New year upgrade.

iaminvaderman · 28 Dec 2014 at 20:55

Right guys, thought I'd stick another request for tips here. Looking to get a new PC in the new year, and would like some advice on how best to do it.

My current spec is as follows:

AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition
GeForce GTX 460 SE
8GB DDR3 RAM (Samsung)
ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 motherboard.

Budget would be around £1000, and that would be purely for the machine, as I currently have a mouse, keyboard, monitor and speakers that work fine.

I've had a bit of a look around and could go with gut on most things, but my main queries are regarding the processor (Intel or AMD) and the motherboard.

Any questions I'll answer as best I can.

Hope you guys can come up with some good suggestions.

valkynaz · 28 Dec 2014 at 21:11

iaminvaderman said:
Right guys, thought I'd stick another request for tips here. Looking to get a new PC in the new year, and would like some advice on how best to do it.

My current spec is as follows:

AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition
GeForce GTX 460 SE
8GB DDR3 RAM (Samsung)
ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 motherboard.

Budget would be around £1000, and that would be purely for the machine, as I currently have a mouse, keyboard, monitor and speakers that work fine.

I've had a bit of a look around and could go with gut on most things, but my main queries are regarding the processor (Intel or AMD) and the motherboard.

Any questions I'll answer as best I can.

Hope you guys can come up with some good suggestions.

I would take out the competitor's name as any linking/referring to hardware competitors is restricted.

Here is a decent upgrade:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £275.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £179.99
1 x Asus Maximus VII Ranger Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £129.95
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £112.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £88
Total : £796.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).

You've got a good CPU and cooler allowing you to easily overclock to 4.5Ghz+. The R9 290X is an amazing price/performance ratio, and it will max out all of the latest games.

You can reuse your Samsung memory (I suspect it may be Samsung Green you have?), case, power supply, and optical drive. This will save you a fair bit.

Echowez · 28 Dec 2014 at 21:15

valkynaz said:
I would take out the competitor's name as any linking/referring to hardware competitors is restricted.

Here is a decent upgrade:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £275.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £179.99
1 x Asus Maximus VII Ranger Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £129.95
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £112.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £88
Total : £796.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).

You've got a good CPU and cooler allowing you to easily overclock to 4.5Ghz+. The R9 290X is an amazing price/performance ratio, and it will max out all of the latest games.

You can reuse your Samsung memory (I suspect it may be Samsung Green you have?), case, power supply, and optical drive. This will save you a fair bit.

There is no discount for end of year promo?

iaminvaderman · 28 Dec 2014 at 21:21

valkynaz said:
I would take out the competitor's name as any linking/referring to hardware competitors is restricted.

Here is a decent upgrade:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £275.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £179.99
1 x Asus Maximus VII Ranger Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £129.95
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £112.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £88
Total : £796.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).

You've got a good CPU and cooler allowing you to easily overclock to 4.5Ghz+. The R9 290X is an amazing price/performance ratio, and it will max out all of the latest games.

You can reuse your Samsung memory (I suspect it may be Samsung Green you have?), case, power supply, and optical drive. This will save you a fair bit.

Looks good. I'm assuming 8GB RAM is still going to be more than enough for games such as Far Cry 4?

I forgot to add 2 things. Firstly, that I'd like to keep a 1TB hard drive, as I use my PC for work too, and I have a lot of music. I also have an external HD.

Secondly, apologies for the competitor name, its because I was thinking about it being built. I've never built a PC before, and would probably feel safer having it built and pre-loaded, however if people have good tutorials etc then I'm happy to have a look.

RJC · 28 Dec 2014 at 21:27

valkynaz can you edit your post as you quoted the competitor name please

iaminvaderman · 28 Dec 2014 at 21:28

Sorry for that guysssssss

RJC · 28 Dec 2014 at 21:35

YOUR BASKET
1 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 970 OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £188.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £92.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £86.99
1 x Cooler Master Nepton 240M AIO Cooling Solution £79.99
1 x BitFenix Ronin Tower Case - Black £69.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £59.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
Total : £954.29 (includes shipping : £17.85).

Use SFCASE at the check out and get free delivery, also you get £22.50 from Gigabyte.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/LP/gigabyte-cashback-promo.php

valkynaz · 29 Dec 2014 at 02:39

iaminvaderman said:
Looks good. I'm assuming 8GB RAM is still going to be more than enough for games such as Far Cry 4?

I forgot to add 2 things. Firstly, that I'd like to keep a 1TB hard drive, as I use my PC for work too, and I have a lot of music. I also have an external HD.

Secondly, apologies for the competitor name, its because I was thinking about it being built. I've never built a PC before, and would probably feel safer having it built and pre-loaded, however if people have good tutorials etc then I'm happy to have a look.

8GB will be fine for your needs. I don't think any of the games I play even hit 4GB of usage. For example, heavily modded Skyrim never goes above 2.5GB for me.

Building your own PC is actually very easy and quite fun. Although if you do not wish to do this yourself while also wanting to order a new case and such, you could ask OcUK to build the computer for you (although this will be at a cost).

You can easily sub in your old hard drive. It's just that a solid state drive is such an amazing addition to your build which you will never look back on. A solid state drive is super fast compared to a hard drive and it is advised you use it for your OS and regularly used programs such as Chrome/Firefox and Microsoft office.

Danny75 · 29 Dec 2014 at 04:41

The second cashback promo expired on the 27th December unfortunately. There may be another coming up, but who knows when exactly.

The SFCASE free shipping code for any SuperFlower PSU + any case expires on the 31st December so you can still take advantage of that during checkout.

iaminvaderman · 29 Dec 2014 at 10:15

valkynaz said:
8GB will be fine for your needs. I don't think any of the games I play even hit 4GB of usage. For example, heavily modded Skyrim never goes above 2.5GB for me.

Building your own PC is actually very easy and quite fun. Although if you do not wish to do this yourself while also wanting to order a new case and such, you could ask OcUK to build the computer for you (although this will be at a cost).

You can easily sub in your old hard drive. It's just that a solid state drive is such an amazing addition to your build which you will never look back on. A solid state drive is super fast compared to a hard drive and it is advised you use it for your OS and regularly used programs such as Chrome/Firefox and Microsoft office.

Ok, that's reassuring with the RAM. The hard drive I currently have is a Samsung HD 103SJ SATA disk drive. Is the Seagate still the better one, or could I theoretically keep the current one if I were to build it myself.

And do you know of any good resources/tutorials on how to build a PC? I've always wanted to but time has been the main drawback - I start a new job next week, and not sure how much down time I'll have.