Need advice - Been out the loop a while

greymack

greymack

greymack

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Hi Folks
Appreciate a lot of people ask similar questions on the forums but I have been out the PC upgrade loop for a bout 4 years now and i don't really know what I'm looking at any more.
This Christmas I'm allowed to do a bit of an upgrade so firstly here is my current spec:
Case -Silverstone fortress FT-01
CPU - Intel Core i7-920 DO
Cooler - Corsair H-50 i think it's called (self contained water cooler)
M/Board - Asus P6T Delux V2
Ram - Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D - 6GB
Hard drive - samsung F1 terrabyte
SSD - OCZ from about 2 years ago and it's 120Gb
Graphics - Nvidia MSI 570
Sound - X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro
Windows 7

My feeling is case is fine, as are graphics and sound card.

I currently have windows booting on the SSD and it can handle that fine along with a host of apps and programs however everything else is on the old drive including my steam folder.
So I think i'm looking for advice on CPU/M-Board/Ram - whats the best bang for buck these days. Also need advice on hard drives as my current one runs on the slower (is it sata 3?) and new m-boards have faster connections? (sata 6?)

Sorry if it's a bit of rambling questions, appreciate your help.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £108.98
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £29.99
Total : £318.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).




SATA has gone from SATAII (3Gps) to SATAIII (6Gps). The motherboard specced has SATAIII ports but you'll need a SATAIII SSD, like this one:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128D/EU) £86.99
Total : £95.69 (includes shipping : £7.25).



As for your H50, have you got a 1156 adapter for it? It will work with 1155 socket too. If you get 2 good fans for it you can have a push/pull setup and it should run amazingly well.
 
Thanks for the advice
I have taken a not of the suggested parts.
Just through curiosity how big a leap is to go from the i7 i had to this i5?
And is that i5 currently the best bang for buck if you like processor?

As for SSD's i may need two. Buy a new 128gb for windows and also a 256 for my steam games and then sell my older SSD as it won't run on sata III.

And my god how cheap has ram got????
 
I think what Stulid is trying to say is it's not worth the upgrade if you can gain the extra performance from overclocking. That money would be much better spent on a GPU if you want to game.

I can't imagine your system will bottleneck a new GPU even with a mild overclock.

:EDIT: Ninja'd :D
 
I see what your saying guys, my apologies.

One of the reasons i was considering the upgrade route was because i had been reading about the drop in ssd prices and this encouraged me to consider getting a 2nd ssd for the rest of my system but of course with my current set up i cannot get the best out of the modern ssd's due to my motherboard only allowing sataII. Also a new motherboard would allow an upgrade to usb 3.
But i take on board your points and perhaps i should hold fire for now.
As for upgrading my graphics card, well i have a 570 and it runs everything i have, i'm sure the 670 for example is good but i don't see it being a game changer for me.

Perhaps i can ask santa for a new mobile phone instead ;)
 
greymack said:
I see what your saying guys, my apologies.

One of the reasons i was considering the upgrade route was because i had been reading about the drop in ssd prices and this encouraged me to consider getting a 2nd ssd for the rest of my system but of course with my current set up i cannot get the best out of the modern ssd's due to my motherboard only allowing sataII. Also a new motherboard would allow an upgrade to usb 3.
But i take on board your points and perhaps i should hold fire for now.
As for upgrading my graphics card, well i have a 570 and it runs everything i have, i'm sure the 670 for example is good but i don't see it being a game changer for me.

Perhaps i can ask santa for a new mobile phone instead ;)
Click to expand...

I'd wait this generation out if I were you, if you want some more space and faster (SATA3) speeds...Consider buying another identical SSD and setting them up in RAID 0. It'll be fairly cheap and easy to do, althrough there is a big difference in speed - practical use you'll barely see any difference.

The 570 is a very capable card (I have one) and it pretty much runs everything maxed with good FPS. Not much point in jumping to the 600 series for now. :)
 
Oh well thats the pc upgrade off the list for this year.

Another route i may examine is an upgrade to my monitor. Now i only got new monitor 2 years ago, a 22inch samsung. It didn't cost much, little over £100 and it's fine. It's not IPS it's the other sort so sort of cheap and cheerfull but it's never let me down.
A 24" monitor does interest me but what would the default resoltion be on that size, if it's still 1980x1020 then there's not much point if i it's a larger resolution then all of a sudden would my 570 handle games played at the higher native?

I'm possibly now in the wrong section discussing monitors but hey if you guys have any advice im all ears.
 
24" is normally 1080p or 1200p, what could be worthwhile is looking into a 120Hz monitor. Which will allow you to show up to 120fps through the monitor, not only will this future proof you it will allow for 3D too.

Seems like it could be a good route for you. Also bear in mind you could also pickup another 570 for a reasonable price (Most seem to be going for around the £120 mark) which will give you a nice boost in performance later down the road. This is dependent on the PSU you have though.
 
appreciate all the advice, I'll have a wee look at those monitors failing that I think i might just end up getting a new roccat mouse and mat :)
 
I'd be tempted to agree on the motherboard etc front. If you REALLY want, get a slot in card for sata 3. They aren't amazing (or weren't) but it's only for a while.

Haswell will bring USB3 into the chipset as well as thunderbolt at the very least along with a performance boost of course so while there's always something to wait for it would at least give a decent step up system wise. Thunderbolt is quite likely to be a future "bandwidth heavy" external connector, USB3 kept for simpler stuff. With the consoles getting a bit long in the tooth there's not been that much movement on the PC front, once the next gen consoles get here you can expect the lazy ports to need more power so the upgrade push will ramp up again :)
 
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