Looking for some info on current parts

Soldato
Joined
7 Apr 2004
Posts
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Location
near Bristol
Hi there, Ive been out of the pc scene for years now, came close to building a new rig a couple of years ago but I decided to spend the money on something else instead! (motorbikes, makes messing about with pc's look like a cheap hobby :P )

Ok so atm I'm running a pretty old rig:

3800X2, DFI NF4 board, 512mb 8800gt (my BFG 7800gtx died and they sent a 8800gt replacement), 2 gb gskill, an audigy zs (i think its a zs), 74gb raptor etc etc usual crap, ocz520 psu in a lian li pc65. It used to be ran 24/7 overclocked but for the last year or 2 its been back at stock after some stability issues (motherboard related, its a dfi)

Bottom line is the graphics card has died again and instead of just RMA'ing the card and waiting for the same thing to happen I was thinking of a cheap upgrade.

What im asking is, back when I was into pc's etc there was always a golden nugget component that clocked well, or was just fantastic for the cash, i.e the 2500 socket A mobile chip, or the 3000 winchester, the 9700 or 9800, my current 3800X2 etc, you get the idea!

Are there any equivalents at the moment? I don't know anything about current chips or how they compare to each other. The upgrade has to be cheap but I don't have a budget per say £300-£400, but rather not spend money unnecessarily. I'm sure I can claw back some cash by selling on the remaining working components.

What I need:
cpu
mobo
gpu
HD, im running 4 small HD's atm and it does my head in, so a single 1TB or 2TB would be preferred
power supply? Im guessing the ocz wont cope with something more modern, plus its over 5 years old atm
memory, min 4gb but memory seems to be so damned cheap these days, remember paying around £200 for my gskill!

ninja edit: With regards to audio, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and assume most onboard sound these days is going to be superior to my old audigy card?

What it will be used for:
Eve online with 2 accounts open (pretty much how the majority of my pc time is spent)
internet (i.e porn and email)

I know that is quite a lot to read so if anyone can spare the time to help out I would be grateful.

Thanks

Mike
 
just checking that you dont need/want:
- operating system
- DVD drive
- case

about the case, do you know how wide it is, because i want to suggest a custom cooler (AMD standard one is louder than a jet) but i dont know what will fit in there height wise

this is roughly what i'd suggest


YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £119.99
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £83.99
1 x Asus M4A78LT-M 760G (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £49.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99
1 x OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W Power Supply £36.98
1 x OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1333LV4GK) £27.95
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £23.99
Total : £395.88 (includes shipping : £10.00).
 
Hi, I have a Windows 7 atm and was going to just stick to the lian li pc65 for now. As for dvd drive I have an old one in there atm so its not desperate.

Size wise the width from motherboard to where the case side would be, if it was on is about 150mm.

So at this kind of budget AMD are preferable to intel?

Thanks
 
at this kind of budget with gaming in mind, you just cant get a good inte (well, you can get a good one, but AMD really is the way to go)

as for the cooler, it sounds like your case is about as wide as mine, so i'll just have a quick check on the web to see what it can take
 
Cool thanks, I like the look of the graphics card, hopefully it will fit in the case, judging by the dimensions it should just fit, if it doesn't ill just remove the HD cage and stick it on the desk!
 
internet (i.e porn and email)

LOL

What im asking is, back when I was into pc's etc there was always a golden nugget component that clocked well, or was just fantastic for the cash, i.e the 2500 socket A mobile chip, or the 3000 winchester, the 9700 or 9800, my current 3800X2 etc, you get the idea!

Are there any equivalents at the moment? I don't know anything about current chips or how they compare to each other. The upgrade has to be cheap but I don't have a budget per say £300-£400, but rather not spend money unnecessarily. I'm sure I can claw back some cash by selling on the remaining working components.

Basically the best value for money CPU at the moment is theSandy Bridge series i5-2500K. It's £165 and comes at 3.3GHz stock but can be overclocked massively due to the unlocked multiplier. I've seen one person get it to 5.3GHz, god knows how stable it is though lol but you can easily get a ~4.5GHz overclock on air with all chips.

The Sandy Bridge motherboards (which allow you to overclock) range from £90-300 but you can get a very decent overclock with CF/SLI able board for as low as £110.

DDR3 RAM is cheap as chips as you may have seen - you can get 4GB DDR3 1333MHz for £27:eek:

Saying that, it's a bit out of budget to then include a decent GPU too, but I thought I'd give you the low-down lol


ninja edit: With regards to audio, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and assume most onboard sound these days is going to be superior to my old audigy card?

I would imagine so:)
 
i cant find anything about the max size of the cooler in that case anywhere, which surprises me because i found the max size cooler for my case pretty quickly

either measure the thing roughly when its off, or send a quick message to lian li customer support and im sure they'll be able to help you.

i doubt it will be a problem, but i figured that, being an older case, it might be a little smaller than whats around today.

if you do find the height is a problem, then im your man for recommending short processor coolers (had the problem myself in a pretty big way, so i've literally looked over every single cooler under £50 at overclockers)
 
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Cheers for the help chaps, I've ordered the suggested items with the exception of the cooler, I ordered a artic freezer 13 instead as a quick google showed its pretty much guaranteed to fit inside the case. Now to nip home tomorrow, get into the loft at mums and fish out all the boxes for the parts, seems 939 kit and ddr is still worth a pop second hand! Then see if I can rma the old card and flog the replacement as well. Will reduce the £383 total down by a decent portion!

sk82jack thanks for the information on those parts, I knew there would be something along the lines that I was thinking, but im currently finishing uni for the second time (i was a bum the first time) so money is incredibly tight otherwise I would have stretched to it :)

Oh yeh, reading that back it makes me out to be a space nerd who spends all day masterbating haha
 
Woke up to see the card had been reduced today to £95, rang ocuk up and they are refunding me £25, bargain :cool:
 
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