£850-ish upgrade advice please

surreal

surreal

surreal

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Upgrade time is nigh!! Finally got myself into a place where I can drop some money on my system and get back up to date (or close to it).

I play a few games regularly but I wouldn't say I'm a hardcore gamer - mainly Skyrim / Fallout / Bioshock Infinite / Dishonored / Far Cry 3 / Arkham. Would be great to be able to see those as they were intended, but the main reason for this upgrade is to be ready for when Elite Dangerous comes out, I really want to be able to crank up the quality on that one and use it with the Occulus when that finally appears.

System will also be used for coding so Visual Studio / SQL Server, some work on Blender / Unity 3D and maybe some video editing. Basically a mix between games and work / hobbies.

I'm going from a Q9550 on a P5Q Pro board so I know I'm pretty much starting from scratch. That system lasted me 5-6 years and I'm still ok with how it runs so I'm looking for longevity with this new setup too, I'm not planning a yearly change of video card for example, so I need a good spec to keep me going.

I was wondering if my PSU might be good enough to keep?

Corsair TX 750W ATX SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750TXUK)

I don't need OS, HDD, monitors (I have dual 24"), keyboard, mouse or speakers.

I definitely want an SSD for the OS. I have a Logitech 5.1 speaker system, but I've just bought some nice ATH-M50 headphones, so good sound would be a plus.

Case does not need to be flashy at all, no window or lights necessary as it will be out of sight. Just enough space for extra drives if necessary. Either 8 or 16gb of RAM depending on budget.

I think that's it. Budget is about £800-£850 but I do have some wiggle room if necessary.

Thanks for the help in advance
 
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £249.95
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Edition OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £239.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLYD38G2400HC11CDC01) £65.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £47.99
1 x Raijintek EreBoss High Performance CPU Cooler £26.99
Total : £847.48 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Sniper motherboard for the superior onboard sound.

An extra £90 will get you the MSI 290 Gaming on Today Only offer: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-239-MS
 
Thanks for those, great suggestions both. Really like the look of that Sniper board, just been reading some of the reviews.

I take it my existing PSU should be fine for use with those builds?
 
AMD + Nvidia Build:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Geforce GTX 770 Gaming Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £269.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8350 Black Edition 4.00GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £149.99
1 x Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £139.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2666HC11CDC01) £69.95
1 x SanDisk Pulse 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDP-128G-G25) £67.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H60 V2 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler £54.98
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £29.99
Total : £796.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Slightly more expensive AMD + AMD build:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £329.99
1 x Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £139.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2666HC11CDC01) £69.95
1 x SanDisk Pulse 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDP-128G-G25) £67.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H60 V2 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler £54.98
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £29.99
Total : £826.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
Oooh, choices choices choices!!! Anyone care to give me pros/cons of these? I was originally banking to go with an i7 but does the AMD have any significant advantages?
 
Ah, you mean the Intel and AMD builds - thought you just mean the CPUs. In that case, yes, the choice is great CPU (and great motherboard) plus good GPU, or good CPU plus great GPU.

Obviously the ideal combo would be the 4770k and the 290. You did say there was some wiggle room in the budget, right? ;)
 
Yeah - I'll definitely double check the budget before I finally decide.

Thanks for all the help guys, as usual OCUK is one of the friendliest places on the web
 
Comapring an i5 to i7 via Bioshock, im not sure how different they perform when video editing as i dont know much about hyperthreading

Bioshock infinite:
1920 x 1080, fps Index
Core i7-4770K Stock 166.00 100.00 %
Core i7-4770K 4.5G 166.43 100.26 %
Core i5-4670K Stock 165.79 99.87 %
Core i5-4670K 4.5G 166.37 100.22 %

Unless you are going to get into some crazy projects via video editing/3d modelling then im sure an i5 would still be ample? plus £70 cheaper. You can get better ram/Gpu with the extra money you save.
 
Thanks Lucas, I'm more about the longevity, not planning to keep having to change things, I'd rather buy something too powerful now and not have to mess about with it.

I'm looking at the ~£160 it would be to go from 280 to 290 and 16gb of RAM and thinking "hmmm...." as it is... ;-)
 
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