Computers gone pop!

Cap4152

Cap4152

Cap4152

Associate
Joined
2 Jun 2009
Posts
49
Location
UK
Hi,

Been a while since i've posted but hoping for some advice....

Just turned on what is now my 5 year old rig and was greeted by a large plume of smoke! After closer inspection it looks like one of the controllers has finally given up! :(

So....some advice please on getting up and working again.

I'm hoping that GPU, drives etc would have survived so new MB, CPU, RAM should be all that is required? Possibly PSU as well?

Going to have around £200 to spend so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
Do you know if the GPU is AGP and the drives are SATA?

Also do you do any gaming on the system.
 
What is your current/dead rig's specs? The GPU is what I'm looking for mainly so I know what PSU to spec?

EDIT - I have added a spec anyway.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £55.99
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £41.99
1 x Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £41.99
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £39.95
Total : £179.92 (includes shipping : FREE).



EDIT 2 - Here is a fairly better spec if you can push your budget a little more..

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £41.99
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £39.95
Total : £231.88 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
The GPU is a 4850, PCIe. I know by no means recent but it's served well for the last few years!

Yeah the HDD is SATA, a WD Barracuda I think.

I'm a casual gamer, maybe a couple of times a week playing MMO's or titles that are a year or so old.

Thanks
 
pdobs1 said:
The GPU is a 4850, PCIe. I know by no means recent but it's served well for the last few years!

Yeah the HDD is SATA, a WD Barracuda I think.

I'm a casual gamer, maybe a couple of times a week playing MMO's or titles that are a year or so old.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Def go with my spec 2 if you can. :)
 
Indeed the second build looks good, you could save by going with 4gb of ram.
 
Last edited:
Hi,

Thanks very much for the suggestions :)

Does the H61 chipset offer an resonable upgrade path for say the next 3 years or so?

Is there a big performance difference between the G840 and the i3 for nearly double the price tag?

Thanks for your help
 
I would say the i3 is worth the extra £40+ odd over the G840.. If you look here this shows the basic tech specs in comparison.. And if you look at this you can see in Far Cry 2 the i3 compared to the G840 the FPS is about 15 FPS difference, along with the other games having better performance also. Then if you look at general performance the i3 has a noticeable impact also.

The H61 is quite an old chipset. If you are looking to have this setup for the next 3+ years and want to upgrade on it later, i.e. a new CPU, more capable GPU, an SSD amongst other newer SATA3 hard drives, etc.. Then you will definitely want to get the i3 at minimum and you will also want a Z77 based chipset mobo, something like this which is £77 at min.. Which is going to start touching over £260ish..


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £77.38
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £39.95
Total : £267.26 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
Last edited:
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