2014 System Upgrades begin!
Its 2014, and that means I’ve begun the long overdue process of upgrading my gaming PC.
First I’ll review the current setup, before looking at recent developments and future purchases. Things have been quite busy in the last few weeks.
I’ve spoken in previous articles about the outdated system I currently own.
It’s based on pretty old hardware, relative to that available today, and has been a soldier until recently when I started to have video card issues.
The below spec reflects my current system:
Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX6850
Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS5 motherboard
4GB DDR2 Geil PC6400 800MHz RAM (CAS 4-4-4-12)
AMD XFX Radeon 5870 graphics card
Samsung 840 EVO SATA6Gb/s SSD Hard Drive
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA6Gb/s SSD Hard Drive
Samsung HD154UI 1.5TB SATA3Gb/s Hard Drive
Tegan 800W PSU
Cooler Master Stacker 810 Case
Peripherals-wise, I use:
Microsoft HABU 2000dpi High Precision Gaming Mouse
Everglide Titan MonsterMat – DKT Edition (Mouse mat)
An old-school IBM Multimedia Keyboard
Hanns-G HG216D 23 inch monitor
Viewsonic VX715 17 inch monitor
Creative Fatal1ty HS-800 Gaming Headset
For reference my server has this current setup:
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3P r2.0 motherboard
8GB DDR2 PC6400 800MHz Kingston HyperX RAM
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W PSU
Codegen 4U Rack Mount Server Case CSCG4U600
So, what has changed so far?
There is a lot of room for improvement here in terms of upgrade potential.
Firstly, I’ve invested in 3 identical 24 inch IPS monitors.
They are the model ASUS VN248H and are viewable in the pic to the right –>
Let me say these monitors are a great purchase! They are perfect for a triple monitor setup, as they have a 1cm bezel and have brilliant colour, brightness and viewing angle thanks to IPS. These things all add up to a perfect scenario for TRIPLE MONITOR GAMING!
Oh yes, Eyefinity is awesome in this setup! I’m also very impressed at how well my old 5870 runs games at high detail on 3 monitors at a massive 5760×1080 resolution!
Below are a few pics running a few games in Eyefinity.
The last purchase?
Well, thats the monitors out of the way, and these will last me many years.
Next, was the final biggest single purchase of a new graphics card to drive all of this.
On this particular subject, I’ve had some scepticism as to whether it will be worth purchasing a high end card earlier or later in the total upgrade process, but since my current video card is playing up and the new card will scale up with a newer CPU, I thought to go ahead and purchase it.
In the end I got the new AMD Radeon R9 290 made by Gigabyte, the GV-R929OC-4GD.
At the time of writing this I’m still due to install it, as it just arrived today, but I’ll update later with findings.
Here are a couple of pics of the card.
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