Out of touch, don't know what kind of power I need

Lyon85

Lyon85

Lyon85

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I'm not sure how long I've had my current system, it feels like 5 or 6 years and every time I say to myself that I need an upgrade a voice of reason inside says that I'm doing fine with what I have. However, last week I started getting BSODs and hangs in games and yesterday my GPU has semi failed on me. It wont run games, wont even run Windows Aero. This time I just don't think I can be bothered to try and fix it, even if it's a software issue. It is time.

So, I've spent the day trying to familiarise myself with what is new, but 5 or 6 years of component ignorance is a long time. Also what I'm realising is that I'm not even a serious gamer any more, not like I was, and I was quite content with what I had before:

8800 GTS 512 OC @ 750MHz
Core 2 Duo 6300 OC @ 3GHz
4GB RAM
1TB Samsung F1 HDD
Enermax 535w PSU

So I thought maybe an i5-2500k, GTX 570, 8GB Ram would be a tasty little upgrade. But considering how content I was with this piece of arse I've been running for years do I even need that? Maybe an i3 would suffice? I just saw a deal for an GTX560 Ti for £130, I have no idea how much of an upgrade that is.

Please don't be angry with my vagueness but I'm kind of asking you to guess as to what kind of power a man like myself really needs. A guess some kind of brief would help:


  • I'm a graphic designer, reasonably fast desktop use with the Adobe Suite. Again, performance right now isn't terrible.


  • I'd like to run games like ARMA II, iRacing and Battlefield 3 fairly smoothly @ 1680 x 1050 (for now, this res is a bit irritating in Adobe CS), max graphics aren't that important to me anymore, high would be nice though. The first two games aren't that bad on this system, not by my standards.


  • I would like to reuse my case, DVD drive and if possible reuse my PSU too. Is 535w pathetic by todays standards?


  • I'm not too bothered about overclocking anymore, unless I can do what I did with this system, I got quite a performance increase especially from the CPU. If the performance to price ratio looks nice, I'll do it.


  • I want a 128GB SSD and I wan't 8GB RAM.


  • Budget is around £500, £600 at a push, but I'm interested to see what I could get under that.

Will buy/transfer the cost of your locals finest cheapest pint to helpful chaps!
 
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Arma II bogs down on an i3 2100 to 20fps in some places, and BF3 hits 35fps on some places on 64 player servers online (single player or coop is very smooth). So I would deffo go for an i5 3570k build rather than an i3 (or a 2500k as the 3570k is newer).

i5 3570k £168
8GB DDR3 Geil Black Dragon £44
Gigabyte Z77-DS3H £75
HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB £186

Total £473

An SSD would bring you over £500, which would mean a change of graphics card but the one above should last a long while if you could stretch the budget. if you get an SSD make sure it's sata3 though. If any of your graphic design software can make use of Cuda then have a look at something like a GTX 560 Ti instead.
 
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2500k is for sure more than enough for today's games :). An i7 might be better if you use a lot of Adobe editing software though.
 
SouthEastBlue said:
Arma II bogs down on an i3 2100 to 20fps in some places, and BF3 hits 35fps on some places on 64 player servers online (single player or coop is very smooth). So I would deffo go for an i5 3570k build rather than an i3 (or a 2500k as the 3570k is newer).

i5 3570k £168
8GB DDR3 Geil Black Dragon £44
Gigabyte Z77-DS3H £75
HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB £186

Total £473

An SSD would bring you over £500, which would mean a change of graphics card but the one above should last a long while if you could stretch the budget. if you get an SSD make sure it's sata3 though. If any of your graphic design software can make use of Cuda then have a look at something like a GTX 560 Ti instead.
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Cheers man, I guess I'll go the i5 route. How much better is the 3570k over the 2500k?

I believe some Adobe addons have CUDA support, nothing to get excited about though. In fact I think I remember reading something about impressive AMD support, I'll have to do some reading.

I hadn't really bothered looking at AMD for some reason but maybe it's a better bet. I'm worried about power consumption and would I right be right in thinking the HD 7850 uses less juice than the Nvidia equivalents? I'd really like to not replace my 535w PSU. Doable?

Bacon? said:
Are the parts your looking to re-use SATA?
Click to expand...

I never thought of that, is IDE extinct? If so the HDD is fine but the DVD will have to go.

Jarrod said:
2500k is for sure more than enough for today's games :). An i7 might be better if you use a lot of Adobe editing software though.
Click to expand...

I'd love an i7 but that is really pushing the budget. Are we talking big improvements?
 
Not a huge difference between the i7 and i5, just hyperthreating. Not worth it unless its within your budget.

So £500 - £600 for:

CPU
Mobo
GPU
RAM
DVD-RW

Also will you be planning on overclocking?
 
i5 3570k is better than the i5 2500k clock for clock but not by a huge amount, it also supports PCI express 3.0 with the Z77, where as I'm pretty sure the 2500k doesn't. There's a thread about it on the CPU part of this forum, and a nice post and youtube vid of the CPUs head to head at different speeds.

IDE is phased out now, so you will need a new sata based DVD/Blu Ray drive.

i7 will make a difference in rendering and such, but if it's more picture editing than video then it won't be needed especially as it's only more added expense. The i5 CPUs are very fast without hyper threading anyway.
 
2500K Retail If you want to cheapskate. Very good CPU, will do anything you ask quite well :) The 3570K has a little improvement clock-for-clock. It will also support PCIE3, however we are nowhere near maxing out PCIE2 anyway, Unless you run into VRAM issues (but faster bus speed is no substitute for lack of VRAM anyway).

IMO, either will do the job for a few years to come. The 2500K is the new Q6600.
 
Bacon? said:
Not a huge difference between the i7 and i5, just hyperthreating. Not worth it unless its within your budget.

So £500 - £600 for:

CPU
Mobo
GPU
RAM
DVD-RW

Also will you be planning on overclocking?
Click to expand...
I'm willing to overclock but I don't feel the need to take parts to the absolute limit and I'd like to keep the power consumption as low as possible.


SouthEastBlue said:
i5 3570k is better than the i5 2500k clock for clock but not by a huge amount, it also supports PCI express 3.0 with the Z77, where as I'm pretty sure the 2500k doesn't. There's a thread about it on the CPU part of this forum, and a nice post and youtube vid of the CPUs head to head at different speeds.

IDE is phased out now, so you will need a new sata based DVD/Blu Ray drive.

i7 will make a difference in rendering and such, but if it's more picture editing than video then it won't be needed especially as it's only more added expense. The i5 CPUs are very fast without hyper threading anyway.
Click to expand...
The i5 sounds fine, I don't really ever do any video. Will check out that video though. Ta.


olivier renault said:
2500K Retail If you want to cheapskate. Very good CPU, will do anything you ask quite well :) The 3570K has a little improvement clock-for-clock. It will also support PCIE3, however we are nowhere near maxing out PCIE2 anyway, Unless you run into VRAM issues (but faster bus speed is no substitute for lack of VRAM anyway).

IMO, either will do the job for a few years to come. The 2500K is the new Q6600.
Click to expand...
2500K is looking like good value to me right now. Cheers.
 
 
Would be a nice build! That Corsair ram is meant to run at 1.65v though, I'm sure Sandybridge and Ivybridge CPUs require a maximum of about 1.55v to be used with DDR3 ram. It would probably work at 1.5v 1600Mhz but it's not guaranteed, so you may have to run it at 1333Mhz with 1.5v. It was the reason I specced the Geil black dragon ram in my original post.
 
Balls, placed the order now. Can't do anything about it until I get home, would I have to cancel the entire order to change the ram?
 
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