Upgrading Rig

[clonesauce]

Hi guys!

I'm looking to upgrade some parts of my PC. Due to limited budget, I have decided to upgrade only my motherboard, GFX card and PSU for now. I'll upgrade my CPU (and possibly replace motherboard) down the road. Here's the list of parts of my current setup:

AMD Phenom II 1055t
Radeon HD5770
Thermaltake Litepower 450W
Ripjaws 4x2GB DDR3

AsusTek M5A78L-M LE

Stock cooling + case fans

The parts I've chosen to replace the ones I have right now are the GTX 760 and the Asrock 970 Extreme4. I'd like to have advice on how much power do I actually need to run with the upgraded parts when I have them. I will also be throwing in a new cooling system. Is the motherboard a good choice? Or are there better alternatives?

Thanks!

[puntoMX]

The GTX790 will pull about 100W more from the PSU, say 120W from your wall outlet. The PSU can still handle it but it will get a lot hotter; although it's a 450W stamped PSU, it can deliver the same as most "newer" models that are 600W stamped, so it will work fine.

If you are planning of selling the mobo and CPU soon, go with a mATX board WITH HDMI/DVI/VGA out, as it will sell so much easier on for example ebay than a mobo without those ports. (only option is the 880G and you won't get much from your upgrade)

BUT... If I were you, I would not upgrade the motherboard for now until you are willing to upgrade your CPU as well. You'll better sell that CPU with the motherboard you have now and get your CPU now. SATA 6gbps is nice but if you are going to use a SDD, you will "feel" not such a big difference between SATA 3gbps and 6gbps. USB 3.0 is nice too but do you really need it? Why are you upgrading the mobo any way?

Note that new games pull more from the CPU these days, what games do you play? Or for what do you use the video card?

[clonesauce]

Sorry for the late reply, and thank you for yours puntoMX.

So my PSU will be safe to use despite getting hot? I've decided to upgrade/replace my mobo because it doesn't support my CPU model. It supports the 95w TDP version of the 1055T, but unfortunately not the 125w version which I have. As I have researched more I am now beginning to be more confused

I had to buy the cooling system first(bought a CM Seidon 120XL, I must say I'm very happy with it) since the temps were getting hot(and will probably need it for my anticipation for overclocks when I finally have upgraded parts). I do some 3D modelling + rendering so that puts some stress on the CPU. I also game frequently whenever time spares me to, and the heaviness of the games I play are pretty random and can vary from light games like Scribblenaut to games like Tomb Raider, Outlast, etc. I guess I'm pretty sold on getting an i7 system in the near future (for the rendering), but not quite sure yet on what to get for the gfx card since the new AMD cards are coming out soon. I guess I'm gonna wait and see the performances of the new cards, and see if NVIDIA drops their pricing.

Thanks a lot again!

[puntoMX]

No need to get confused, it's just a lot cheaper to build a 95W VRM (voltage regulator module) than a 125W one, thus making the board a low-end board (just less features, cheaper electronics).

Now, good that you mentioned that you are going to overclock, in that case your PSU will not be adequate; get something new in the 750W range.

The new AMD GPUs look nice on paper indeed, I´m also waiting to get some real-world benchmarks from the heavier games (like BF4). Note that most games theses days are CPU hungry as well (especially multi-player games).