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Needs some guidance.

bigdave2k9

bigdave2k9

bigdave2k9

Associate
Joined
10 Nov 2009
Posts
118
Location
Doncaster
Its been a whille since my last visit, life issues have been causing problems, but now thats past, ive forseen it to be upgrade time.

The problem im currently seeing is i dont know where to head anymore.
Yes to be straight up im a AMD fanboy, been using AMD for over 10 years and never had an issue with them.

At present im using the following:

AMD Phenom II x4 965 AM2 (Clocked only when needed)
Gigabyte mobo (Cant even give you a model without going in the loft, my cooler covers it up)
4Gb of 1066mhz Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM (i would be happy with 4 more GB but i aint paying £60 - £80 for it second hand off ebay, as i cant buy it anywhere)
Crutial M4 120gb SSD
850watt OCZ PSU
Gigabyte 450 OC graphics card
Corsair A70 CPU Cooler.

Im looking at upgrading the bare bones, the mobo, cpu and ram.
Given a respectable budget of £600 including i believe i priced up £100 worth of watercooling parts i need for my build, what options would you suggest.

I would prefer to stay with AMD, but the force of the darkside (Intel) is strong.
The rig would be used for gaming, just got MoH today, not installed it yet, but it ran BF3 very well on up'd settings.

I shall now leave the floor open to opinions. Just be honest with me, it takes a lot of insult me.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
For your usage and budget, I honestly think you'd best just get a i5 3570K, a £25-£35 CPU cooler, Z77 board and 8GB DDR3 1600MHz ram for around £300 ish, and then use the remaining budget on a 7950.
Click to expand...

Would you mind linking me the board and chip you have in mind, as i aint got my head around intel parts yet.
 
Had a little luck, i think i can scrap together a few more pennys but ive kept it to £500 for the base 3 pieces still.
This is what i have come up with.

552357_10151245132266066_564849114_n.jpg
 
BrianB said:
I recommend Gigabyte UP4-TH if you have that kind of money to spend, has very good power components, very good chokes they run at low temps, also has thunderbolt. That ram is a ripoff imo, also over 8GB is overkill for gaming at the moment.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-405-GI

Overclocks like a beast and with latest BIOS is even better.
Click to expand...

A good old trust Gigabyte, got 3 of there mobos in use now and never had an issue.

16gb ram, the amount of times i run out of ram is unreal, so i think the term is "be prepared" lmao
 
GX-275-AS_44581_350.jpg


Ill take a guess... over kill? Least it would last me some years before the next needed upgrade.

Edited this post instead of making another one.

Just installed MoH War Fighter, and well it spat out Ultra, and im suprised but its struggling with High settings..... Defo time for a new card aswell.

Budget is now £700 after doing some number crunching.
 
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BrianB said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus HD 7950 DirectCU II V2 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE FARCRY3, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs & 20% off MOH Warfighter PC Games £257.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £167.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E CPU Cooler (Socket LGA 2011/1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3/FM1) £58.79
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £25.99
Total : £690.74 (includes shipping : £10.00).



YUM YUM YUM! No need to spend this much on a motherboard, but it's a lovely board no doubt, I love mine and at the price range I wouldn't really consider much else other than http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-219-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2261 because it look's so sweet.

I think the Asus is a bit expensive for a 7950, but I like it thanks to the Asus backplate it comes with, the DirectCUII is a pretty good cooler too. Triple slot though like my Accelero cooler.

I have 8Gb ram, playing BF3 it never reaches anywhere near 8Gb, and that's with a 1Gb RAMDisk running my pagefile and caches.

With cooler you can usually easily reach 4.4-4.5GHz with 3570K, though tbh your cooler you have now should take it to 4.0-4.2GHz without much voltage increase at all, if any.
Click to expand...

I like the first one more, id save £60 straight off with the cooler as id use mine untill i know how it fairs up, its been a cracking cooler so far so why change what works.
The gigabyte board is where i would more likely go over the MSI as ive no experience with MSI, so im more torn to what i know and trust.

Cheers for them Brain mate.
 
Nearly ready to drop my order in now, just a few little bits to tidy up.

One of which is the ram, as posted above is the crucial balistic tracer ram, looks good, good price but at present they have the 1866mhz sticks cheaper than the 1600mhz sticks.

Is it worth saving a few quid and getting the higher rated ones?

Quick edit:

Im sat on youtube aswell looking into this, but what do people think of using the mSata slot for the OS?? Worth doing or a waste of money?

Pro's and Con's?
 
Last edited:
JonSmith said:
Avoid using the msata slot, mSATA SSDs are more expensive and the mSATA port is also usually just SATAII so you lose sequential throughput compared to a 2.5inch drive in a SATAIII port.

About the RAM, the speed isn't so important as the profile of the RAM, the kingston RAM is normal profile RAM so will have no problem with any heatsink, the crucial RAM has a slightly increased height.
Click to expand...

So another Crucial M4 SSD it is...

Now to find out what the size difference is between the normal profile and these, as m A70 is low, as my current set up means i can only use slots 3 and 4 because its high profile dominator ram >_>
 
BrianB said:
Nice! :D You won't be dissapointed. Currently testing my new 3570K in my UP4 TH.

4.6GHz (via turbo core)
Normal Voltage +0.030V offset voltage (Extreme Load Line Calibration)
1.5V DDR 2133MHz 9-11-11-21 T1 TRFC 96 (Extreme Load Line Calibration)
1.050 VTT (Extreme Load Line Calibration)
1.500 PLL (PLL overvolt disabled)
Only C1E enabled (EIST, Thermal, C3/C6 disabled)

Max temp so far 77C. The VRM on this board is only at 67C, other boards reach much higher temps with poor power package.

4.5GHz was better, 1.25V max temp 70C. 60C VRM.

By the way I am jelly, you will have that ASUS card with the lovely backplate. :) I had to strip my 7970 because its stock cooling was terrible, has an accelero now which is very good and silent but not that pretty.

For your DDR3 you should be able to choose an XMP (Xtreme Memory Profile) in bios for 1600Mhz.
Click to expand...

Shall be saving up the pennys again, and getting the water blocks and a new res, then stripping out my fractal r3 and moving it all into there, right now i guess my asaka eclispe shall do the job.
 
Right then, alls ordered, but before i dismantle the one im using, i would like to be able to do a comparision of before and after to see what sort of performance improvements im getting, what software is there that i could use to do this?
 
407717_10151251246666066_112995254_n.jpg


This is why i love OverClockers....

Would have been a OC cup, but was smashed on delivery, within 5mins had a new one ready to be sent out.

Will make a little project log up once i start to assemble it all at the weekend, just waiting on the compressor to be dropped off so i can clean my cases out.
 
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