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modest upgrade recommendations

Easy Rhino

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I am looking to upgrade an "older" rig to play modern games at middle settings. The games I play most often are Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, and other Indie titles.

Rig specs for this build are not in my system specs.

Q6600
8 gigs 1333
750 watt PSU
DVD Drive
ATX Case
24bit Soundcard
250 gig HDD
On Board graphics intel crap
Samsung 1080p 24 inch monitor

The cpu,ram,psu,audio are all staying. I would like recommendations on a SSD, gpu, and 1440p monitor. The idea is to take a lame rig and make it so that it can play games at decent settings but not break the bank or buy parts that will be useless paired with a q6600.

I am thinking a 650Ti, a 250 gigs SSD with sandforce chip, and one of those Korean 1440p monitors.
 

brandonwh64

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used 2500K/P67 or Z68 and keep the ram and your done.

*edit*

didnt finish reading but that would give it a huge difference from the Q6600

650Ti would be a good choice if you can get it cheap
 

Easy Rhino

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used 2500K/P67 or Z68 and keep the ram and your done.

*edit*

didnt finish reading but that would give it a huge difference from the Q6600

yea but what if i don't want to bother with upgrading cpu? also, budget for all 3 parts is $600 firm. i would rather avoid going used.
 

brandonwh64

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yea but what if i don't want to bother with upgrading cpu? also, budget for all 3 parts is $600 firm. i would rather avoid going used.

Most components I have purchased in the last 3 years have been used and I have yet to get a single one fail and most companys are going by serial number for RMA so that would help in case of the need to RMA.

BUT..... Thats just my opinion to help save money and afford the full upgrade.

But yes I belive either a GTX 760 with a nice SSD would be a good upgrade but if you DID decide to play heaver games the Q6600 would start bottlenecking.
 
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I am not the best at this, but it seems the Monitor is the budget killer.

I found this on Amazon, Crossover 27Q LED 27" 27inch LED Monitor S-IPS, QHD 2560 x1440

The GPU and SSD I would get:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Fs81
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Fs81/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1Fs81/benchmarks/

Storage: Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($180.51 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB Video Card ($168.98 @ Newegg)
Monitor: DoubleSight DS-279W 60Hz 27.0" Monitor ($545.44 @ Amazon)
Total: $894.93
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-19 11:57 EDT-0400)

Delete the DoubleSight and add the Crossover...$742.43

That's the best I can do in less than 10 minutes. Which is the limit of my attention, at this point. Big storm coming outside, a little distracted....
 

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That CPU would be a bottleneck, and especially at 1440/1600p medium settings. And forget about next generation games. You could get the stuff anyway and upgrade the rest later on though.

These are for the big titles btw. For indie games it'll be more than fine. Also, overclocking.
 

Easy Rhino

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That CPU would be a bottleneck, and especially at 1440/1600p medium settings. And forget about next generation games. You could get the stuff anyway and upgrade the rest later on though.

These are for the big titles btw. For indie games it'll be more than fine. Also, overclocking.

i certinaly don't plan on playing any games other than the simple ones at native resolution. the rest i will just scale down to 1080p. i want the 1440p res mainly for the improved image quality so that my eyes are not as strained by the end of the day.
 

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You can consider 7850 if the price is right, performance should be roughly the same as 650Ti I think. Any reason why you would want a Sandforce SSD as opposed to others?
 

Easy Rhino

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You can consider 7850 if the price is right, performance should be roughly the same as 650Ti I think. Any reason why you would want a Sandforce SSD as opposed to others?

i heard sandforce was the best. that may not be the case any longer?
 

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i heard sandforce was the best. that may not be the case any longer?

A year ago maybe, you get many other alternatives today. Samsung 840 (pro, evo or normal) will be my first stop.
 
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Frick

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A 7950 and a q6600? :roll:

This ^
Don't make this mistake.
I used to run q8400 with GTX 560 Ti ... Holy inconsistent frame rates, Batman! Now that was a poor bottlenecked GPU.
 

migel_7prado

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i heard sandforce was the best. that may not be the case any longer?

sandforce is still the best to me. The new sandforce based SSDs like you have chosen is far better than any other SSDs in terms of performance & reliability. Good luck bro!:)
 
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