Recomend me an SSD and a GFX card

[rich_tech]

Hello all,

 

I am thinking of a rebuild here for my home PC, have 2x1tb drives mirroring at the moment but want to improve the OS speed to eek a few more years out of it, ideally I want to be able to stick the OS and possibly wow on it, so I am looking for at least an 80gb drive to be comfortable as a minimum I think.

 

I havent bothered with SSD drives at all to date, so havent got a clue what makes for a decent drive other than looking at "Fast" read and write speeds.

 

Also I am looking to replace my Geforce GTS450 in the next few months as its starting to "White spot" a bit now in game, ideally I want a card around the £120-150 range, what would be decent now? (Used to avidly read custompc, but give it up as it was like paying for advertising)

 

Thanks,

 

Rich

[Arthur]

I am looking for at least an 80GB drive to be comfortable as a minimum I think / ideally I want a card around the £120-150 range, what would be decent now?

120GB Samsung 840 EVO (£55.89) + nVidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti (£107-£130), GeForce GTX 760 (£175) or AMD Radeon R9 270X (from £145).

 

I would be tempted to get the GTX 760 myself since you get a 'free' copy of Watch Dogs.

 

What's the spec of your current PC like (CPU, RAM, PSU, monitor etc.)?

[hawc]

Little note about the AMD card. I have the R9 290x and it runs stupid hot and the fan is crazy loud.

[Arthur]

Little note about the AMD card. I have the R9 290x and it runs stupid hot and the fan is crazy loud.

The R9 270X is much better in terms of noise and heat. In some cases beating a GTX 760.

 

www.anandtech.com/show/7503/the-amd-radeon-r9-270x-270-review-feat-asus-his/16

 

I thought I would include an AMD card for a change since some people don't like nVidia for whatever reason.

Edited May 20, 2014 by Arthur

[rich_tech]

noise might be an issue there then I should add, PC is in bedroom at the moment and was unbearable when I had the stock cooler on my CPU, I think I might fancy going AMD for the cards now as this nvidia hasnt been all that impressive

[rich_tech]

At the moment I have a fairly old Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2 board that came bundled with 4gb of ram and an AMD Phenom 6 core CPU when I was skint and unemployed, my previous motherboard having actually caught on fire (I wondered why my monitor went black and the case started glowing orange on the ASUS board I had before it to look in the window and find that a capacitor actually had a flame on top of it )

 

As soon as I started work I upped that to 8gb of RAM, 1TB hard disk drive and a decent 500W psu (that heats the room ), I want ideally to eek out another couple of years before upgrading the CPU/Mobo on the device, the wife wont go barmy if I do any upgrades in pieces, I bought a nice Benq 24" HDMI monitor last year as a present from me to me

 

I basically use it for work i.e. RDPing in and office and a bit of Gaming (Generally its WoW I play the most, I have noticed that the GTS450 seems to be struggling a bit now, I am getting a lot of white spotting on it when in game, with quite low settings)

[sonofsanta]

What @Arthur said, basically. An 840 EVO is all the SSD you need, particularly when budget is a concern (the 840 Pro is lovely, but you don't need to spend that much). The 760 and 450 are very different cards, three generations apart - the 400 series was famously overpriced and inefficient for heat/power compared to the contemporary AMD cards. The 700 series are generally cooler, quieter and more efficient than the equivalent AMD cards, for now at least - no doubt the needle will swing back the other way again in time.

 

Watch Dogs looks good as well.

 

Saying all that, AnandTech are recommending the AMD cards at the moment as the R9 270X is a bit cheaper than the 760 for a negligible loss in performance - so I think the pack in games may be the decider.

 

If you want a quiet cooler, I've had great success with the Asus DirectCU II and Sapphire Vapor-X cards in the past - this card for £145 looks a great option. An Asus 760 is about £30 more for marginally better performance.

 

EDIT: Phenom II X6 with that stuff will be fine - I'm running a Phenom II X4 965 with a Samsung 830 and Asus 680 and it chomps through anything (1680 x 1050, though).

Edited May 20, 2014 by sonofsanta

[3s-gtech]

Same as @sonofsanta here, I game with a Phenom II 955 and a HD 6870 at 1680x1050 and it eats modern stuff. Your Thuban PII x6 has Turbo Core and is generally a better piece of kit. I'd guess your monitor is full-HD - the 750Ti would probably be the minimum spec card I'd go for, though it is pretty awesome. The 270X and GTX 760 should cope fine. The new R9 280 is too close to the GTX 760 in performance to be worth the extra cost though.

[mcrabb]

In terms of graphics card the really important thing to know is what resolution you are planning running. I'm guessing 1920x1080 since your monitor is 24"? In that case the GTX 760 will handle pretty much anything you throw at it, the GTX 750ti is still a strong card if you aren't planning on playing AAA titles on Ultra.

 

In terms of cooling/temps, it's more about the vendor you go with as they normally build their cooling from the ground up that are much better then the reference models. It really is worth spending a little bit more now for the same card from a brand with a good reputation (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI etc). Also check the stock clocks, some cards run slightly faster out the box then others.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

The GTX 760 is a lovely card! Definitely worth looking at! handles most of everything on high or better

[sonofsanta]

I havent bothered with SSD drives at all to date, so havent got a clue what makes for a decent drive other than looking at "Fast" read and write speeds.

 

Oh, and as a general point of information: random IOPS tends to be the most important performance metric for most use cases, because that's where SSDs really blow HDDs away. You're not loading gigantic sequential files in a time-sensitive fashion very often, but you are loading lots of tiny little files dotted all over here there and everywhere everytime you boot your PC, which is where the IOPS will help. That's my thinking, anyway!

[rich_tech]

Ideally yeah I would play games in 1920x1080, high levels of detail isnt a massive thing for me, seeing as I have always turned off junk like sunshafts/shadows and water textures in WoW, just isnt worth the FPS drop.

 

Samsung 840 looks like a winner straight off the bat too think ill be ordering me one at the end of month all going well.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Ideally yeah I would play games in 1920x1080, high levels of detail isnt a massive thing for me, seeing as I have always turned off junk like sunshafts/shadows and water textures in WoW, just isnt worth the FPS drop.

 

Samsung 840 looks like a winner straight off the bat too think ill be ordering me one at the end of month all going well.

 

Get a nice new card and you'll be able to turn all those little things back on with no drop

[sonofsanta]

Get a nice new card and you'll be able to turn all those little things back on with no drop

 

+1 this, R9 270X or Geforce 760 will eat WoW alive.