PC upgrade spec, looking for some feedback

wenchkin · 27 Jan 2013 at 19:37

Old PC is near death, so I'm looking to upgrade. Main function is for digital graphics work (some 3D but mostly 2D) as well as running Second Life, and general gaming. My OS will be assorted flavours of Linux.

I have a large Lian Li case that my existing build is in and that has a pretty new beefy PSU so I don't really need to touch those now.

I've always gone AMD and Nvidia so happy to stick with those. They've always worked well for me especially on Linux, so I don't really mind if I'm not the fastest compared to some Intel users. I just want something that works and won't need re-doing for a while.

I've looked for what I think is best within my budget (£500 or so). But I haven't really kept up with all the new wizardry that's available, so I don't know if I'm missing any geeky weaknesses in this build or if it plain won't work lol.

This is my shopping list:

Motherboard: ASUS SABERTOOTH AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 PCI-Express ATX Motherboard
Memory: 32GB Mushkin Enhanced BlackLine Frostbyte #994069 (4x8GB) 1600 (PC3-12800) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM CAS 9-9-9-24 1.5V
Processor: AMD (Piledriver) FX-8350 4.00GHz (4.20GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 8-Core Processor
Graphics: GIGABYTE WindForce GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Any thoughts?

zakblood · 27 Jan 2013 at 20:40

a i5 build maybe better, is £500 your max budget and only those 4 bits needed?

wenchkin · 27 Jan 2013 at 20:56

zakblood said:
a i5 build maybe better, is £500 your max budget and only those 4 bits needed?

Yes, I'm upgrading and using the working parts from my old build, so just need to get a few parts. £500's the budget I'm hoping to stick with.

The other option I'm considering is keeping the 8gb memory I have from my current build and using that for a bit longer. Then I can go for a more expensive graphics card and slot in more memory later if necessary.

The other card I was considering was this one:
ASUS GeForce GTX 660TI Direct CU II DC2O 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

dacads · 27 Jan 2013 at 20:58

Is 32GB really necessary? I thought 16GB would be a more realistic option

An i5 would be better for gaming not multi-threaded apps

wenchkin · 28 Jan 2013 at 10:43

dacads said:
Is 32GB really necessary? I thought 16GB would be a more realistic option

An i5 would be better for gaming not multi-threaded apps

I realise I could get away with less memory, the 32gb ended up on my list purely because it wasn't a huge leap in price to go with the extra memory. It's more of a "want" than a need really

(basically any excuse lol)

I'm aware the Intel option is probably going to be faster, but that's ok. I don't mind being a bit slower on AMD and Nvidia components. I've always had long lasting systems on those two and they played perfectly with linux so a performance hit isn't a huge issue here.