Good time to upgrade? £1200 budget

DEL 707

DEL 707

DEL 707

Soldato
Joined
20 Mar 2004
Posts
4,578
My PC's getting a bit long in the tooth now, I think it's 10 years old. It's had a few upgrades along the way, but the motherboard and CPU are the same.

Current specs -
Intel i7 930 2.8Ghz (overclocked to 3.8ghz)
12gb RAM
Geforce GTX 970
1Tb Samsung SSD 850 Evo
1Tb Samsung standard drive
Blu-ray drive

It was overclocked to 4ghz till earlier this year but it started to become unstable. Unfortunately I've had a few crashes this week, but I've not bothered to do any fault finding.

I'm looking to build a new machine, with a max budget of £1200.
Only thing I'm looking to transfer over is my SSD and my blu-ray. I already have a Windows license, monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.

I was thinking of building it pretty soon, but would be willing to wait if there was any new tech coming out that might lower prices.

I would like to overclock again, so would like a decent heatsink and I would like a standard 2Tb hard drive.

Can anyone give me a suggestion on a new build?
 
PC's just for gaming to be honest.
Monitor I use is a Asus VE228, can't say I have any interest in upgrading, 1080 suits my poor eyes, not sure I want to spend the extra money to get up to 4k.

As for the CPU, I've been using Intel in my last few builds.
I know it's a silly question, but how much difference is there between AMD/Intel. I want the biggest bang for my buck, how are they for overclocking?

Would it be possible to do me an AMD build as well?

Is it worth me keeping hold of my 780 GTX for the time being?
 
Thanks for all the replies so far.

I am thinking of going with the Ryzen, but does Intel offer some sort of tech or advantage, other then performance?
Would it be possible to get a build with the Ryzen without a graphics card, with the same budget? I am thinking of hanging onto my 970 for a few more months.

Will I see much of a performance difference over my old i7 930?
 
Thanks for all the replies, I'm definately going to go for a Ryzen, feel like such a rebel!

Going to post what I wrote on the CPU sub forum.

I'm going to get that Optix G24C monitor, but lets not include that in the budget.
So using £1200 on the just the PC (not the monitor) is it worth using that extra money for a better CPU or GPU, should I aim for a Ryzen 7?
How are AMD graphics cards these days? I've been using Nvidia for years.
Click to expand...
 
I'd rather stick to a 21" or maybe a 24" monitor, desk isn't that big and I sit quite close to it.
Would rather use that extra money on the CPU/motherboard.
 
How about something like this, over £1200, but I think I was lying to myself if I thought I was going to stick to that budget.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,489.77 (includes shipping: £15.90)
​

From what I read on the AMD website, the RX VEGA has freesync with it.
 
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Thanks!

Looks like I'm almost there, but I noticed you put down 3000MHz RAM, is it not worth paying the extra £25 for 3200MHz?
Same question also applies to upgrading the CPU cooler from 130mm to 140mm?
 
Not gonna lie, that all went completely over my head!

I would go for the Gigabyte RAM since it's the cheaper of the B-Die, but is that extra 200MHz would the extra cash?
 
How about this then.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,577.76 (includes shipping: £15.90)​
​
Click to expand...

So much for my budget.

1 problem is that the motherboard is on pre-order. I asked customer service and they don't have an ETA on when they will get stock.
Is that board worth waiting for, or is there a decent alternative?
 
Thanks, forgot to change the graphics card.

So hopefully final basket looks like this.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,567.76 (includes shipping: £15.90)
​

I've asked at OC and they don't know when they'll get more motherboards, so push come to a shove I'll just have to order it elsewhere.
Would be cool to get it ordered this week.
 
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Final basket mkII

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,582.76 (includes shipping: £15.90)​
​
 
Auto overclock???
So many terms I'm unfamilar with mentioned in this thread, sure I'm gonna have a few questions once it's all together.

Also I don't think any of that kit comes with any thermal paste, so was gonna go with some Arctic MX-4.
 
I asked and they said they had a mixed stock, so no guarantees.
So if the BIOS isn't current enough, I'm going to end up with a dead machine?
How old is this X370 board? Gotta admit I'm a bit worried about it.
 
I've been thinking about this all day.
Watched those videos and the guy didn't seem that happy with the x470, so do I take a punt and hope that the x370 works off the bat...

I am quite litterally in for a penny, in for a pound at the moment.
Would going for the Asus Rog Strix x470-F be a viable option?
 
Bit the bullet. Placed my order

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,653.29 (includes shipping: £15.90)​
​

Got screwed on a few items where the discounts had disappeared, but not too bad. Taking a punt on the x370 and just hope she works.
Big thanks to Obital, Lee and everyone else who replied to this thread.

I'm sure I have more then enouigh questions later on.
 
Had a bit of a suprise, got a call saying my order had turned up, wasn't expecting it to arrive till Tuesday.

Got home, through all the basics onto a table just to test it out, but sadly it didn't work, was getting 0d error codes on the motherboard.
Looked around and couldn't find any real help on the internet other then that it was a RAM fault.
I tried changing the RAM around, but no change. Only other thing I had to go on with a light marked VGA.
I'd been plugging the monitor into the HDMI port on the motherboard, but I thought I might as well try it with the graphics card and lo and behold, it worked!

Not going to have time to assemble it tonight, but good to see it at least works.
 
Machine is together and Windows installed.

I let Windows handle most of the drivers, but I've installed the lastest chipset drivers and the latest radeon graphics drivers.
Computer says refresh rate is running at 144Hz and Radeon drivers are saying Freesync is enabled.
I noticed the board has 2 network controllers, Intel I211 and Killer E2500. I'm using intel at the moment.

Are there any other drivers I should update, or software I should download? I've checked the BIOS and it is running the latest.

Talking of BIOS, I left Ez overclocking on.
I installed AMD Ryzen Master and can see the clock speed going up and down, peaked at 4.3Ghz. Memory clock is 1067Mhz.
 
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