Prebuilt v DIY,,,,,,,Intel v AMD???

Phil2112 · 11 Sep 2013 at 15:17

Hi guys,,,,been thinking about getting a new pc for a while,,,big problem I have £400 tops to spend so my first question is prebuld or DIY??.
I have never assembled a pc but looking at You tube videos it does'nt seem that hard. If I was to go DIY I presume I can use some bits off my old pc,,,the full spec of it is as follows,,,
- Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)
- Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI PCI-Express
- Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
- LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive
- PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk II Series 600w Power Supply
Antec 900 case
The power supply is only 8 months old which I fitted when the orignal one died.I will transfer my copy of Windows 7 from my old pc to the new one.
The other question is Intel or AMD???,,,I have looked at 2 systems for my budget,,,they are,,
Primo 130i Intel Core i3-3220 3.3GHz the AMD version
Primo 150a AMD A10-5700 3.4GHz
I use my pc for light gaming ,, Starcraft 2,,,,Crysis 2 Football Manager 13 and some word processing. Thanks in advance for your advice

Hyburnate · 11 Sep 2013 at 16:14

You could use the Blu-Ray reader and Hard Drive, but everything else including a keyboard you should buy new

JonJ678 · 12 Sep 2013 at 16:14

The power supply is excellent, keep that too. Case, mouse, keyboard will also work fine in a new build.

You could:
A/ upgrade graphics card
B/ upgrade cpu, motherboard, ram
C/ upgrade both

AMD is much slower than Intel but also a bit cheaper.

The bundles may be a reasonable halfway house for you - OcUK pick motherboard/cpu/ram, plug them into each other and post them.

Phil2112 · 13 Sep 2013 at 07:18

JonJ678 said:
The power supply is excellent, keep that too. Case, mouse, keyboard will also work fine in a new build.

You could:
A/ upgrade graphics card
B/ upgrade cpu, motherboard, ram
C/ upgrade both

AMD is much slower than Intel but also a bit cheaper.

The bundles may be a reasonable halfway house for you - OcUK pick motherboard/cpu/ram, plug them into each other and post them.

ok,,,so if I was to upgrade my cpu/motherboard and ram first that would fit inside my Antec 900 case,,,,is there a type of motherboard that I need for that case or will any of them fit?.