Build without the gfx...for now?

Retroman09 · 21 Feb 2010 at 21:15

Hi all.

So basically my 8800GTS has died today and need to get myself a new card. The whole pc is pretty old though as I am currently running a E6320 which struggles to get over 2ghz.

Since I'm obviously not wanting to spend a lot I thought about buying a new cpu, mobo and ram now and then gfx in a month as I'm not really pushing the system much ie. Perhaps WoW.

So far these are what I have in mind.

Current Basket

Gfx card I will be getting is a 5770.

Any lols or advice is welcome.

Cheers.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 21 Feb 2010 at 21:23

The Asus M4A785TD-V Evo is a decent motherboard for the price. It has an 8+2 phase VRM with cooling which is really useful if you intend to overclock and/or unlock the X3 720 as it will reduce the likelihood of the VRMs overheating. The motherboard also has the SB710 southbridge with ACC which should be useful if you want to unlock the processor too.

The motherboard also has all solid capacitors and the HD4200 IGP has 128MB of DDR3 on the motherboard dedicated to the IGP too.

Retroman09 · 21 Feb 2010 at 21:26

Yeah I'm kinda hoping to unlock the processor so you think this would be a fairly solid build for a month until I purchase the 5770?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 21 Feb 2010 at 21:30

Retroman09 said:
Yeah I'm kinda hoping to unlock the processor so you think this would be a fairly solid build for a month until I purchase the 5770?

It looks solid but if you may want to consider the Phenom II X2 550BE:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=227004

OTH,unlocking is not guaranteed.

The X2 555BE is also worth a look at too and is based on the newer C3 stepping. Even at stock speeds without unlocking the X2 555BE is not too bad a processor for gaming:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-x2-555,2540-8.html

The X2 555BE is around £80 at most retailers.

I would definitely look at this thread:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18108943

The B50 processors are unlocked Phenom II X2 processors.

There are a few OcUK forum members who have experience in unlocking the AMD Phenom II X2 processors so it maybe worth asking them some questions too.

JonJ678 · 22 Feb 2010 at 05:06

What's your power supply?

A bit of a strange way round to do things since it's your graphics card which died today, wouldn't a 5770 now and the new cpu/motherboard/ram in a month make more sense? After all, you may discover you don't need the rest of the upgrade for a while yet.

Changing from a 2ghz core 2 duo to an amd dual core seems a bit odd too, can't imagine there's much difference. What's limiting the overclock on the current dual core?