Replacing my 5 year old PC

PMKeates

PMKeates

PMKeates

Soldato
Joined
16 Jul 2004
Posts
14,075
Hi,

I have decided to replace my 5 year old PC. Cataclysm is out soon; Diablo III and Star Wars: The Old Republic within a year. My requirements are that these games play pretty much flawlessly at high res (currently 1680x1050, probably notching up one or two shortly), max graphics, AA, AF etc. I don't want to upgrade for another 3 years at least, but I accept the graphics level maintainable for newly released games does drop off a bit.

My typical usage is Internet and music with occasional gaming. I won't be overclocking.

In November 2005 I bought:

AMD Athlon X2 4400+
2GB Corsair XMS DDR
BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC 512
DFI LANParty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert
Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB
Seasonic S12 600W
Thermalright XP-120
Vantec Stealth 120mm

Everything else is irrelevant as it's staying.

I am considering:

grab2.gif


Things of note:

There's no PSU. Should I change my 5 year old bastion of stability? It has been switched on with maybe 1 restart every few months for 5 years straight.

There's no graphics card. This is for two reasons: 1) My current BFG is unstable. It has a fault, for sure. It also has a lifetime warranty, the older super-duper-ultra-don't-need-to-register forever one. I am thinking of RMA'ing it and seeing what I get. 2) I have no friggen clue what to buy.

During the RMA period I have a backup card (GeForce 210). Am I better off buying the new card and Member's Market'ing whatever I get in RMA, and considering it a bonus?

Opinions on the build et all, please!
 
BFG dont honor their old lifetime RMA promise because they went bust on the graphics card side of things, you're gonna have to get a new GPU
 
I don't think you'll be able to do much, they went bankrupt after nvidia stopped supporting them I believe, I'm not too clued up on the whole process but I think thats the gist.
 
WOW's frame rate will benefit hugely from the high clock of CPU, so I would suggest you get a overclocked bundle:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-056-OE&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=
Currently on this week's offer at £50 off.

However, if you don't need Crossfire/SLI, I would suggest you get a i5 760 overclocked bundle instead and save yourself £100:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-023-OB&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=
The board use in the bundle does support Crossfire/SLI at x4/x4, but what it means is you can lose up to 8-9% speed on each card, so it would be better off getting a much faster single card to begin with.

Graphic card wise I would suggest you go for either:
MSI GeForce GTX 470 Twin Frozr II and overclock the nuts out of it :p
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-104-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1810
Currently on this week's offer at £25 off

Or a GTX580 if it would fit your budget.
 
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I'd spend the extra £20 and get this motherboard:
Asus X58 Sabertooth TUF Intel X58

If your going down the Nvidia route then this motherboard supports SLi so adding another card will be easy. (If/When required) Its also got some really nice features on it.

Star Wars:TOR is the mmo coming out yeah? it shouldn't be too hard on the system. But Diablo 3s multiplayer might eat graphics. All depends on how much ££ you want to spend.

A 480/580 will keep you going, whilst the GTX470 will do for now and you could add another later on. And the PSU will be related to which Graphics card you want.
A decent 850W PSU will power 2x GTX 470's.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
WOW's frame rate will benefit hugely from the high clock of CPU, so I would suggest you get a overclocked bundle:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-056-OE&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=
Currently on this week's offer at £50 off.
Click to expand...
I want 12GB of RAM. Reason being, I did the whole "I can just buy more later" thing in 2005 when I got 2GB of fast RAM. I still have 2GB and it sucks. Will the overclocked bundles work properly when I add another three sticks of RAM?

Marine-RX179 said:
However, if you don't need Crossfire/SLI, I would suggest you get a i5 760 overclocked bundle instead and save yourself £100:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-023-OB&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=
Click to expand...
4GB of RAM just isn't going to happen. I get the feeling I can't just triple the RAM and still have those overclocks stable?
Marine-RX179 said:
The board use in the bundle does support Crossfire/SLI at x4/x4, but what it means is you can lose up to 8-9% speed on each card, so it would be better off getting a much faster single card to begin with.
Click to expand...
I don't think I'm a serious enough gamer to warrant Crossfire/SLI tbh.

Marine-RX179 said:
Graphic card wise I would suggest you go for either:
MSI GeForce GTX 470 Twin Frozr II and overclock the nuts out of it :p
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-104-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1810
Currently on this week's offer at £25 off

Or a GTX580 if it would fit your budget.
Click to expand...
OK. I will probably not overclock. My current machine has been stock since pretty much day 1, and I'll probably do the same with my new one.
R088ieS86 said:
I'd spend the extra £20 and get this motherboard:
Asus X58 Sabertooth TUF Intel X58
Click to expand...
Good idea - will keep that in mind.
R088ieS86 said:
Star Wars:TOR is the mmo coming out yeah? it shouldn't be too hard on the system. But Diablo 3s multiplayer might eat graphics. All depends on how much ££ you want to spend.

A 480/580 will keep you going, whilst the GTX470 will do for now and you could add another later on. And the PSU will be related to which Graphics card you want.
Click to expand...
A 580 is seeming very tempting.
 
mp260767 said:
have you set a budget for this ? (should allow for inclusion of new psu and gfx card)
Click to expand...
Not really. I want to see how much what I want is and then tweak to suit. I specced out a "new PC" as a Mac and it was three grand, so if it's below that I'm safe :p

EDIT: I guess I'm looking for that value sweetspot, where performance increases begin to taper off considerably versus price. Look at my CPU choice in the grand scheme of things and it's essentially a reflection of my budget overall. I'm not going to spend a fortune getting the absolute peak of performance, but I want something that is at least very good.
 
