Four Year old PC needs upgrade ~£720

9TurningMirrors

9TurningMirrors

9TurningMirrors

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Joined
12 Oct 2008
Posts
286
Hello,

My poor old PC is increasingly struggling with modern games (PS2, GW2, Plannetary Annihilation).

From my old system I can salvage:

  • DVD Writer
  • 24" Monitor
  • Network Card
  • 2x 500GB HDDs
  • Case
  • Windows 7 Pro

I don't tend to upgrade very often every four or five years so I'm looking to get something will last me, so I was thinking of an i7, or is that over the top? Also I was thinking of getting a single GPU now and then upgrading to a second card in eighteen months or so.

I have about £720 to spend.

Suggestions would be most welcome.
 
 
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Ok this may well be an IvyBridge setup, but this includes a 7950.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7950 OC BE 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (R7950-3GD5/OC BE G) £221.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £175.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £83.99
1 x XFX Pro 650W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £64.00
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX) £49.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler *Manufacturer Refurbished Unit - 90 Day Warranty £39.95
Total : £748.90 (includes shipping : FREE).




To help a little, if you take Snips list and replace the SSD and RAM (I haven't checked this ram with the haswell mobo, my bad) with my list, you'd be saving £90, which you could put in the pot towards a Dedicated GPU
 
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Thanks for the replies. I'd prefer to get onto Haswell now and potentially upgrade later. I'm not too fussed about an SSD drive. From what I've read they would help loading times but wouldn't be much use for games like Planetside 2.

What about:

MSI HD 7950 OC BE
Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHZ (Haswell) Retail
Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 Motherboard
TeamGrop Vulcan 8GB DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition 80 Plus Bronze power Supply

Which would come to £700.
 
9TurningMirrors said:
Thanks for the replies. I'd prefer to get onto Haswell now and potentially upgrade later. I'm not too fussed about an SSD drive. From what I've read they would help loading times but wouldn't be much use for games like Planetside 2.

What about:

MSI HD 7950 OC BE
Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHZ (Haswell) Retail
Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 Motherboard
TeamGrop Vulcan 8GB DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz
XFX Pro 650W Core Edition 80 Plus Bronze power Supply

Which would come to £700.
Click to expand...

Good choice!
 
The SSD can come later. You have got the core components there and you'll get great performance. Don't skimp on what you have to fit an SSD in, you'll be better waiting and getting a 240/256gb later on.
 
Yeah. An SSD. And I'd think about getting a PSU that might last longer than one upgrade cycle. I didn't really want to spend on my recent replacement, but I'm glad I did. A 7 year warranty and platinum efficiency feels like a tiger in my tank ;)
 
Network card is useless as all mobos do have built-in one. Unless you wanted something like Killer 2100 :) Or if you use WLAN - drop this way and buy some PowerLine Adaptor(s).

DVD Writer is something that might not fit your new rig as new mobos usually don't have IDE socket (depending on particular model), so if your writer is IDE and not SATA, you need to buy IDE-SATA adaptor, or brand new SATA writer for 12 pounds.

The same regards to HDDs, but obviously it would be much better to have native SATA drives (minimum SATA-II).
 
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