£120 upgrade

Hawkesbury

Hawkesbury

Hawkesbury

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I know its a small budget and not going to get me much but its what my wife is allowing me to spend!

I current have a
cheapo MSi mobo AM3+
Phenom ii X2 550 BE @ 3.7
8 Gb DDR3 Ram
500gb HD
HD 5770
cheapish 500w PSU

I have had to bend the fins on the CPU cooler to fit over the ram, ram isnt big, its just a small compressed board.

I use the PC for some CAD work (nothing too intensive) some light gimp (photoshop) stuff and games. It currently runs BF3 okay, just takes a week or two to load between maps..... anyway.

Im thinking about buying a BD fx 4170 or 4100 and a new PSU. I know intel would be better, but i dont have the money at the moment. unless say at 150 id be able to go an i3 route? and then id show the wife the bill and not mention the VAT....
 
960T would be a good upgrade, no point buying another cheap psu though as if you already have a cheap one, it won't be an improvement.

Otherwise what about an SSD boot drive? Will feel lots snappier
 
Jony27 said:
have you tried unlocking your CPU, it may need more volts to unlock it, which means youll need a beefier CPU cooler(if your using the stock)
Click to expand...

I agree. What is the model of the mobo? If it's really cheap you might not have the unlock option :( You can't be using the stock cooler.....it's tiny and wouldn't get near the RAM.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) £77.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £46.98
Total : £135.47 (includes shipping : £8.75).



I think jony only used the OCZ SSD to keep you near the original budget. The M4 is the favoured SSD drive for performance and reliability.

Install windows to the SSD and you will notice a big difference in load times for both the OS and any software installed to it. You can use your old drive for storage so you don't clutter up the SSD.
 
thanks for the replies.

the psu is a nexus value 430w, my 500w guess was a bit off.

my current mobo, has core unlocker stuff on it, but no joy so far... but i dont really understand what to do.
 
Actually, that isn't a bad PSU (here is a review). If you are sticking with a HD 5770 (or even upgrading to a GTX 460 or HD 6850) it should be fine.

As mentioned above, upgrading to an SSD like the Crucial M4 and possibly upgrading the CPU to a Phenom II X4 would be a nice option.
 
cmndr_andi said:
Actually, that isn't a bad PSU (here is a review). If you are sticking with a HD 5770 (or even upgrading to a GTX 460 or HD 6850) it should be fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks! the only reason I doubted the PSU was when i bought the 5770 a couple of years ago from OCuk, the bloke on the phone said it wasnt brilliant.

my mobo is a MSi-760gm-e51.

I will have a look at the SSD's.
 
Its worth saying, loading times on bf3 are greatly affected by ssds!

I moved bf3 off my sdd to my 2tb drive, as i wasnt playing it as much.

Just recently going to bf3, loading times appear 3times longer at least. Feels like almost 2mins on the larger maps, I'd need to time it and my systems been running at 4.6ghz recently.
 
SSD will make it a lot snappier in normal use.
It may be your current CPU just won't unlock, but it's a gamble if you want to try and buy something to unlock. May be wiser to just pop in a 2nd hand hex core.
 
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