Infinite Upgrade Possibilities - which one is best

legendaryjordan

legendaryjordan

legendaryjordan

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12 Feb 2015
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I'll start by saying any help and insight you can give me would be so appreciated.

I currently have:

CPU: AMD 4170 @ 4mhz
System Model: GA78LMT S2P
PSU: CoolerMaster GX-lite 500w
GPU: HD 7770

I have £400 (and no more) to spend on an upgrade for modern games like assassins creed Unity, Crysis 3 etc.

I have done a lot of research so I'll list a few things before I give you my thoughts.

1) the mobo only supports 95w AMD CPUs (even though my 4170 runs well on it) so getting a 8350 will be out the question. correct?

2) getting an i5 with a new mobo + r9 280 would require me to get a new psu which would put my cost too high. I also really like the fact that the GTX 970 runs quietly and uses less power.

4) I would consider buying the FX-8370E with the GTX 970 for these reasons:

a) I wouldn't have to upgrade my PSU or MOBO, saving me money.

b) I wouldn't worry about a new OEM with my windows 7 if I went with say an i5 and a new mobo.

c) very energy efficient

However I dont know if FX-8370E with the GTX 970 would bottleneck the CPU too much. What do you think?

If you can suggest a better alternative at under £400, I'm all ears.

Thanks so much people :) :)
 
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I wouldn't put a 290 in there as the psu is pretty poor. It's not 80+ rated at all, has no dedicated voltage regulation and only has 432w on the 12v rail.
 
What revision of the board do you have. Rev 3.1 limits your choices a bit but 3.5 and 4.0 will take the current FX range. One thing I will say though is that it's not a great board and has no vram cooling at all. That would need to be addressed if you went for a FX cpu as they put a lot of stress on the vrm's and it's quite common to throttle cpu's when the vrm's overheat.
 
pastymuncher said:
What revision of the board do you have. Rev 3.1 limits your choices a bit but 3.5 and 4.0 will take the current FX range. One thing I will say though is that it's not a great board and has no vram cooling at all. That would need to be addressed if you went for a FX cpu as they put a lot of stress on the vrm's and it's quite common to throttle cpu's when the vrm's overheat.
Click to expand...

Well, it has SP2 after the motherboard model and from this website it seems i'm limited:

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=4125

Howweeever, I've been running an fx-4170 with it for a while, and that's in the 8350 range of 120w PSU's. What do you think?
 
pastymuncher said:
What revision of the board do you have. Rev 3.1 limits your choices a bit but 3.5 and 4.0 will take the current FX range. One thing I will say though is that it's not a great board and has no vram cooling at all. That would need to be addressed if you went for a FX cpu as they put a lot of stress on the vrm's and it's quite common to throttle cpu's when the vrm's overheat.
Click to expand...

What else would you recommend that's within my price budget? e.g. an i5 perhaps that when combined with a Mobo is under £200?
 
The revision of you board is printed on the PCB somewhere, usually around the audio section/PCI slots.
 
See what you can find 2nd hand, you have the list of supported CPUs so go see what you can find.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £199.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £62.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £55.99
Total : £378.96 (includes shipping : ).



Get the G3258 clocked up to 4ghz+ and go from there, it will make a good stop gap between now and when you can next upgrade.
 
ThaReaperGuy said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £199.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £62.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £55.99
Total : £378.96 (includes shipping : ).



Get the G3258 clocked up to 4ghz+ and go from there, it will make a good stop gap between now and when you can next upgrade.
Click to expand...

Will I be able to use that motherboard on an i5 4690k if i eventually buy one.
 
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