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£100 upgrade for a friend

bru

bru

bru

Soldato
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
kent
ok a friend of mine has an 'Acer E-Machines ET1862 Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz DDR3 Full System' which back when he got it was a great deal with a monitor included for a measly £325 odd, but now he wants to upgrade the graphics card.
My first thought was a AMD 6850, well actually my first thought was a Nvidia gtx460 but the 6850 only uses 1 6pin pcie power plug whereas the 460 uses two therefore less power, and I have a feeling that it will all rest on the psu. my friend is suppose to be looking at what psu the machine actually has but hasn’t got back to me yet.


I was looking at a Cooler Master GX 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply to allow a better card, but of course that eats just too much of the budget to get a anything better than a AMD 6670 (yes I’m sure I can manage the extra £2 for him)

Now with a hard budget of £100 what would be your suggestions?
 
bru said:
I was looking at a Cooler Master GX 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply to allow a better card, but of course that eats just too much of the budget to get a anything better than a AMD 6670 (yes I’m sure I can manage the extra £2 for him)

Now with a hard budget of £100 what would be your suggestions?
Click to expand...
Tell you friend to find extra £20 for his budget, and grab that CoolerMaster 450W PSU and pre-order this 6850:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-269-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866
 
The 7870 is rumoured to be released next month and the 7850 can't be far behind.

The "hits" i've had for that system show it has 2GB of RAM. I would suggest he uprates the PSU and adds some RAM so he has atleast 4GB.

YOUR BASKET
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £52.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £23.99
Total : £87.48 (includes shipping : £8.75).



Then look for a GPU once he has saved some more cash. That PSU will end the worry over power, granted there aren't any good offers on RAM at the mo. So if he decides to do this upgrade waiting for the next set of weekly offers might be wise.

I'm expecting his current PSU to be generic rubbish. Interesting that you mention the xbox and 6670 as the next xbox is rumoured to be using that GPU. If he's smart and uprates the PSU and RAM then the GPU his machine will mostly likely have more grunt than the next xbox before it's even released :)
 
the system has 3Gb of ram and only 32bit windows 7 so extra ram isn't an option, also investing £53 on a psu out of an £100 budget for a GPU upgrade just seems ludicrous to me, but thank you for the comments anyway.

i agree that the 6850 on offer would be the best bet but i really don't think it will run on the included PSU.
 
@OP,
100 quid cannot buy anything better (not to say that they are bad!) than 460 or 6850. You reasoning is sound, so go for it!!
 
oh dear the PSU is worse than i thought its a 'delta electronics 250ab 22d" a real cheap and nasty one, not really any good for anything at all.

so I'm going to have to recommend to him to find the extra £23 for the Asus ATI Radeon HD 6850 DirectCU V2 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **PRE-ORDER ONLY PRICE** and a Cooler Master GX 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply
unless you think the 6850 would be held back by the i3 540 then maybe a Asus ATI Radeon HD 6770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card requiring only a extra £10 to be found.
 
Just been reading the Asus 6850 pre order thread and I hear it has two 6 pin PCie power connectors instead of one for the other 6850's. this is not good as I have explained to my friend he will need a new power supply only to then have to explain that he will still need to use a molex to PCie converter. Not a good situation.
 
bru said:
Just been reading the Asus 6850 pre order thread and I hear it has two 6 pin PCie power connectors instead of one for the other 6850's. this is not good as I have explained to my friend he will need a new power supply only to then have to explain that he will still need to use a molex to PCie converter. Not a good situation.
Click to expand...

It's been suggested that although it has two it works with one.

SMed said:
Had a look around, and it seems that it can run happily on one 6 pin power connector. The second connector is for overclocking.
Click to expand...
 
Cooler Master gx450w and Asus 6850 direct CU v2 ordered.

thank you all for all your comments
 
OK so Monday has come and gone and no email from OCUK about the order being shipped, bugger after looking into it i see that the PSU is out of stock.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Cooler Master GX 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply £35.99
Total : £35.99 (includes shipping : FREE).



So i have to decide which PSU to suggest to my friend, I'm leaning towards the lepa 450w as it has two native 6pin PCIE connectors apposed to the others only having one.

any other suggestions?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Cooler Master Elite Power 500W Power Supply £40.99
1 x Lepa W-Series 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply - with FREE LEPA Hard Drive Enclosure £39.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £39.98
1 x Antec VP450P 450W '80 Plus' Continuous Power Supply £39.98
Total : £160.94 (includes shipping : FREE).




edit: you gotto just love that basket thumbnail thing. :cool:
 
Yeah is great :p

Usually the Corsair is recommended out of those. Don't know enough about the Lepa to say, but I know the Corsair is good.

Is using an adaptor a problem, the card may come with one?
 
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