any worthwhile upgrades?

[JBuk]

I have a xeon 5950,x58 mobo with 6gb ram and a radeon 270x

Is there anything worthwhile upgrading the CPU and gfx to?

I was already thinking of getting more memory


I know theres plenty of new stuff out there but I don't want to spend say £400 - £500 for only a few % gain in performance

 

[bioshockeruk]

What is your budget and what do you use your rig for?

 

[JBuk]

A mixture of things, PhotoShop , Lightroom , gaming, a little bit of rendering

Budget of about £500 + whatever I can sell my old kit for

 

[bioshockeruk]

In this case I would say go for around 16gb or more ram. And change board and cpu to a modern quad core or higher preferably intel as it provides a better upgrade route. If your not gaming much then your gpu is fine for those tasks but a little weak if your at all gaming.

I'll see what I can spec for you...

 

[JBuk]

Having had a rethink I might just keep the xeon rig and build another system just for gaming

The gaming would be on a HD TV

I'm not sure if its worth building something or just buying an Xbox one ?

In any case if anyone cares to spec me up something, the only stipulation is that it has to be small

 

[bioshockeruk]

Is the budget still the same?

 

[JBuk]

Cheaper is better heh so around £400 if possible

 

[bioshockeruk]

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Asus A88XM-PLUS AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard= £56.99
• 1 x AMD Kaveri A10-7870K 12 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 8 GPU Compute Cores) - Reta= £109.99
• 1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (HX321C11T3K2/8)= £49.99
• 1 x Bitfenix Aegis Micro-ATX Chassis w/ Icon Programmable Display - Black= £59.99
• 1 x EVGA 500W 80 Plus Power Supply (100-W1-0500-KR)= £36.95
• 1 x NZXT KRAKEN X31 AIO Water Cooling Unit - 120mm - Variable Speed Control= £54.95

Total: £382.06
(includes shipping: £13.20)
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Try this, if you prefer I could spec an Intel build for comparison also. This is a good entry level gaming machine although for more grunt I would add a discrete GPU, but this can be factored in at any point in future to keep your costs down.

 

[JBuk]

Thanks, I think I would prefer Intel though

I notice theres a £26 micro atx cube case and I would probably just run everything at stock so no need for a third party cooler

 

[bioshockeruk]

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-4460 3.20GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail= £152.98
• 1 x Asus H81M-K Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard= £39.95
• 1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00C= £31.99
• 1 x MSI Radeon R9 380 Gaming 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £155.99
• 1 x EVGA 500W 80 Plus Power Supply (100-W1-0500-KR)= £36.95
• 1 x Kolink Satellite Micro-ATX Cube Case - Black= £26.99

Total: £457.15
(includes shipping: £12.30)
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This is a little over budget but is a much better rig, will play most games on med-high settings at 1080p @ 30-60fps, and will also have enough grunt to perform the extra tasks in photoshop etc. You could always swap the 8gb kit for a 16gb kit and would be even better in lightroom and photoshop. But this would be what I would put my money to in your situation.

EDIT: you could always go for an i3 CPU and save yourself some money but I think the price difference the i5 is a much better performer.

 

[ExRayTed]

Bio, whilst both builds are good, you've missed hard drives on both.

 

[JBuk]

Thanks for the specs

One thing I have is a few ssd's so no worry on that front


I'm now toying with the idea of just selling the xeon setup and building a decent micro atx system that I can quickly move from the living room to my pc desk if/when I need to do some work (which wouldn't be often tbh as I have a surface pro 3 too)

Currently reading up on the latest kit as I've been out of the picture for a while