PC Upgrade, worth it?

[phoenix20]

ssd would make a difforence ecspecialy to gameing and video editing

[barnard94]

Upgrade EVERYTHING.

[kingpotnoodle]

Boot drive: Velociraptor out, SSD in, I'd take a crucial m4, 64/128/256GB depending on how much stuff cannot be moved to another drive.

CPU wise overclocking would be cheapest, so long as there is a decent cooling solution in place (replace that if not, Corsair H50/60/70 maybe), failing that a 960 or 970. The 980(X) isn't worth the disproportionate extra money for one multiplier bump.

The good advice above to do some of his work and see whether the CPU, RAM or disks are maxed out.

If RAM then double up to 12GB. Could dump the lot and buy some lower latency and higher speed memory, 1600MHz CL8 or 1866MHz CL9 isn't that expensive anymore.

If CPU then see above (upgrading CPU never really hurts though, *something* will be quicker!)

If disks then I assume that the RAID0 is the scratch drive where the 'workspace' is? Well replace that with SSDs as well, could be pricey though to get the same capacity, could look into a PCI-E SSD. If that's too pricey you could look into 15K SAS drives (they are NOT quiet though) and a basic SAS controller. Even cheaper if you replace the Raptor boot drive, then get another and RAID0 that up.

[adz08]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've talked him into definently overclocking his CPU for now, and another 6GB RAM.

He's has a budget of £400 for upgrades or did say he wouldn't mind spending out £1000+ on a new PC. I just don't think thats neccessary.

I could possibly see a 5870 as another upgrade (or whatever the equivelent 6 series is).

As has been suggested, I will sit down with him and work out where the upgrades are needed. I think he's primarily just looking at making vidoe editing as fast as possible. With games a side issue.

[adz08]

Hi All

Sorry to bump an old thread but we're sorting this at the moment.

He's decided to go for new memory. Some 24GB (6x4gb) sticks or corsair vengance ram I think. But it's only 1.5v rather than 1.65, will this cause a problem???

[kalniel]

Hi All

Sorry to bump an old thread but we're sorting this at the moment.

He's decided to go for new memory. Some 24GB (6x4gb) sticks or corsair vengance ram I think. But it's only 1.5v rather than 1.65, will this cause a problem???

I don't think it'll improve things, but let us know. 1.5v RAM is fine, just check your motherboards compatibility list (or the RAMs compatibility list) if you want to be sure - some boards are a little picky. And you obviously need an OS licensed to use that amount of ram (ie not home premium).

[HolograM]

If video editing is the priority in terms of perfromance gains, make sure he's done everything he can to optimise the software configuration, especially in terms of sratch disks, and very fast ones, befroe doing anything else. Then, find out what hardware will be used by his video app, and if there's any accelerat5ion to be had from, for example, graphics cards, then make sure whatever he gets complies with the app's exact requirements.

After that, I'd suspect the SSD route has most merit.

[Pob255]

I would do some investigation work first.

Get him to show you what games are slow....decide if it is a GPU or CPU problem first. An un-overclocked 920 could seem a tad slow in some games. Give it an overclock (if only temporarily) to confirm.

Then fire up resource monitor and get him to show you what video editing stuff is slow. You will be able to tell from the disk queue length and CPU utilisation whether it's the disk or CPU that is bottle-necking him.

From there, you will be much better informed before spending his money

This I think is a prime thing.

The speed issue could more than well be a perception or PEBKAC issue
an SSD to replace the Velociraptor as an OS driver would help here, I doubt you get much improvement in video editing as such but it will make the pc "feel" snappier and faster
that and overclocking it a bit Still on stock cooler? if so then replacing that with an all-in-one water cooler (corsair h20 or antec Khuler) as it looks and sounds far more impressive than a stock cooler

[adz08]

Thanks,

I'll be overclocking his CPU, I think he's got one of them Thermaltake Ultra 120's or something? So should be up to a bit of OC'ing.

We've agreed to leave the GPU upgrade til later in the year. I want to see whats running slow first!

24GB ram is a bit over the top but it's what he wants! Will be better than 6GB either way.

I'll have to check how he's using Adobe Premier, I think he uses the raid 0 as a scratch disk. Was thinking of switching this out for an SSD, what size would be needed if its just a scratch disk? (I know nothing about Adobe Premier!)

[kalniel]

24GB ram is a bit over the top but it's what he wants! Will be better than 6GB either way.

I'm not sure it will be, but am interested to find out otherwise

[Domestic_Ginger]

Am I missing something but i7s use triple channel ram and should be bought in packs of three sticks?

Get him to buy you slap up dinner with what hes saved on the budget!

[kalniel]

Am I missing something but i7s use triple channel ram and should be bought in packs of three sticks?

Well they can run perfectly fine in dual channel as well. However 24gb is a multiple of three so you just put 3x8gb or 6x4gb

[adz08]

Yeah it's 6 x 4GB sticks. So still triple channel.

I've just installed the memory and am actually amazed, we tried re-encoding a project he was working on a few months back and it used 15GB of memory. So that has to be a big improvement over 6GB. Unfortunately he didn't take a note of how long encoding took last time round but he's able to still work is a big bonus.

I've managed to get his CPU to 3.2 GHz on the cooler he's got. Pretty sure I could get more out of if it had one of them H70 coolers on it.

[DoomMarine]

Like others have said you could potentially see a massive boost in performace if he shifted his OS and apps onto an SSD. For instance running OS and apps on this drive http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...0mb-s-85k-iops would yeild an impressive boost.

[adz08]

It's something on the list to upgrade, but he wants to see how more memory and the overclock do first. Agree it would make a massive difference to load times though.