours, ripping movies from BluRay does that, or even simply doing folding@home or any other grid computations.

[DarkBlade6]

I dont know who told you to buy AMD hardware just to play WoW because WoW simply run MUCH BETTER on Intel Sandy/Ivy CPU and Nvidia GPUs, I dont need to link any article, its just fact. I dont know whats your budget, but you could get a 3570k, Asrock Z77 Extreme4, 8GB DDR3 1600 and a GTX660 for 500-600$... actually forget about the GTX660, that 7850 is more than enough for WoW hehe :P so make that 350$ish for the cpu/mobo/ram combo.

[Taurentony]

You should check it out from him.

Basically, first step of overclocking is getting the computer to boot to windows desktop without bluescreening.

After that the second step is making sure the computer will not bluescreen under any normal use. Prime95 is a program designed to hit the processor and RAM usage to maximum, far higher than games do. Usually badly overclocked computers that can run games for hours will crash within 30 seconds of running Prime95. It could be that your cousin didnt run the stress test to see if the processor can handle full load for extended lenght of time. Most people run Prime95 overnight to make sure the overclocking is 100% stable.

And yes, it's realistic that the CPU can be used at 100% load for hours, ripping movies from BluRay does that, or even simply doing folding@home or any other grid computations.

Ok so i called him up and he said he had ran the overclocking that window has. Which im guessing is absolute shit?
So in theory i can force a bluescreen (if my PC is badly overclocked) and take a screenshot and post it here?
How can i reset and do a proper overclocking?

mnm
I dont know who told you to buy AMD hardware just to play WoW because WoW simply run MUCH BETTER on Intel Sandy/Ivy CPU and Nvidia GPUs, I dont need to link any article, its just fact. I dont know whats your budget, but you could get a 3570k, Asrock Z77 Extreme4, 8GB DDR3 1600 and a GTX660 for 500-600$... actually forget about the GTX660, that 7850 is more than enough for WoW hehe :P so make that 350$ish for the cpu/mobo/ram combo.

Thanks, i will look it up!

Also it just crashed and i tried doing a print screen but it didn't work

[Nixaler]

To reset the OC, you should be able to do that in BIOS if it has a "load optimized defaults" or you could pull the battery and reset the CMOS jumper. To properly overclock it, I recommend getting prime95, cpuz and hardware monitor. Hopefully you also have some solid aftermarket cooling (CM Hyper 212 EVO for example) There is a guide on overclockers.com for OC'ing the Phenom II found here if I can link it : http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...s+phenom+guide


yay i can link things now lol!

[Taurentony]

To reset the OC, you should be able to do that in BIOS if it has a "load optimized defaults" or you could pull the battery and reset the CMOS jumper. To properly overclock it, I recommend getting prime95, cpuz and hardware monitor. Hopefully you also have some solid aftermarket cooling (CM Hyper 212 EVO for example) There is a guide on overclockers.com for OC'ing the Phenom II found here if I can link it : http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...s+phenom+guide

yay i can link things now lol!

Hmm ok i will take a look at the guide! Thanks!
And what a coincidence, the hyper 212 evo is exactly what i got

[Nixaler]

Awesome, I would think you could get that thing stable @ 3.8 pretty easily. I forget off the top of my head the "safe" temps for the phenom chips and iirc the phenoms like a little fsb tweaking as well ( although that could be more for the x6 thubans ) or at least a higher mhz on the cpunb. Definitely give that guide a read through and with any questions, make you an account over there and ask away. Those guys are awesome and really knowledgeable with Oc'ing. I think they have a couple threads going now with the 965 in it.

[Taurentony]

Awesome, I would think you could get that thing stable @ 3.8 pretty easily. I forget off the top of my head the "safe" temps for the phenom chips and iirc the phenoms like a little fsb tweaking as well ( although that could be more for the x6 thubans ) or at least a higher mhz on the cpunb. Definitely give that guide a read through and with any questions, make you an account over there and ask away. Those guys are awesome and really knowledgeable with Oc'ing. I think they have a couple threads going now with the 965 in it.

Cool i had a read through it and tried my best at understanding it. I'm not the best when it comes to technical stuff more because i lack the experience of it but the interest is there!
I will try when i get the time!

[Nixaler]

Cool i had a read through it and tried my best at understanding it. I'm not the best when it comes to technical stuff more because i lack the experience of it but the interest is there!
I will try when i get the time!

I felt the same way first time I went through it with my old 555be that i unlocked from a duel to a quad. First time I BSOD'ed it during testing I freaked out lol! Now I'm hooked on it, I've been tweaking my 4170 all over the place and finally got it stable with the mulitplier and a small fsb tweak. The most boring part for me is the running of Prime95, I know I could walk away and let it run, but I usually end up firing up the wifes comp and surfing the web while it does its thing. The guys on the forum there say at minimum let it run for 2 hours once you have it to the clock speed you want.

You will probably want to reset everything anyway and start from scratch, that way you can see what your temps are under load while at stock and get an idea for how much headroom you have.