£600 to spend on base unit only...

Cashman

Cashman

Cashman

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Joined
20 Jan 2004
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1,136
Location
Petersfield, Hampshire
Hi guys...

I used to be really into my PC's a few years back with Vapochills and Mach II GT's etc... however, I have sat back for the past 4 years atleast and now I'm a little lost if I'm honest!

But I need your help with an upgrade path!

I have the following rig which was incredible when new:

DFI Lan Party SLI-DR
AMD X2 4800+
2x1GB Crucial Ballistix
XFI Extreme Music
74gb Raptor
300gb Spinpoint
nVidia 8800GTS
720w OCZ Powerstream
Watercooling with HE120.3, Storm G5 CPU block
Lian Li PC75 Case with top mounted Rad

Now I think my PSU has given up and the PC keeps turning itself off.

I was thinking of selling my parts and buying new internals but I get confused with the latest processors etc. I'm guessing my cpu, ram and gfx are all WELL out of date now?

I will be playing games although not as much as I used to, but I like COD:MW2 and will be playing the new Battlefield etc.

I will be keeping my sound card and hard drives although I may add another or replace the raptor for a SSD.

What would you get for £600? I would like Windows 7, cpu, mobo, gfx, psu, case, ram...

Thank you!
 
The DFI Lan Party SLI-DR is a socket 939 motherboard AFAIK. Hence your socket 939 X2 4800+ is going to worth a lot of money on a certain auction website.

If you type "x2 939 4800+" into the search engine for this website and click the completed listings feature you will see that the X2 4800+ has been sold for between £120 to £130 in the last two weeks!!

The reason is that the socket 939 X2 4800+ was the second fastest socket 939 processor made after the Athlon 64 FX-60.
 
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Here is an AMD based build I could suggest:

Phenom II X4 955BE ~ £136

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-244-AM

This has shot up in price by around £14 on OcUK in the last week to two. You can get a Phenom II X4 965BE for around the same price if you look around.

Asus M4A79XTD Evo ~ £88

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-366-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1481

Does symmetrical Crossfire at PCI-E 2.0 8X/8X,has an 8+2 phase VRM with cooling and all solid capacitors.

HD5770 1GB ~ £113

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-131-OK

Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 500W ~ £67

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-167-CM&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

This PSU uses Japanese made primary capacitors.

Windows 7 OEM ~ £81

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-127-MS&groupid=33&catid=1555&subcat=

You may also want to consider the retail version for around £100.

Antec 300 case ~ £41

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-101-AN

4GB 1600MHZ DDR3 ~ £77

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-026-PA&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

The total comes to around £603 excluding postage.

You can add another HD5770 1GB at a later date and this will give you performance which rivals an HD5870:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1105/1/

The HD5770 1GB has very low power consumption so a decent 500W PSU would be enough for a pair of them.

If you don't mind sticking with OCZ again I would look at this modular PSU:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-031-OC

This will save you a few quid.

If you decide to go for a socket 1156 based build and want symmetrical Crossfire I would read this article first:

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/p55-motherboards-crossfire-sli-performance-problem/

If you want to forgo the symmetrical Crossfire ability of the AMD based build I would exchange the following Intel parts instead and get the OCZ PSU:

Intel Core i5 750 ~ £160

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-299-IN

Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H ~ £75

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-233-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1124

OR

Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L ~ £81

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-207-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1495
 
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excellent choices so far thank you!

So you;'d definately pay the £50 extra for the i5 over the i3?

Im happy to go OEM for CPU's and OS etc. I also assumed that Intel were still far stronger than AMD, is that correct?

And will the gfx card be considerably better than my 8800GTS ?
 
How does this look?

Is it worth the extra money in the gfx card from the 5770?

pcspec.jpg
 
i'd go with a quad core cpu rather than a dual core with hyperthreading and which 8800 gts do you have ? the 320, 640 or 512 mb ?
if you have the 640 or 512 mb one i would hang on untill the new nvidia cards come out and see what happens with the prices of gpu's then.
 
The current Nvidia cards are crap for the price. The new ones are not even out yet and the old ones cost the same as ATI's new ones. No Nvidia card is worth buying imo (btw I have owned both).
 
mglover070588 said:
The current Nvidia cards are crap for the price. The new ones are not even out yet and the old ones cost the same as ATI's new ones. No Nvidia card is worth buying imo (btw I have owned both).
Click to expand...

I think this means no, you're better off with the 5770 or going up to a 5850 :) +1 from me
 
when i said wait to see what happens with gpu prices i meant hopefully fermi will be competative and will help drive high prices of ati and nvidia cards down hopefully.
 
chipps101 said:
i'd go with a quad core cpu rather than a dual core with hyperthreading and which 8800 gts do you have ? the 320, 640 or 512 mb ?
if you have the 640 or 512 mb one i would hang on untill the new nvidia cards come out and see what happens with the prices of gpu's then.
Click to expand...

I have the 640mb 8800GTS

Ok... so the i5 is the better choice and either keep my 8800 for a while or look at a current ati card?

What do you think?
 
the gts 640 should still cope with most games ok just now as long as your not maxing everything out at 1920 x 1200 for example.
i would go for the i5 750 myself rather than an i3 and would wait for fermi and hope that prices are driven down a bit before getting a new gpu :)
what size and resolution is your monitor btw ?
 
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I have a 22inch 1680x1050 Iiyama

So, perhaps upgrade the system and os etc but leave the GPU for a little while longer? That way I could perhaps spend a little more cash on getting a really solid system with the expense of gfx a little while later in the year.

What do you think about SSD's? My thoughts are that they are expensive now and will only get cheaper in the future?
 
the 8800 gts will play most games fine at med to high settings on thats monitor so wait and hopefully save some cash when you buy your gpu.
i have the intel 40gb ssd in my htpc for the operating system and i love it, win 7 boots in 30 seconds and it is very quiet, but they will come down in price so maybe just buy a new spinpoint f1 500 gb or something for just now as it will be faster than your old 300gb drive and see what happens with ssd's also as patriot may fix the problems with their cheap drives and the new budget kingstons will be out soon also.
i'm sure i read somewhere that patriot will be issuing a new firmware that will resolve the problems with their drives and add trim support sometime this month.
 
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Cashman said:
any more suggestions before I click the BUY button??
Click to expand...

Since you are not buying a graphics card I would suggest the following motherboard:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=3242

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-225-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1693

It has USB3 and SATA3 too and the latter would be very useful if you are going to get an SSD.

If you want to do some overclocking of your processor I would suggest the following motherboard:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-363-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1495

It has an 8+2 phase VRM which is better for overclocking but lacks USB3 and SATA3.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Since you are not buying a graphics card I would suggest the following motherboard:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=3242

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-225-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1693

It has USB3 and SATA3 too and the latter would be very useful if you are going to get an SSD.

If you want to do some overclocking of your processor I would suggest the following motherboard:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-363-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1495

It has an 8+2 phase VRM which is better for overclocking but lacks USB3 and SATA3.
Click to expand...

Cool, I'm definately looking to have a little overclock, nothing as extreme as I have done in the past though. Are you saying the USB3 gigabyte is cack for overclocking?
 
Cashman said:
Cool, I'm definately looking to have a little overclock, nothing as extreme as I have done in the past though. Are you saying the USB3 gigabyte is cack for overclocking?
Click to expand...

The USB3 would probably be OK but again it depends on how much of an overclock you are looking at. I would also attach some heatsinks to the VRM sections or at least stick a fan on them when overclocking so as to keep them cooler.
 
I shall me buying today... any more comment on this spec and its future proofing? Is my £600 well spent?
 
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