£500 Build Excluding GPU

m0r94n · 5 Oct 2011 at 11:21

Hi,

Considering upgrading for BF3, Skyrim, Rage, etc and am unsure as to whether to do it at present, or to wait a month in the hope that prices might fall

.

I'm currently running with:

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
AMD Phenom X4 Quad Core 9750 2.40GHz (Socket AM2)
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 AMD 790X (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Enhanced Bandwidth Edition Dual Channel (OCZ2RPR800C44GK)
2x750gb Samsung drives
650w psu
Bog standard case with a few added fans.

Win 7 Professional - 64bit

Can't remember a lot about the build to be honest, purchased most of it in 2008 (had to dig up my OcUK order history to get product names).

I've got £500 to spend and ideally am looking to keep the card as I've only had it a few months. I can be flexible around the cash in all honesty, especially as I want to get as much as I can for the money. Had a look at the following products:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-309-CS
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-131-CR
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-244-SE

Am just looking for a few suggested specs to help me tie everything together. If possible I'm looking for 2x2tb HDD's to be thrown in to the mix as I've got far too many externals that I keep losing.

Thanks in advance.

m0r94n · 5 Oct 2011 at 12:32

In all honesty would stretch to £600 with a new case, psu and Blu Ray drive. The above looks good.

I run two screens from the GPU, one for gaming and one for media/browsing generally so if any performance issues arise I'm hoping the new hardware can handle it.

m0r94n · 6 Oct 2011 at 14:42

MY BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68A-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £72.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £44.99
2 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (ST2000DL003) £123.98
1x Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) (SH-B123L/BSBP) £49.99

Total : £461.93

Going to £600 with a case and PSU, though still looking to keep costs down. Not too clued up on how much power I'd need. Been looking at the fractal design cases as they look quite nice. Don't really want some massive LED ridden thing sat next to my desk. Anyone have any recommendations or revisions?

m0r94n · 10 Oct 2011 at 12:33

Just to add, is there any major difference between the i5 mentioned in this thread and say one of the phenom models in this weeks sale?

This for example.

On top of that you've also got the Hex cores here.

m0r94n · 10 Oct 2011 at 14:58

It's tempting to wait. My current setup handles BF3 ok, but I want to run Skyrim as best I can. Always feel like I missed a trick with Oblivion not having it on high at the start.

m0r94n · 13 Oct 2011 at 11:47

Final "make or break" post

.

Anyone see any issues with this, or any ways to bring the price down? (Don't want to sacrifice performance too much).

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
£167.99

Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9)
£89.99

Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
£79.98

2x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EARX)
£111.98

Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM)
£49.99

Total: £499.93

m0r94n · 13 Oct 2011 at 12:28

Changed the blu ray drive and ordered the lot

.

Thanks for all the help everyone!

m0r94n · 14 Oct 2011 at 22:18

Thought I would keep.this in here. Posting on my phone atm as the new build won't boot. Hooked everything up as normal and tried to start the thing but it errors. Fans start and then stop after a few seconds and repeat ad infinitum. Any ideas?

m0r94n · 14 Oct 2011 at 22:43

Got the 4 and 20(?) pin powers in along with both gpu ones. Psu gpu cpu and additional.fans spin but stop. Just about to reseat bios battery to see if it fixes it.

m0r94n · 14 Oct 2011 at 23:04

stulid said:
Turn off at the wall and then remove the battery for a min, refit and turn on.

Tried that. no dice

.

m0r94n · 14 Oct 2011 at 23:15

stulid said:
Do you have all the RAM fitted?

Yes I do. Worth removing them all and trying one at a time?

m0r94n · 15 Oct 2011 at 00:48

stulid said:
Yes, but also try this,

Take the RAM out.

Power up.

Power off.

Take one stick of ram and place it in the slot furthest away from the CPU.

Power up, anything?

If not, power off and move one slot closer and repeat moving closer to the CPU every time.

Had to pop out so have only just seen this. Started removing and moving, all are working and the system is booting! Seems that the stick that is noe in the furthest slot away had an issue with.being in the closest slot to the cpu. Currently getting ready to install windows!