Replacing guts with AMD for about £450. Advice appreciated.

toonfool

toonfool

toonfool

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12 Feb 2010
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Hello all.

I'm replacing the guts of my son's machine and would appreciate some advice. It's currently...

Antec 300 case
OCZ Stealth Xtream 500W PSU
Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L socket 775 board
2.4GHz Pentium D (I think)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
2 Gig of DDR2
500Gig HDDs x2
Sapphire 5770
Acer X203 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor 1600x900

There's a budget of £450~, which will need to include a wired keyboard, some 2.1 speakers and one of those massive mouse mats that cover your whole desk (I can't wait to see that). The budget is actually £500 but a desk is needed too, the wife is browsing the local charity shops as I type. Anyway, we'll need a motherboard, RAM and a processor. I reckon AMD is the way to go, for incremental upgrades. We did an upgrade early last year to get on to the 775s (I'm carrying on with mine with an E8400 for now) and feel like we're stuck in a dead end.

I'm thinking...

Motherboard - Crosshair IV - £130~
Processor - Phenom II x6 1100T - £152~
RAM - Frankly, I've no idea when it comes to RAM. The subject just confuses me.
Keyboard, speakers, mat and delivery - £90~ ?

That leaves about £70 for the RAM. What should I go for in that area? Also, have I made a schoolboy error in the other points I've covered?
 
think i've covered all of it, to reduce it could go for 4gb of memory and not 8gb:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £173.99 (£144.99)

Asrock Z68 PRO3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £99.98 (£83.32)

Logitech Z323 2.1 Speaker System (980-000355) £43.99 (£36.66)

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £41.99 (£34.99)

Logitech K340 Wireless Keyboard (920-001979) £32.99 (£27.49)

Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99 (£21.66)

Boogie Bug AimB.Pad XL Gaming Mouse Surface Boogie Bug AimB.Pad XL Gaming Mouse Surface £15.98(£13.32)

Sub Total : £362.43
Shipping : £11.25
VAT : £74.74
Total : £448.42
 
Actually an Intel i5K build would make more sense fella.

That crosshair mobo is AM3+ so will take the new AMD bulldozer cpus but they still arent released and we dont have a confirmed release date.

I will rightly or wrongly assume he will be gaming and that x6 is pointless as games wont use any more than 4 cores. If you are determined to go AMD just get the 955BE they can be overclocked very easily just by upping the multiplier.

For RAM if he is gaming 4GB is enough. Look in the dual channel PC3 12800 section. The corsair XMS3 is on offer for £25ish this week.

I'm sure you will see plenty of guys spec intel builds, so i'm not going to. Any questions post back
 
Plenty of advice will tell you to go with Intel 1155 socket as the fastest gaming system. If you want to go AMD and I cannot fault that, choose a 990 chipset to upgrade to Bulldozer later or sooner (AM3+).

The 1090T or 955BE will be more cost effective than the 1100T in the short term. Any DDR3 12800 (1600MHz) should be compatible.

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Hmm, lots of people pointing in the direction of the 2500k. I suppose it would be futureproof for a couple of years without upgrading it at all. I think I'll go for it.

Thanks for helping me out.
 
No worries fella.

I would suggest a Z series mobo. It has the overclocking of the p series (the i5K is the overclockabubble CPU) coupled with the onboard graphics of the H series. Personally i would opt for a Z series which has the same video output as your monitor, some only have 1 the HDMI.

This isnt essential but can make your life much easier should you have a problem in the future with your dedicated cgfx card. You can remove it and use the mobos IGP to confirm if the gfx card is faulty. Silly lil thing really but will certainly help with troubleshooting ;)
 
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