i7 Gaming Spec Check

[arty]

Hallo, I currently have an ageing gaming PC which doesn't play various modern games (such as Fallout) at all well. I tend to get low FPS, glitching and about a second's mouse lag whenever I turn which is annoying the hell out of me

Current specs are: AMD Athlon X2 4800+, Nvidia 7900GTX and 2GB DDR2. I'm thinking of going for the following:

Intel Core i7 920 OEM CPU
Gigabyte EX58-UD3R motherboard
OCZ Gold 6GB DDR3 PC3-10666C9 RAM
Asus ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB graphics card
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 CPU cooler

I already have a Tagan 480W modular PSU which I'd rather avoid upgrading if possible. Do you guys think it'll be enough?

I also already have a couple of old HDDs, a decent Pioneer DVDRW and keyboard, monitor, mouse etc. so it's just the core components I need to upgrade.

I'd also like to try overclocking the above to give it a little more oomph. Is the CPU cooler a good one for this?

Any thoughts / recommendations / suggestions welcome! My budget is flexible but I'd like to keep it under / around £800 if possible.

Thanks very much for any feedback gents...

arty

 

[spitzoid]

Components look good to me.

However, I think you might have to get a more powerful PSU, especially if you want to overclock - your current one might manage but I suspect it'll be running close to the maximum @load thus shortening its lifespan.

The CPU cooler that you've chosen is one of the best so no worries there, although it is quite large so check that it will fit in your current case before you buy it.

 

[ro55o]

If you are on a tight budget, especially for i7, then you could go down the route of the cheaper socket 775 route or AM3. For gaming i7 doesn't show any improvement over the other 2, which for the same money can get a pretty good gaming rig. I'll spec up both for around the £800 budget, with a new PSU aswell.

But for the i7 spec you've shown, it does look good, and the noctua cooler is regarded as one of the best you can get.

If you can give us the full spec of the PSU we can then see if it's enough, as it's not always down to the output power of the PSU.

edit - are the old hard drives and DVD drive IDE or SATA?

 

[ro55o]

Both the above systems will perform to the same levels in gaming as the i7, the i7 performs much better at multi tasking, encoding, basically prgrams that will fully use the 4 cores.

I've put a hard drive and dvd drive in with the specs, but if the older ones you have turn out to be sata then just use them, I do think that theres a couple of IDE sockets on the motherboard though, but you'll really want to move to sata anyway.

The good thing with the AMD setup is it can use DDR3 ram and is the newer AMD socket, so better upgradability than the older intel socket 775. Obviously the i7 will offer the most future proofing, but does come with a higher cost.

 

[arty]

Components look good to me.

However, I think you might have to get a more powerful PSU, especially if you want to overclock - your current one might manage but I suspect it'll be running close to the maximum @load thus shortening its lifespan.

That's what worries me - it was a top-notch PSU when I bought it so it seems a shame for it not to last more than one build

The CPU cooler that you've chosen is one of the best so no worries there, although it is quite large so check that it will fit in your current case before you buy it.

I have a Silverstone TJ07 which is a pretty big case, so I think it'd be OK.

If you are on a tight budget, especially for i7, then you could go down the route of the cheaper socket 775 route or AM3. For gaming i7 doesn't show any improvement over the other 2, which for the same money can get a pretty good gaming rig. I'll spec up both for around the £800 budget, with a new PSU aswell.

Yeah, that's a fair point - I was thinking about the future-proofing aspect of a more modern architecture. I should have mentioned that I also do quite a bit of media encoding on my PC so an equivalently-priced i7 system would probably help me with that, I'm guessing. Thanks for the spec offer.

But for the i7 spec you've shown, it does look good, and the noctua cooler is regarded as one of the best you can get.

If you can give us the full spec of the PSU we can then see if it's enough, as it's not always down to the output power of the PSU.

Cool - actually, I've just checked and it's 530W which is a little better. It's a 530w Tagan EasyCon - TG530-U15 is the model number I think.

edit - are the old hard drives and DVD drive IDE or SATA?

The HDDs are both SATA but the DVDRW is IDE. Thanks for both replying, it's appreciated

arty

 

[ro55o]

No problem mate, let us know what you end up going for.

The PSU should good enough to power the i7 rig with the 4890.

 

[arty]

Both the above systems will perform to the same levels in gaming as the i7, the i7 performs much better at multi tasking, encoding, basically prgrams that will fully use the 4 cores.

I've put a hard drive and dvd drive in with the specs, but if the older ones you have turn out to be sata then just use them, I do think that theres a couple of IDE sockets on the motherboard though, but you'll really want to move to sata anyway.

The good thing with the AMD setup is it can use DDR3 ram and is the newer AMD socket, so better upgradability than the older intel socket 775. Obviously the i7 will offer the most future proofing, but does come with a higher cost.

No problem mate, let us know what you end up going for.

The PSU should good enough to power the i7 rig with the 4890.

Cheers for the specs - I think if I went Intel I'd probably go for the newer platform for future-proofing, but I'll consider the AMD a bit more seriously as I know their newest crop of CPUs are a lot more competitive again. If I decide to upgrade I'll probably do so next week and will let you guys know for sure

arty