Looking to upgrade.

kaelyn

kaelyn

kaelyn

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Joined
4 Nov 2009
Posts
25
Current system is:

AMD Phenom x4 965BE cooled with corsair h100
Gigabyte 990FXA UD3
Asus Direct CuII Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 ti
8gb Corsair vengeance 1600 RAM
1tb hard-drive and 120gb SSD
Bequiet pure power 630w PSU
NZXT phantom 410 chassis.

I'm ideally looking for a system to play games at a decentish framerate, my current game of choice is ffxiv but there are other new games I play as well such as dayz. I can salvage parts from my old pc but would prefer not to as it is probably easier to sell it whole. I also do some photography so anything that will help with photoshop etc would be great. I have been looking at a new monitor, my current one works fine but the 144hz ones have been tempting me, looking for good colour reproduction with a fast response time, this can however wait til a later time if it doesnt fit within budget.

I would like quite a quiet system, not super quiet but I recently tried a sapphire R9 280 x and have had to return it due to the awful fan noise so please bear that in mind if you choose to help me :)

I am completely willing to switch to intel and AMD graphics if they are better value for money, I'm not very loyal at all :P I've been looking at new cases, quite fancy the prodigy series, even if it means sacrificing my sound card!

Budget is probably up to £1200 at a stretch, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
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Thank you for your advice, does anyone have experience with that card? Is it noisy with 3 fans?

Would it be worth upping my RAM as well?
 
Slightly over your bugdet. However getting Free Ram with GPU which you can sell to gt below the budget. Can aloway get smaller cheaper case or cheaper cooler as well

YOUR BASKET
1 x EPIC POWER BUNDLE: Intel 4790K, Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7, Kingston 16GB 2400MHz Kit, Superflower 1000W Platinum PSU & FREE STUFF!! **£50 SAVING** £597.97
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE AMD 8GB 2400MHz Memory Kit £299.99
1 x NZXT Phantom 530 Full Tower Gaming Case - Black £104.99
1 x NZXT KRAKEN X40 AIO Water Cooling Unit - 140mm £78.98
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Desktop Kit - (MZ-7TE120KW) £77.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £56.99
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24F1ST SATA ReWriter - Black (Retail) £17.99
Total : £1,234.90 (includes shipping : ).

 
pigeonguyuk said:
Slightly over your bugdet. However getting Free Ram with GPU which you can sell to gt below the budget. Can aloway get smaller cheaper case or cheaper cooler as well

YOUR BASKET
1 x EPIC POWER BUNDLE: Intel 4790K, Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7, Kingston 16GB 2400MHz Kit, Superflower 1000W Platinum PSU & FREE STUFF!! **£50 SAVING** £597.97
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE AMD 8GB 2400MHz Memory Kit £299.99
1 x NZXT Phantom 530 Full Tower Gaming Case - Black £104.99
1 x NZXT KRAKEN X40 AIO Water Cooling Unit - 140mm £78.98
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Desktop Kit - (MZ-7TE120KW) £77.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £56.99
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24F1ST SATA ReWriter - Black (Retail) £17.99
Total : £1,234.90 (includes shipping : ).

Click to expand...

This is a complete waste when like RJC said he she could get a really capable machine by dropping in an 8320, R9 290 and possibly a CPU cooler. The motherboard is more than capable of taking the 8320 in this instance, really not worth spending all of that
 
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RJC said:
Personally the only items I would change is the CPU & GPU.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 OC WindForce 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-R929OC-4GD) £305.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £95.99
Total : £401.98 (includes shipping : ).

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+1 for a CPU and GPU upgrade, if that card is a bit noisy have a look at the 290's as the DCU seems to get a good sound review ?? ...what is the fan setup on your CPU Rad ? if you have the room you could add push pull to help with the OC as you could put a good OC on the 8320.
 
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Shivy011 said:
This is a complete waste when like RJC said he could get a really capable machine by dropping in an 8320, R9 290 and possibly a CPU cooler. The motherboard is more than capable of taking the 8320 in this instance, really not worth spending all of that
Click to expand...

I've decided to go the recommended upgrade route and placed my order just now, thanks for your advice, you've saved me a lot of money!

My next purchase will be a nice monitor to make the most of my extra graphics power, but that can wait a little bit.

I'm a girl, btw :P
 
:o Sorry, explains the name :P Did you get a CPU cooler too? Might be a good idea

EDIT: See you already have a H100, that'll be fine - fail
 
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If you over clock your 8320 you might want to change the fan setup on the cooler but let us know how you get on once its arrived and installed ...
 
Well it's currently cooled by two corsair sp120s blowing cool air down onto the rad from outside the case, I think I would struggle having push pull without using some thin fans or modding the top cover of the case, there is quite tight size constraints.

My current cpu sits at 30degrees idle but I haven't had it overclocked for a while as I had no need, I do understand that the new cpu appears to use twice the power though so I expect it to run hotter.
 
You might want to take a look at a push based configuration from the inside out in that case, since the SP 120's have a high static pressure. I recently got a H100 and played around with my fan setup and found when gaming or having any real GPU load using the fans in a push configuration blowing air from inside the case > Rad > Outside of case got the best ambient temperature since they worked as extractor fans rather than only having a rear fan for extraction.

Also for a push pull configuration which I am running now you might want to look at the slimline fans some companies do. Like:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-004-RT&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=4
or
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-042-SY&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=4
 
I did actually have them on push until this weekend when I cleaned the case out and thought I would change them around, I'll have to swap them back :P This is how it stood before I changed it:

FiuaAi4l.jpg

Those fans do look pretty awesome, I'll have to have a play around and see what works for me.
 
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