General advice please

BAcon

BAcon

BAcon

Soldato
Joined
7 Apr 2004
Posts
4,751
Location
near Bristol
Hello, I am pretty much completely out of touch with modern tech! SO excuse the long post which is coming up.

The last time my pc was upgraded was back in 2011 while I was a poor student, as such, my upgrade was done on a very low budget.

My current specs (no laughing!)

Amd Phenon II X4 955 with arctic freezer 13 cooler (bought for the 2011 upgrade)
4gb corsair mem (bought for the 2011 upgrade)
5850 with 1gb mem (bought for the 2011 upgrade)
Asus M4A78LT-M mobo (bought for the 2011 upgrade)
74gb Raptor (haha)
Various data drives
OCZ Stealth stream 2 500w psu (bought for the 2011 upgrade)
Sunflower fan controller (bargain Akasa at the time)

All wrapped up in a Lian Li pc65 case with (at the time) silent Panaflow fans, retro right???

Peripherals
Logitech mx518, this is around 9 years old and looking knackard

Some 10 year old Altec Lansing 2.1 speakers

Running a Samsung 913m, which has recently kicked the bucket and no longer displays a picture, so im actually using a borrowed 19" tv at 1400x900 through hdmi



So I am no longer a filthy student, far from it actually and would like some advice on what the current best buy components are?

I love parts which are best bang for buck, i.e the 5850 is a fantastic card but cost me around £100, previous cards I have loved such as the ATI 9800pro, 8800gt, or even the budget 6600GT's I used on many builds for friends back in the day.

My previous chips include mobile 2500+, A64 3000 winchester (I had this baby clocked at 3ghz, 300x10, running all day long on minimal additional voltage, running 1:1 with gksill memory and a thermalright heatsink)

I don't mind spending money on good components, but I'm not one to chase 10% performance for double the cost as it's pretty pointless.

For example, I have just ordered a Crucial mx100 256 ssd, as that will go with any build I make in the near future, I'll also be getting a new monitor as soon as I can decide on what route to take, I'd love an IPS panel but all of them seem to have poor build quality with backlight bleed, as well as panel glow (I'm aware this is an IPS trait!).

TL : DR What are the current bang for buck components and platforms?

Cheers

Mike
 
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Thank you for the reply, I don't really have a set budget, as long as I feel what I am buying is worth the cash its pretty irrelevant.

Is the performance of a gtx 970 seen as mid range card? Or is that a premium card?
 
Shivy011 said:
Do you have an SSD in there? What HDDs can you re-use that are SATA
Click to expand...

I've just ordered a Crucial mx100 256gb ssd, as from reading about its priced well for the increase in performance I will get over my older drives.

I have a Samsung 1TB sata drive, plus a random 250gb samsung, but I can sort storage later.


It was more finding out what the best buy components on the market right now are.

With regards to mobo/platform, cpu, mem, gfx cards, power supply manufacturers etc, rather broad topic I know.

From what I can tell from suggested builds on other topics and the first reply on this one, am I right in saying the current 1150 socket is a pretty straight forward choice?
 
Yep, 1150 for gaming really.

Do you have a set case you'd like? PSU manufacturers - Seasonic and SuperFlower and Delta Electronics OEM PSUs, don't touch cheapo stuff like Corsair lower end (CX, HXi etc) as they aren't great. EVGA G2 are also great (OEM SuperFlower)
 
Wat will you be using the rig for?
Gaming, video coding, image editing etc.
I defo agree with the GTX 970. More of a premium card imo. Runs most of my latest games (AC, Far Cry etc.) on ultra to a good 40-50 fps.
 
Shivy011 said:
Yep, 1150 for gaming really.

Do you have a set case you'd like? PSU manufacturers - Seasonic and SuperFlower and Delta Electronics OEM PSUs, don't touch cheapo stuff like Corsair lower end (CX, HXi etc) as they aren't great. EVGA G2 are also great (OEM SuperFlower)
Click to expand...

To be fair I just stuck in a PSU that would handle it but you're right, even my TX850 had a lot of whine at high current. My new EVGA is silent.
 
I play the odd game, but nothing overly taxing, Assetto Corsa perhaps and other driving games. Nothing lately has really jumped out at me, my back catalogue of games play fine on the current card on this little tv, but I'm sure at 1440p or even 1080p perhaps it will struggle.

I watch a lot of movies, general browsing etc, so a ~£300 graphics card isn't required.

Ok, so 1150 socket and an i5 processor seems a good buy, a 280x sounds good too.

No idea on case, I love my old Lian Li, so perhaps another would be nice, they were never cheap though. Superflower psu's sound good.

Thanks for the advice so far!
 
Do you want a case with or without a window? Soundproofing to make it quieter? Any particular amount you'd like to spend on the case?
 
Shivy011 said:
Do you want a case with or without a window? Soundproofing to make it quieter? Any particular amount you'd like to spend on the case?
Click to expand...

Yes because it does help doesn't it?

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18634808

Shivy011 said:
Fans should be optimised as well with custom curves etc, just as important if not more as having a sound-dampened case
Click to expand...

Thats what you said and edited in to your post after I had suggested a silenced case with sound deadening material.
 
Apologies about being vague regarding the case, that's always a personal choice style affair so didn't expect help in that regard.

But from looking around, I like the look of the Antec 280, the black one is pre order only though so unsure when that will arrive. I'm not bothered about a window, silence is always nice though when you need it.
it appears to have decent cable tidying features too.
As for slots and ports, front audio jacks and usb slots are always useful which this has.

Room for 4+ hard drives would be nice, I presume people dont keep a floppy drive to run things like mem test anymore, usb now yes?
Space for one optical drive is enough.
 
Anything Antec that is out of stock is due 6/7th.

P100/P280 are both good "silenced" cases with sound deadening and thick panels to reduce vibrations (more important than any "fan curve" ;))

P380 is around 4-5 weeks away.
 
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