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Gaming Rig For Girlfriend

SubZero89

SubZero89

SubZero89

Associate
Joined
8 Feb 2012
Posts
154
Location
U.K
Hello People

My GF thinks her PC is old now even tho I built it 4 years ago! So her current Spec is:

Asus P6T
I7 920
12GB MEM
AMD 4870
HDD 500GB And 320GB
Coolermaster 850Watt Power supply
Coolermaster HAF 922

(plus all your other things, mouse, keyboard, 23inch LCD monitor, DVD Writer, Speakers, CPU Cooler)

I don't think that's old for what she needs her PC for, however with a small budget maybe a improvement!

So what I have come up with, is to keep the following components for her new build. This new build will be for playing SIMS 3 game and just normal use, web surfing and maybe the odd MW3.

To Keep:
HDD 500GB And 320GB
Coolermaster 850Watt Power supply
Coolermaster HAF 922
Mouse, keyboard, 23inch LCD monitor, DVD Writer, Speakers


Upgrade To:
Capture-4.png


Will this be a improvement from what she has already got! should I change a few things or is the above OK!

Thanks in advance!
 
If its just for gaming then look at the 2500k cpu which is only 4 core but is perfect for gaming.

But the her system is still perfectly good and perhaps just upgrading the gnu might be a better option along with the SSD.

Is her system overclocked at all?
 
+1 Keep the core of her current system - if she is just gaming then an i7 920 is PLENTY for playing all current games (speaking from experience here).

However, her graphics card is getting a bit long in the tooth and a SSD would provide a nice "wow" performance boost to keep her happy.

I would recommend something like a HD 7850 2GB and a Crucial M4 128GB.

Also, if the i7 920 isn't overclocked then I would suggest investing in a decent cooler like a Thermalright Venemous X or a Noctua NH-D14 and overclock it to 3.6-4.2 GHz. This will keep it up to speed with modern games for some time.
 
That's very similar to my system, get the cpu to 4ghz and upgrade the gfx + ssd for a noticable boost. It's still a perfectly capable machine.
 
Put an SSD in the PC and a new graphics card.
Tell her that the entire internals are new. She is a woman so won't be able to tell the difference. I have never come across a female who has knowledge of gaming PC hardware.
 
I'm running a i7 920 clocked at 4.2ghz and combined with a GTX480 it copes with Battlefield 3 just fine

Put a Agility 3 SSD in the other day which improved the speed nicely

So I'll echo the statements above, clock the cpu, new graphics card and SSD = job done
 
Personally if it was my missus I'd just get her the below if she wanted an actual worthwhile upgrade without spending £630+..

New 7850 GPU with MSI's custom cooler, good sized SSD and a cooler to OC that I7.


YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £199.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £126.98
1 x Gelid GX7 High Performance Quiet PC Cooler (Socket Intel 775/1366/1155/6 and AMD AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+/FM1) £39.98
Total : £366.96 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
Sparx said:
Personally if it was my missus I'd just get her the below if she wanted an actual worthwhile upgrade without spending £630+..

New 7850 GPU with MSI's custom cooler, good sized SSD and a cooler to OC that I7.


YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £199.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £126.98
1 x Gelid GX7 High Performance Quiet PC Cooler (Socket Intel 775/1366/1155/6 and AMD AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+/FM1) £39.98
Total : £366.96 (includes shipping : FREE).

Click to expand...

Nice! I may just do that Spec,
 
OpenToSuggestions said:
Put an SSD in the PC and a new graphics card.
Tell her that the entire internals are new. She is a woman so won't be able to tell the difference. I have never come across a female who has knowledge of gaming PC hardware.
Click to expand...

No Way!! She knows her stuff mate, I got one of those smart and Intelligent girlfriends:p

She brought me my Rampage 4 Extreme for Xmas. Good Idea bud, but I will pass
otherwise no Sexy time for me for a while:rolleyes: if she found out!
 
I'll echo the above, I'm not too great with the best air coolers right now. Go for the Thermalright Venomous (save money)! ;)
 
As echoed above, SSD and a decent gpu, maybe a bigger monitor and some nice peripherals.

If you really want to spend money, watercool it!
 
As said that borad cpu and ram combo will be good for a few years yet. Upgrade the Gpu get a nice aftermarket ssd in there and get a good cpu cooler on there. Clock the cpu up. Job done for at least 2 more years I would say.
 
Upgrading SSD it will give you a boost in performance, but not big as you would expect. Your girlfriends board doesn't have any SATA III ports, so she wouldn't gain that much in performance. All X58, even with sata III have this problem, because of Marvel controller. Myself have rampage III and I've bought Intel 520 about a month ago, and I'm looking to upgrade the mobo/cpu/ram.
 
Yea, the X58 boards don't have native SATA3 ports, but if you are currently using a mechanical HDD then the performance jump going from this drive to an SSD (even one limited by SATA2 bandwidth) is a significant upgrade.

Also bear in mind that most of the SSD's most important work (small reads and writes) are well under the SATA2 speed limit - so this usage is largely unaffected if you can't provide the drive with a SATA3 port, just make sure you give it a SATA2 port connected to the Intel southbridge.

This article shows the real-world performance difference of running current gen SSDs (like the Crucial M4) on SATA2 and SATA3 ports.
 
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