£300 which upgrade for girlfriend? includes mb/ram

[bemaniac]

My girlfriend games on a phenom II x3 overclocked to about 3.3ghz and it's alright with her 4890 but could do with a beef up.

I've been tasked with doing the beefup for her birthday and wish to spend £300. We have everything including SSD, monitor, case, xfx650w psu, storage, optical and cabling/speakers/peripherals already and for now I'm looking to get

board
processor
ram

Then around xmas I'll pop a 7970 in there for her.

So what board proc and ram should I be looking at, she only uses the pc for gaming and it struggles 1920x1080 right now. If the budget weren't so limited I would just build another x79 system but can't afford another one at this point for her.

 

[FoxEye]

Everything about your post screams "overkill". Seriously.

Are there any games out there atm that really push a [email protected]?

And LOL at £300 being a "limited budget" for CPU/mobo/RAM for a gaming PC.

Sorry I'm not having a go, but unless you're made of money and want to flaunt it, you don't need SB-E do you (for gaming)?

 

[bemaniac]

Sorry my cpu mb and ram bundles cost me about £500-£600 every 1.5years or so and I'd like to get something nice for my girlfriend and have £300 to spend and would like the most I can get for this money. I don't think £300 for a gaming barebones bundle is overkill and didn't mention the 2500k is that going to be something in budget?

 

[FoxEye]

entirely depends on what you want/need in a motherboard. I've never looked at any mobo costing >£100 but I know some people enjoy spending a lot more than that (tho what they get for the additional cost I'm not sure).

2500K £160
z77 mobo £100
8gb ddr3-1600 ram £40

exactly on budget.

[also my "overkill" comment was mainly about you wanting to build her a SB-E/IB-E rig for gaming I just can't see that amount of CPU horsepower being in any way useful, given that CPU makes much less impact than gfx card in most games.

there's a good reason why single-core performance is still the most important thing in games - parallel programming is not a natural fit for games programming.]

 

[sw1ft]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £78.98
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £39.95
Total : £315.32 (includes shipping : £9.50).




slightly over but you get free postage so it's very slightly, means you can Xfire in the future and the RAM is proven good, retail cpu so you get a HSF with it but if you have one that will fit from the current system you can drop to OEM and save a tenner.

 

[FoxEye]

not worth dropping to oem as you lose the 3 year warranty.

 

[Bacon?]

CPU's rarely fail so the warranty wouldn't be an issue.

 

[eyetrip]

Would it not be more prudent to upgrade the cpu to something more powerful that the current motherboard could support, and then stick in a more up to date GPU?

Something like a 1090t and then 7850 or some such?

All depends on if board can take any better cpu's though guess

 

[sw1ft]

Upgrading the board means able to use DDR3 RAM, assuming the current one can't so would be more 'futureproof'

 

[FoxEye]

that and a stock 955 or 1090T seems to perform the same as a Pentium G - in games - if the benchmarks are anything to go by (in games only).

 

[Davedree]

Gpu upgrade for 1080p would be my first port of call,

 

[sw1ft]

has a planned GPU upgrade at christmas though, so he can get this stuff, she'll be chuffed, and then bust out the GPU upgrade at christmas.

makes him look like the best, most thoughtful boyfriend in the world, while giving him the chance to play with computers now, rather than just 1 screw for fitting a GPU.

 

[MADMAN]

Monitor is important also... and main thing u look at 99% of the time

you could go for the dGM 27inch and then give her your old tft lol

 

[Davedree]

sw1ft =

she only uses the pc for gaming and it struggles 1920x1080 right now.

upgrading the system isn't really gonna help the 4890 at 1080p. So bar the games that she may play that are cpu intensive she won't see much difference until xmas time.

 

[MADMAN]

gpu upgrade sounds good then but yeah depending on the games....

 

[bemaniac]

Her monitor is a 120hz 27" jobby so we'll keep that as her love of fps games demands. Yes it is important for me to fiddle with pcs on a regular basis so the system upgrade is a key thing to begin with, think she's happy with the gfx card at xmas though and you know there may be a 685 or a 7990 around that time and we'll probably buy each other one for xmas lol. Also the solution from sw1ft is excellent i like the idea of a 3570k and have used geil memory before it's excellent

 

[jamesfreddie]

You would be better off with upgrading the graphics card now then board chip ram later.

Maybe a HD7850 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-005-VX&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411

 

[bemaniac]

would the x3 425 not bottleneck that card in say.............guildwars 2 which we'll be playing this month?

 

[sw1ft]

Holding out on a GPU present because you want one at christmas as well, genius!

 

[bemaniac]

yeah it's an idea I've had for a while It started last year when I got her stuff for the pc and ended up with a razer naga and sidewinderx4 alongside the usual presents so I thought 'hmm this would work for gpus'