It's upgrade time \o/

iCeh

iCeh

iCeh

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I'm about to upgrade my E8500, ATI3850, 2GB RAM.

I use my PC for gaming, but not really a fan of overclocking. Would anyone mind having a look at the purchase I'm going to make? Just making sure they're all compatible, and if anyone has any suggestions please let me know. :)

(I'm on Windows 7 32bit)

Asus GeForce 480

i5 2500 retail

Asus P8H67M-EVO Motherboard

OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB

Am I making a huge mistake not going for the 2500K? I think I'd be happy with just the turbo mode of the 2500, and the K verison will end up costing me extra.

Appreciate any advice. :)

Oh yea, I also want SLI capability. Maybe one day I'll get another 480.
 
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Note that the MoBo only supports PCI-Express x4 in the second (black) x16 slot, potentially choking the bandwidth if you ever do decide to go with SLi. I believe that you'll need a P67 motherboard to take advantage of dual x8 mode, though you'll want to check that.

Apart from that niggle there doesn't appear to be any glaring issue as far as I know, but I'm hardly an expert :)
 
Well, the K does allow you massive overclocking capabilities - a free easy upgrade when you see frame rates start to drop. It's also very easy on SB - you only need to change two things. But if you really don't want to overclock then the 2500 will see you through fine.

That motherboard doesn't support "true" SLI, which will bottleneck the cards greatly.

The HDD you've specced is also very very sloooo...... Zzzz.... Zzzz - swap it out for this - not only is it the fastest mechanical HDD around but its also cheaper! :)

What kind of budget are you looking at? The only real way of getting SLI and SB together is going with the P67 chipset - which as you know is more costly.

Using the same GTX480, and a 2500 the total comes to £565:

Asus GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Far Cry 2 £199.98
(£166.65) £199.98
(£166.65)
Intel Core i5-2500 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £169.99
(£141.66) £169.99
(£141.66)
Asus P8P67-M PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard ** B3 REVISION ** £124.98
(£104.15) £124.98
(£104.15)
OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £28.99
(£24.16) £28.99
(£24.16)
Sub Total : £461.61
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £94.22
Total : £565.33

If you went with a slightly lower spec graphics card, like a GTX470 then its slightly more in-line with what your spec cost:

MSI GeForce GTX 470 Twin Frozr II 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £179.99
(£149.99) £179.99
(£149.99)
Intel Core i5-2500 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £169.99
(£141.66) £169.99
(£141.66)
Asus P8P67-M PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard ** B3 REVISION ** £124.98
(£104.15) £124.98
(£104.15)
OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £28.99
(£24.16) £28.99
(£24.16)
Sub Total : £444.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £90.89
Total : £545.34
 
Oh, tbh I think you need to accommodate W7 64bit in there - 32bit won't let you use all 4GB of RAM, more like 3.5 (including how much Windows hogs :p)

What resolution do you game at btw?
 
Cheers guys, didn't notice that about the Motherboard! I've gone for the P67 and HDD that you've recommended Cookeh. Thanks for pointing that out, I've always had bad luck with HD's.

I game at 1920x1080, which is one of the reasons I went towards the 480 tbh (plus read some nice reviews on it... except the heating problems.)

About the RAM; I've read that most 1155's should be running with v1.50, and the RAM you specced is 1.55-1.65 - do you think I should get this instead for the lower voltage? Or doesn't it matter?

Argh! Can't decide if I should just go the extra mile and get the 2500k.

Ahhh, I'll go for the 2500k. Plus I get Shogun 2, quite liked the total war games.
 
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RAM I specced should be perfectly fine - but feel free to get the platinum - its the same price :p

I hope you didn't buy already :( I used the wrong board - well, you can do SLI on it, but its asymmetrical... (I can't get on any other website than this, and foolishly asked a guy clueless about PCs to get me a link to the the stuff I said - I didn't specify the ATX version). For proper 8x/8x symmetrical SLI, you'll need this board or this board - please note the latter board is a B3 revision so it's immune to the USB2.0 failures affecting 5% of all H/P67 chipsets.
 
I have the caviar blue hdd which was originally specd into this build. Can u give an idea how much faster In real noticeable performance terms the seagate barracuda is? Might be worth thirty quid at some point!?
 
Sorry iCeh - will teach me to do it myself next time.

This is what I meant: :(


Asus GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Far Cry 2
(£166.65) £199.98

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM
(£134.99) £161.99

Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION **
(£116.66) £139.99

OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Ultra Low Voltage Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1600C9ELV4GK)
(£24.99) £29.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS)
(£24.16) £28.99

Intel Official i7/i5/i3 CPU Cooler (Socket 1155/1156)
(£0.82) £0.98

Sub Total : £468.27
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £95.55
Total : £573.32
 
Tazzfalcon said:
I have the caviar blue hdd which was originally specd into this build. Can u give an idea how much faster In real noticeable performance terms the seagate barracuda is? Might be worth thirty quid at some point!?
Click to expand...

I can't link you to it, for reasons already mentioned.

But its on a website called xzibitlabs :)
 
Gammawolf said:
Free to the tune of £20 :P
Click to expand...

Aye, its £22 more for the retail 2500K vs the 2500, however you do get Shogun 2 with the 2500K (retails on steam for £29.99). So if you were considering getting the game anyway then its pretty much the same price and you get a better CPU.

Also, if he goes for the OEM version (no heatsink and 1 year warranty vs 3 years with the retail), the 2500K OEM CPU is a bit cheaper than the retail 2500. I think this is what Cookeh was getting at (since he picked the OEM CPU and a £1 stock you would get with the retail version).

Personally I would strongly suggest going with the 2500K. Even if you don't plan to overclock right now - you always have the option in the future when you need more speed. With a good £30 air cooler you can expect to get this CPU up to ~4.5GHz. Also, due to the overclocking ability - the resale value of the 2500K will be substantially higher than the 2500.
 
cmndr_andi said:
Personally I would strongly suggest going with the 2500K. Even if you don't plan to overclock right now - you always have the option in the future when you need more speed. With a good £30 air cooler you can expect to get this CPU up to ~4.5GHz. Also, due to the overclocking ability - the resale value of the 2500K will be substantially higher than the 2500.
Click to expand...

Yea, I've decided to go with what he has shown. Guess in the near future I can get a decent cooler and another 480 for a cheap upgrade like you say. :)
 
Also, if you want to ever overclock in the future - then you want to get a P67 motherboard. H67 boards can't overclock.

Also, if you want to run dual 480s in the future (in SLI) then you will want to go for a P67 board (no H67 boards can do SLI), one that supports SLI and one that can run the main PCIe ports at x8/x8 speeds (the cheaper ones are limited to x16/x4, which is not ideal).

The Asus P8P67 PRO picked out by Cookeh fits all these conditions and is a nice board all-round at a good price.
 
Need some advice; I installed this today but the monitor will not power up, I've changed to my old card and it works just fine - reckon the card is dead? The fan is spinning, and I've plugged all the required power cables in the card.

PSU is OCZ 700w btw.
 
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