Gradual Upgrade Advice Sought

[stefanod]

Hi Folks,

I put together my original rig around 5 years ago and am now looking to upgrade it. Now if I had my way, I would splash out 1k and get it all done in one go but with family commitments I have to do this gradually, say over 4-6 months.

So the advice I am looking for boils down into two parts:
1) What parts am I looking at to get an upper medium spec but future proof gaming rig
2) What order do I upgrade to have the least bottlenecks during the gradual upgrade whilst keeping any bits that do not need replacing.

Advice is very welcome and appreciated. Also, if you think my line of doing it gradually is not the right one please say so and why.One more thing, One more thing, I like a quiet pc so that is definitely going to be a constraining factor on which parts I go for.

My rig is currently as follows:

Motherboard: Biostar TPower I45

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient 95W edition Socket 775 (2.40GHz) G0 Stepping L2 8MB Cache OEM Processor

RAM: 4 GB Kingston HyperX Performance

Graphics Card: Sapphire HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card

Soundcard: Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard Soundcard

Hard Drives: Western Digital WD6400AACS 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green


Case: Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Full Tower Case

Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Intel LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA775 and AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3 aluminum with nickel plated copper base Processor Cooler
Noctua NF-S12 1200rpm 120mm Quiet Case Fan - 3 & 4pin

Power Supply: Be Quiet 550W

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Thanks All

 

[Danny75]

Decide on what range of new video card you'll be going for later on, so you can choose the right power supply for it now (some of the latest high-end models pull more wattage these days). And nevermind storage drives right now. Get a good SSD in, and transfer your current OS to it. Then you can add extra storage later. Leaving those two things for later on, plus the fact you don't need a new OS, should allow room for a nice budget to get started on building your foundations.

If you're going Intel, then socket 1150 is the newest Intel motherboard socket. The Z87 chipsets are the fanciest (although unnecessary for some people's needs who could make do with H87, B85 or H81 chipsets) and the new processors for that socket are i3-4's, i5-4's and i7-4's. If they have a K at the end of the number then they are overclockable.

You could give it a go yourself and try come up with your own list and post it here, using the extension for browsers called "OcUK Shopping Cart Viewer"*. Add it to your browser (it works with Chrome for sure, that I know of) and when you click View Basket you will see a new icon on your browser (on Chrome it will appear beside the star icon for Bookmarks). Click it once, then just come back to this thread and paste and your basket will display nicely. Then it can be checked by others, and recommendations made. I say this because (a) it's fun to do yourself, and (b) you didn't state a specific start-off budget, meaning you could be getting an idea of prices etc by doing the above.

* https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ocuk-shopping-cart-viewer/empfloiadabicdlgahhamannadefhehj

P.S. I love the idea of gradual builds, personally.

 

[snips86x]

To give you an idea, this would be my recommendation. You may want to ensure you are able to get the major components all at the same time, mobo/cpu/ram you can then use your g/card/hdd untill you are able to replace them.

You mentioned 1k spend, so I've used that as a benchmark. That is assuming you are going to keep your PSU, Cooler & Case.

Stage 1:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Series Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD38G2133HC11ADC01) £59.99
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
Total : £372.55 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Stage 2:
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Edition OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with BattleField 4 PC Game Included £239.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Laptop Kit - (MZ-7TE250LW) £149.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD £49.99
Total : £449.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



From here, you could then consider replacing your case and cooler, but that's if you need too. Some suggestions would be:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Corsair Obsidian 750D Full Tower Case - Black (CC-9011035-WW) £134.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black (CC-9011030-WW) £105.95
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £99.95
1 x Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Windowed Case - Black (CC-9011017-WW) £78.95
1 x Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler - Red £69.98
1 x BitFenix Ronin Tower Case - Black £69.95
1 x Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler £65.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler £59.99
Total : £718.80 (includes shipping : £27.55).



The Corsair 300R may not fit the air coolers, but you'd be fine with the watercooler. Saying that, you should be fine with your current cooler and should get a decent overclock around 4.2ghz-4.4ghz.

The final consideration would be your PSU. If you are looking to go crossfire/SLi, you'd need a 750w minimum, otherwise your 550 will be fine.