£600 upgrade to current rig, what to go for?

Frisby

Frisby

Frisby

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19 Jan 2010
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So I have caught that bug and already need to upgrade again. I am running an i5 750 at 3.9GHz on a GA-P55-UD4, 4Gb 1600MHz RAM, Sapphire vapor-x 5770, 1Tb spinpoint F3 HDD, BenQ 24" monitor, Gigaworks T40's. G500 mouse, G15 keyboard.

All of this with a 450W corsair PSU and Antec 300.

How would you upgrade this system if you had £600?
 
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Was thinking about getting these and selling my 450W PSU and that will make not much over £600 hopefully.
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Would it be better to just get a 2nd 5770 or sell my current one and upgrade to a 5870 or something?

Are there any better SSD's in that price range at the moment?
 
You're using two PSU's currently? If so then I would definitely upgrade to a single one. And if your planning on going crossfire with two 5770s then the 750W will be good enough. However if you get the single 5870 I think a 650W is sufficient (if a good brand like corsair). To be honest it's more than enough power.

As for the graphics cards performing.
two 5770s would be level with a 5870 I believe. However you have to fiddle around with x-fire and some people have problems with this compared to the simplicity of one card.

Also SSDs are a great way to upgrade your computer especially for boot times if you install your OS to them.

Personally if it was me with your system the 80GB SSD would be sufficient with a F3 1TB for storage.
The monitors I know little about so wont make too bold a comment on them, but from the look of it it looks pretty solid.

Choices, choices choices.
 
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Yea two 5770 is around the same as 5870 so cant go wrong there, you could get a lesss beefy PSU, maybe the 650watt one or look at the antec ones. Personally i would get a smaller SSD and a new case but thats just me XD.
 
No, I am only using a single 450W modular corsair power supply, the Antec 300 was referring to the case, sorry.

What cases would anyone suggest? I do like the look of the the corsair 700D and 800D but they are way too expensive for me right now.
 
I'd keep the Antec 300 case (unless you're struggling for room) and spend an extra fiver to get the 96GB OCZ Vertex... about 20% more room and about the same (if not more) speed for only 3% more money. :)

Each to their own I suppose. :)
 
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Frisby said:
Was thinking about getting these and selling my 450W PSU and that will make not much over £600 hopefully.
basket.png


Would it be better to just get a 2nd 5770 or sell my current one and upgrade to a 5870 or something?

Are there any better SSD's in that price range at the moment?
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id just get these aslong as you dont mind fiddling round with xfire, as that ultimately may be less hassle than selling your current 5770, and fun! add another benq somewhere along the line and youve got a nice eyefinity setup with xfire 5770's
 
I've built 5 CAD rigs with the Intel X25-M 80Gb SSD. Its a fantastic hdd and windows 7 pro x64 boots up to desktop in 15 secs !! :) I certainly wouldn't use a smaller SSD, but Mason-'s idea of adding a F3 for storage is a good one.
I'd give the nod to the Corsair psu too, great quality psu.
You can get cheaper 24" monitors, but that's just... meh!
 
Banzai_Joe said:
I've built 5 CAD rigs with the Intel X25-M 80Gb SSD. Its a fantastic hdd and windows 7 pro x64 boots up to desktop in 15 secs !! :) I certainly wouldn't use a smaller SSD, but Mason-'s idea of adding a F3 for storage is a good one.
I'd give the nod to the Corsair psu too, great quality psu.
You can get cheaper 24" monitors, but that's just... meh!
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I have heard nothing but good reviews for the intel SSD's and that is why I chose that one, if anything else has comparible random read write speeds i would consider that.

I already have a spintoint F3 1Tb, and other storage (500Gb HDD with linux on it, 1Tb external drive) so I don't need any extra storage on that front just yet.

Since I already have a 24 inch BenQ I wouldn't really want to get another brand as my 2nd monitor as it would look out of place and i am happy with the quality of my BeQ i already have.

p.s. About running crossfire how difficult is this and what does it involve? I just thought it was a case of downloading the appropriate drivers and off you go.
 
Frisby said:
p.s. About running crossfire how difficult is this and what does it involve? I just thought it was a case of downloading the appropriate drivers and off you go.
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Just install the 2nd card and the Crossfire bridge to connect the two of them. Install CCC, check the enable CF option. Done.
 
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