Recent content by bobthebot

If I were you, I would just buy a better case for your machine rather then trying to take a hacksaw to what you have now. A good one won't be cheap, but it will make upgrading and modifying your machine easier in the future, and you'll probably never have to replace it.

The first thing you should do is get rid of the power supply that came with your machine. The units in pre-built PCs like that are often of questionable quality and don't leave a lot of breathing room in terms of capacity, and the last thing you want is your power supply failing on you. Once you...

What about your motherboard, case, and power supply? Is your PC factory or custom built?

You can put together an amazing machine right now for $1000. For gaming, I always recommend an AMD CPU, intel will of course always be marginally AMD in terms of performance, but CPU horsepower doesn't really matter in games, so your better off saving the $100 and going with an 8350 over an i5...

Apart from your CPU, what are the specs of your system?

Download MSI afterburner and check your card's temperature and fan speed, the reference 290x does sound like a jet turbine, but you definitely shouldn't be smelling anything burning .

Video cards tend to have diminishing returns when it comes to gpu horsepower, but I would still go with the 280 just for that extra gig of vram. When you make your decision, keep in mind that AMD is probably going to have a new line of cards out by q2 next year.

A phenom 965 will handle anything up to a R9 280 without bottlenecking, especially if you apply a modest overclock. To answer your second question, a 270 is definitely a worthwhile upgrade over a 6870.

Get rid of that power supply before upgrading anything else, make sure the replacement is from a reputable manufacturer and is at least 80+ rated.