advice needed on pc upgrade please?

Stretched

Stretched

Stretched

Associate
Joined
14 Apr 2011
Posts
160
Location
London
as the titel suggests i need help with a pc upgrade, also requires a requires a new motherbored as my current one isnt all that good and is glitchy (casuses system to crash a lot as well)

im using a Phenom 2 550 BE CPU and cant give a accute figure on the amount of money i will have to spend on upgrades, how ever i can figure it will be £250-£450 that i will have (allready got the £250 and awaiting to see how things sell)

current PC specs : Phenom 2 550 (stock cooler), ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO (requires replacement), GeIL Value DDR3 1333Mhz, Samsung HD251HJ (250gb hdd)
PSU is a powercool 450watt (this may need to be replace for a better PSU for graphic card support as this only provides 300watt on 12v rails with 1 rail rated at 10amps and the other rail rated at 15amps)

Will be very gratfull for any upgrade and replacement advice as this will help me greatly.
 
no graphics card, and it is the mobo, worked fine on the previous bored (unfortantly the prevous bored died being a studant i have no income so i had to setle for this bored as it was the only thing i could get, is 2nd hand bored)
 
Ok cool, I'm a student too.

Do you feel your psu needs an upgrade?

what would you like your upgrade to do (apart from work properly and not crash) i.e. play games, or just general use. I ask only as you mentioned for better gpu support when talking about psu.
 
i play stracraft 2 now quite a lot, but when i had buit the pc it was only i only had general use inmind, how ever saw the realease of starcaft 2 and ended up going into that (IGPU worked fine on very lowest settings but it is quite annoying and and feels alitle unsafe to push a IGPU for gaming on the latest titels)

the PSU i feel may hanel a card with only 1PCIE connection due to the low wattage on the 12v rail, tho it has 1pcie 6pin slots, so i aint to sure on the psu being all that strong if i was to get anything that may demand abit more power, im not to sure how much power my current parts use out of 12v anyways so would like to be more safe then sorry
(especialy since i herd that PSUs could take out other compoments tho im not sure this is ture, it sounds fightning)
 
Ok good thinking then. A gtx 460 756mb is bang on for SC2. It plays SC2 on MAX. So we will grab one of those.

EDIT only one mid 460 available so might as well grab a 1gb card

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-140-OK&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1830

A new PSU would not go a miss either so I would suggest a 530 Watt Bequiet PSU.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-042-BQ&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1083

Which should leave you with around £90ish, on lower budget.

And of course a new motherboard which I will look into but AMD is not my strong point. You could also look at overclocking in the future by adding a cooler such as the gelid tranquilo which is fab.
 
Last edited:
thanks for the advice :)

i normal only do replacement parts and minor upgrades for friends, never really had anything quite like this, even tho to manny people what im doing is still minor, and so many review sites seam to be biest for either AMD or N-vidia, as one site says one thing about the 2 then another just goes the opiset direction -_-

witch is one of the resons why i decided to join the forums, shoped with OCUK befor and had enjoyed their servies
 
would something like this work for you?
ive assumed you are going to keep your case, HDD and DVD drive and RAM. the ones you have already all looks fine to me. dont know about the case though.

ive chosen the 5850 because its cheaper than the 460 and better. heres a comparison of the two:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/295?vs=313

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £107.99
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 840 "95W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £89.99
1 x Asus M4A88T-M AMD 880G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £42.98
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £24.98
Total : £337.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).
 
yes, does look better on most the listed title, but cant help but note how all the titles except a few was 1st person shotting games, but the onces that wasnt the gtx had performed better in, would the game platform of RTS games favour the gtx as looking at the stats the AMD seams to be 1st person shotting games optimised, ill try to find some comparasons for RTS games for my self of the 2 cards, thanks for your help :) does help a lot
 
im not sure about all RTS's, but i know that civilisation V really hates ATI cards. the reason they have FPS's in the comparison is because those are the top graphics card killers of today.

you might be better off with the GTX460, im not sure. the GTX460 is definitely a great card (hell, ive got one myself), but in a lot of areas the HD 5850 is better.

ive also got a slightly more expensive intel sandybridge build here. you cant overclock it, but it will beat the AMD build no matter what speed you get it to

*edit*
removed aftermarket cooler as you cant overclock this processor (both motherboard and processor stop you from doing this)
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £137.99
1 x Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5850 Extreme 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **OcUK Exclusive** £107.99
1 x Asus P8H61-M Intel H61 Chipset (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £64.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £42.98
Total : £365.95 (includes shipping : £10.00).
 
Last edited:
umm, yes i found a review of the AMD vs nvidias, and also how they performed with the differ processors, intel, being better at RTS games, no suprise, but how much better they was really was a supprise, the gtx 460 768mb does still beat the 5850, so a gtx 460 if i have the cash for it will be what i get, thanks for all the help guys, umm, iv never been to sure on asus as the 1st bored i got from them died on me, and it was a new bored, not a 2nd hand one, but i guess i cant be a hater for bad luck, ill see a few other things, maybe find a few better things, maybe not, but it will help :) any other recomendations would be gratly apprechiated

btw my case is a Coolermaster Elite 334, im pretty happy with it, but no cable management and top mounted PSU means that sometimes it can be annoying when weiring up witch is no supprise
 
btw, would u recormend lower end P67 ( think it is called ) chipset and 2500k to allow overclocking and would it be worth the extra crash (roughtly £80)?
 
would definitly be worth the cash. only reason i didnt recommend it is because i wasnt sure if you would need to change the case, which would have pushed it WAY over budget (its over budget as it is)

this is what i would get:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £165.98
1 x OcUK Value GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
1 x MSI P67A-GD53 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £109.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W Power Supply £42.98
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £24.98
Total : £475.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).
 
yes, i see, it does look overbudget the budget i set as a maxium, how ever i when im selling stuff i allways onputposly underestimate how much ill sell, just so i cant plan anything like that build and then end up with much less

like i said i have to see what i end up with and how things turn out, if i come resonble close to that figure, then i can do a few 1 of jobs to rase the litle more, looking at replieys from the ocuk site it does look wroth it, if i dont end up with enought money or things dont sell im more then happy to settle for something less then the best that i could have had

if it still does what i want, then im happy, but if like i said, i come close to the figure of a better system, i would work for the extra (tho its hard to work with tones of studdys) and then get that, then it would be my pride and joy for years to come ^^

thanks for all the help guys and yes its just a waiting game to see how the sals in OCUK are at the time i get all that i can, besides, a computer is better thought over then rushed to be made :)

if anyone is intrested then i cud repost back here when its time, or when iv made what i got my hands on, tho i do
 
i think reposting when you know exactly what you can afford would be a great idea. also, the price of computer parts is falling dramatically. the computer i bought about 2 months ago could now be bought for ~£40 less than i paid for it back then. (i dont regret buying what i did though, because i was majorly overdue an upgrade)
 
ok, yes ya point does make sence, ok ill repost back on this when i have got what i can get, and yes, when i look at it at how fast computer prices drop, a graphic card is worth roughtly half its orginal sale price only a year on, gtx 480 i feel makes a good example...

and i tend to keep to my upgrade weither it be a good one, or only something still decent but not as "good" of a set up for 2 years atlest, idealy 3, but computing technologys and the paths they take seam to change to freqently to make a esstamate wether the parts i get will even last tolong befor being out dates, but hopefully ill pass my studdys and get a job befor any of this happen.

thanks for your help again reaper 392, its appreciated, especial since im such a pain ^^
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom