Hoping to upgrade, been a while so need advice

Loony BoB

Loony BoB

Loony BoB

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10 Mar 2007
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235
*** See post #9 in this thread! The situation has changed to me upgrading only my PC and to the value of £800. Old post is below. ***

Currently my wife and I have a pair of gaming PCs that I'm looking to upgrade (last upgrade was 2010). There have been some niggling issues with the system board over the past year on my PC and the wife has speed issues when we're gaming. We're also hoping to boost up the gaming potential of both PCs with the likes of Star Citizen on the horizon and naturally hoping to be able to play most new games for the coming 2-3 years at least.

We're happy enough with our monitors, speakers, keyboards and mice for now.

My PC...
Lian Li PC-7FN Midi Tower Case - Black
Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK)
Gigabyte GA P55 S1156 DDR3 ATX
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156)
Gigabyte GF GTX 460 1GB PCI-E HDMI OC
6GB RAM (3x Corsair XMS3 2GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz)
2x HDD (1TB + 500GB)
Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe Optical Drive (Black) - OEM


Wife's PC...
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - Black (EarthWatts 500W PSU)
Gigabyte GF GTX 460 1GB PCI-E HDMI OC
Gigabyte GA P55 S1156 DDR3 ATX
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156)
6GB RAM (3x Corsair XMS3 2GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz)
2x HDD (1TB + 250GB)
Samsung SH-S202N/BEBN 20x DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM

I'm not wanting to jump to the latest spec out there, but somewhere around the point that you can still justify getting bang for your buck. What things would I be looking to replace, and how much work would I be looking at?

Ideally I'd like to get a couple of PCs with significantly better GPUs, 8GB RAM each, an SSD in each and, if possible, have the two PCs pretty much replicas of each other... to stop my wife complaining that I have the better one. :p

I'll probably have a couple of months before I get everything decided because we're on the honeymoon next month, but I'm really looking forward to finally boosting these things into high quality machines. :D
 
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Have you tried overclocking your cpu's to give a extra free speed boost?

Done a quick upgrade spec:

YOUR BASKET
2 x Powercolor Radeon R9 270X "PowerBank" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £143.99 (£287.98)
2 x Crucial M500 240GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (CT240M500SSD1) £79.9 (£159.80)
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £55.99
2 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99 (£39.98)
Total : £553.34 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Added a new PSU to change the Earthwatts one, the Corsair is still good :)
 
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If you had £600 to spend per PC, what would you go for? I'm not sure just how much but it's nice to have options, I'm sure I can save a little longer if I need to and/or tie it in as a Christmas present to the missus!

Good to have an option at that figure, though, so thanks. I'm really unsure about how much I'll spend just now but to have a £300 per PC option along with a £600 per PC option would be nice, just so I can get an idea of how best to manage it all.

EDIT: We did get coolers that came with the CPU... I'm assuming the one you've mentioned is much better?
 
Loony BoB said:
If you had £600 to spend per PC, what would you go for? I'm not sure just how much but it's nice to have options, I'm sure I can save a little longer if I need to and/or tie it in as a Christmas present to the missus!

Good to have an option at that figure, though, so thanks. I'm really unsure about how much I'll spend just now but to have a £300 per PC option along with a £600 per PC option would be nice, just so I can get an idea of how best to manage it all.

EDIT: We did get coolers that came with the CPU... I'm assuming the one you've mentioned is much better?
Click to expand...

£600 Per Pc? New GPU,Cpu & mobo..
 
£600x2

YOUR BASKET
2 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £159.95 (£319.90)
2 x MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming Edition OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99 (£299.98)
2 x Gigabyte Z97-D3H Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £89.99 (£179.98)
2 x Toshiba SSD HDTS212EZSTA 9.5mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £65.99 (£131.98)
2 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99 (£111.98)
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £43.99
2 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99 (£39.98)
Total : £1,144.28 (includes shipping : £13.75).




£300x2 upgrade.

YOUR BASKET
2 x MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming Edition OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99 (£299.98)
2 x Toshiba SSD HDTS212EZSTA 9.5mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £65.99 (£131.98)
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £43.99
2 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £19.99 (£39.98)
Total : £530.03 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
 
Loony BoB said:
If you had £600 to spend per PC, what would you go for? I'm not sure just how much but it's nice to have options, I'm sure I can save a little longer if I need to and/or tie it in as a Christmas present to the missus!

Good to have an option at that figure, though, so thanks. I'm really unsure about how much I'll spend just now but to have a £300 per PC option along with a £600 per PC option would be nice, just so I can get an idea of how best to manage it all.

EDIT: We did get coolers that came with the CPU... I'm assuming the one you've mentioned is much better?
Click to expand...

Others have done good £600 upgrades :)

If you do look at the £300 option then the upgrading the cpu cooler will allow you to overclock and keep temps cool and system quiet.
 
Right, sorry to bump an old thread, but the situation has changed - the wife is no longer too worried about investing in a PC upgrade anytime too soon (has other priorities like driving lessons, fair enough) so I'll be upgrading my PC to the tune of £800. I don't suppose anyone can spec that? Sadly my rig has crashed three times today which means I no longer have the luxury of waiting, getting a bit tired of it happening while I do simple tasks like browsing the web! I'm even posting this from my laptop to avoid the risk :p

Currently...
Lian Li PC-7FN Midi Tower Case - Black
Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK)
Gigabyte GA P55 S1156 DDR3 ATX
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156)
Gigabyte GF GTX 460 1GB PCI-E HDMI OC
6GB RAM (3x Corsair XMS3 2GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz)
2x HDD (1TB + 500GB)
Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe Optical Drive (Black) - OEM

I have the week off so hopefully I can get everything delivered while I'm in.
 
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Hmm, I kind of suggest finding out what is going wrong, as then you can know what you can reuse from your current pc ^

imo the PSU, HDDs and case should be re-usable - would you be happy with that?
No point in re-using broken parts only to find out you have to replace that too :(
 
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Loony BoB said:
Right, sorry to bump an old thread, but the situation has changed - the wife is no longer too worried about investing in a PC upgrade anytime too soon (has other priorities like driving lessons, fair enough) so I'll be upgrading my PC to the tune of £800. I don't suppose anyone can spec that? Sadly my rig has crashed three times today which means I no longer have the luxury of waiting, getting a bit tired of it happening while I do simple tasks like browsing the web! I'm even posting this from my laptop to avoid the risk :p

Currently...
Lian Li PC-7FN Midi Tower Case - Black
Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK)
Gigabyte GA P55 S1156 DDR3 ATX
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156)
Gigabyte GF GTX 460 1GB PCI-E HDMI OC
6GB RAM (3x Corsair XMS3 2GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz)
2x HDD (1TB + 500GB)
Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe Optical Drive (Black) - OEM

I have the week off so hopefully I can get everything delivered while I'm in.
Click to expand...


Right so you can reuse your case, drives and PSU.



YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 - Devils Canyon Core i7 4790K CPU & Motherboard Bundle **£43 Saving** £361.98
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE AMD 8GB 2400MHz Memory Kit £305.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £82.99
1 x Alpenföhn Brocken ECO CPU Cooler - 120 mm £24.95
Total : £785.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).



The GFX card comes with free RAM.

The SSD will run the OS and games.

If you wanted to run Crossfire then you will certainly need to upgrade the PSU to a 850W'ish type.
 
No urgency on crossfire and I'm sure if I ever go down that road then I can upgrade the PSU at the time.

I'm hoping this sudden crashing (it didn't do it more than once every few months beforehand) will ease off after a bit of tweaking but then, not too much point in spending all my time on that when I'm off work for a week - great for deliveries - and also am due to upgrade my PC next month anyway... so... credit card time. :) And yeah, the intention is to spend, so I have no issue regarding the replacement of SBD/RAM/CPU. Getting a SSD will hopefully help matters further (looking forward to that, big time, as I've never owned one before!).

Just got a BSOD about ten minutes ago, so it looks like it's time for some memtesting etc.
 
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