new hardware

antrock101 · 5 Apr 2014 at 12:14

Hello,

I'm looking at a replacement motherboard, power supply and case.

I currently have a gtx 250, and phenom and 12gb of ram.

I need to make it as small as viable for the price, I am also interested īn changing the gpy and if its cheap enough the CPU

I probes have around 500 to spend I can go over this if needed. Any suggestions, off if the CPU is still fine for nowadays gaming I'll leave it, I know the gpu is old.

Thanks!

Idleman · 5 Apr 2014 at 12:28

Which Phenom do you have?

antrock101 · 5 Apr 2014 at 16:41

x4 quad core 955 black edition 3.2 am3

dacads · 5 Apr 2014 at 16:55

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Edition OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £249.95
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £79.99
1 x ASRock 990FX Extreme3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £79.99
1 x SuperFlower Amazon 550W "80 Plus Bronze" Power Supply £49.99
1 x Zalman Z1 Midi-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £30.95
Total : £500.47 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Idleman · 5 Apr 2014 at 17:26

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Edition OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £249.95
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Case - Black (CC-9011014-WW) £59.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99
Total : £479.90 (includes shipping : £12.50).

Overclock the 955 to about 3.7-4.0Ghz and hopefully it wont bottleneck the 280x. That way you get a decent case and a cooler if you don`t already have one. Sell your 250, then upgrade the Cpu at a later date.
Or, just go for decads spec.

antrock101 · 5 Apr 2014 at 18:26

How much is an improvement for the CPU or should I bet an i7 and Mb?

Itx sounds like a good size

altrewin · 5 Apr 2014 at 18:33

If you're wanting ITX then that'll need pretty much a complete rebuild (apart from the RAM), best I could do within budget:
YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £189.95
1 x Intel Core i5-4430 3.00GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £131.99
1 x ASRock B85M-ITX Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £62.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Mini-ITX Case - Black £39.95
Total : £494.46 (includes shipping : £8.00).

honosuseri · 6 Apr 2014 at 02:44

antrock101 said:
How much is an improvement for the CPU or should I bet an i7 and Mb?

Itx sounds like a good size

It's true that if you want to resize you will need to make quite a few changes which need to be thought through.

In a smaller case you really want to lean towards a semi-modular PSU as space becomes an issue (I've built inside the CM Elite 120, it is compact in there and airflow isn't great). The ITX mobos only have two DIMM slots for RAM so this will limit how much of your RAM can be reused too.

Maybe have a look at the Bitfenix mATX cases, same size as the ITX variant just a different internal layout to allow a larger mobo......

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x MSI Radeon R9 270 Gaming Edition OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £137.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87M-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £82.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Midnight Black £65.52
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £55.99
Total : £526.58 (includes shipping : £11.75).

That's using the i5K which can be overclocked on the Z series mobo. You'd want a better cooler to really push the clock speeds up. Not sure if you have one already but you can always buy one once you sell off your old kit.

The 270 can be overclocked to pretty much match it's big bro the 270X. A 280 is basically a rebadged 7950, the 280X is a rebadged 7970Ghz edition essentially. The 270 is a good value GPU for 1080P gaming although it does have less VRAM available than the 280/280X.

You can use THIS to compare GPUs and even CPUs to help make your choices. Certainly worth discussing your options as once you hit 100 posts you could well lose the dreaded P&P costs

All the best with it fella, we look forward to seeing what you settle on

stulid · 6 Apr 2014 at 02:54

I wouldn't be recommending A CX PSU as they are inferior to other competitively priced PSU'S.

Also MSI cards with TwinFrozr coolers leak oil.

Idleman · 6 Apr 2014 at 04:15

stulid said:
I wouldn't be recommending A CX PSU as they are inferior to other competitively priced PSU'S.

Also MSI cards with TwinFrozr coolers leak oil.

Oil leaks from the fans hub when the fans are spinning at 100% over a long period of time under high heat conditions.

Seems like that issue has been sorted.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18585437

stulid · 6 Apr 2014 at 07:20

Idleman said:
Seems like that issue has been sorted.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18585437

I've seen recent posts about it still.

antrock101 · 6 Apr 2014 at 15:53

Some great ideas, what do you guys think of matx vs itx cost/performance?

stulid · 6 Apr 2014 at 16:02

Go big or go home, you get more expansion on a larger setup, Crossfire and SLI options.

Idleman · 6 Apr 2014 at 16:16

antrock101 said:
Some great ideas, what do you guys think of matx vs itx cost/performance?

If I had to choose between these 2 form factors, I would go mATX.

thel33ter · 6 Apr 2014 at 17:22

+1 for matx unless you particularly want a teeny system, for gaming matx makes far more sense are the possible expandability doesn't really cost any extra.

antrock101 · 6 Apr 2014 at 20:25

i'll go matx as there seems so little difference in the bitfenix cases

antrock101 · 6 Apr 2014 at 22:00

thel33ter · 6 Apr 2014 at 22:07

Go for something like honos build. You don't want the 4770s as its slower than the 4770k and probably about equal to the i5 4670k. In terms of GPU, AMD is by far the best bang for your buck at the moment, good choice on motherboard for the Intel , although for your AMD build you've linked a case. The difference between the two cases is basically looks, and I'd go for a full size 3.5" HDD cause you get more storage for less money, and speeds are all basically the same.

antrock101 · 6 Apr 2014 at 22:34

Sorry just re added the mother board as I got it wrong, I'm leaning towards the AMD as according to Tom's Hardware it's still 3rd tier and I can put more money towards the gfx card, the smaller 2.5 hdds are so I can remove the drive bays

thel33ter · 6 Apr 2014 at 22:39

Out of interest, why are you replacing the motherboard?