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If you're not a serious gamer. Why go for the 580? Thats burning money. Unless you game at high res, you will not benefit from this card. Buy a 460/470 now, when it becomes sluggish a few years down the line, buy another then.
 
PMKeates said:
I want 12GB of RAM. Reason being, I did the whole "I can just buy more later" thing in 2005 when I got 2GB of fast RAM. I still have 2GB and it sucks. Will the overclocked bundles work properly when I add another three sticks of RAM?

4GB of RAM just isn't going to happen. I get the feeling I can't just triple the RAM and still have those overclocks stable?I don't think I'm a serious enough gamer to warrant Crossfire/SLI tbh.

OK. I will probably not overclock. My current machine has been stock since pretty much day 1, and I'll probably do the same with my new one.Good idea - will keep that in mind.A 580 is seeming very tempting.
Click to expand...
12GB of RAM is seriously overkill for gaming. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit, got Firefox with like 20 tabs running in the background while I game, and the RAM usage never uses more than 3GB of memory. Going i7 with 6GB of ram would be more than plenty for a gaming build. The only people that need like 8~12GB of rams are those that do editing works with large files such as images and audios.

And trust me...if you are gonna be playing WOW a lot, i7 or i5 at 4.0GHz would make a huge differents to frame rate/smoothness for the game, comparing to with the CPU at stock speed. The OcUK's overclock bundle already charged a small premium for the overclocking, and they should be stable to use without you having to mess about with overclocking yourself. Should you be unlucky enough and end up with a unstable overclock bundle, OcUK would have to take responsibility in sorting it out without you having you stressing over it yourself.
 
I won't buy another one down the line, that's the thing. I will buy something now and then be in this situation 5 years from now where my PC is creaking and then replace everything. The question is - will the 470 last? Probably. Could just get that.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
12GB of RAM is seriously overkill for gaming. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit, got Firefox with like 20 tabs running in the background while I game, and the RAM usage never uses more than 3GB of memory. Going i7 with 6GB of ram would be more than plenty for a gaming build. The only people that need like 8~12GB of rams are those that do editing works with large files such as images and audios.
Click to expand...
Will it be overkill for gaming in 4 years time? I don't really do much editing work, but I do play around with SQL/Excel occasionally and that can eat a lot of RAM. I want to still be able to play around with SQL/Excel in 4 years time and not be going "oh I don't have enough RAM for that", which happens today. Maybe 6GB will be enough.
Marine-RX179 said:
And trust me...if you are gonna be playing WOW a lot, i7 or i5 at 4.0GHz would make a huge differents to frame rate/smoothness for the game, comparing to with the CPU at stock speed. The OcUK's overclock bundle already charged a small premium for the overclocking, and they should be stable to use without you having to mess about with overclocking yourself. Should you be unlucky enough and end up with a unstable overclock bundle, OcUK would have to take responsibility in sorting it out without you having you stressing over it yourself.
Click to expand...
I think I should define "a lot". I work ~60 hrs a week and go out most nights. This is, in reality, going to be "occasional" use compared to most people in here. Re: the overclock bundles, are these rock-solid stable over years and years? I don't want to have any issues with it ever.
 
PMKeates said:
I work ~60 hrs a week and go out most nights. This is, in reality, going to be "occasional" use compared to most people in here. Re: the overclock bundles, are these rock-solid stable over years and years? I don't want to have any issues with it ever.
Click to expand...
Overclock should remain stable once you got it stable in the beginning, and stability should rarely worsen over couple years time; what is more likely to affect the stabilitiy of the overclock is that the PSU may slowly getting wored out over the years, and 'might' eventually get to to the point of no longer able to deliver stable voltages to keep the overclock stable...but it is not too likely to happen if you have a decent quality PSU, and at worst you can just replace it.

If you are seriously worried about overclocking's reliability, then may be you should skip the current i5/i7, and wait for Intel's Sandybridge platform that's coming at the first quarter of 2011. Rumours has it it might not be as great an overclocker as the current i5/i7, but if we compare stock speed vs stock speed (no overclock), Sandybridge's platform would most likely be quite a bit faster than i5/i7...and could well be suit your requirement/preference more.
 
went a slightly different route with the amd phenom II six core.

included a samsung 2tb drive for storage and too keep un needed things off the SSD, also included 8gb of memory.

swapping the 6870 for a 580 takes the cost from £1,077 up to £1,292

Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1) £223.24 (£189.99)

HIS ATI Radeon HD 6870 TURBO 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £214.99 (£182.97)

AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £199.99 (£170.20)

Corsair HX 750W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750HXUK) £112.99 (£96.16)

Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £84.99 (£72.33)

Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen 2TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD204UI) £77.98 (£66.37)

Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £131.98 (£112.32)

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1156/1366) £19.99 (£17.01)

Sub Total : £907.35
Shipping : £10.00
VAT : £160.54
Total : £1,077.89
 
If you don't want to overclock that is absolutely fine. No need for it - but I will get the following:

CPU
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-344-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1272
£235

Motherboard
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-235-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1692
£150

Or the Sabertooth one (but I prefer Gigabyte's RMA process)

12GB of DDR3 Memory can be bought for £140 if you look around

580GTX can be had for around £400 if you look around. The best value is on the GeForces 470 GTXs as they can be had for under £200.

SSD
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-060-OC&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1427
£170 - cheaper and very good quality one as well, same capacity.

Cooler, the one you selected is fine but if you are not overclocking the stock option is good too.

That should set you back around £890 more or less what you had planned.

The Seasonic is still a great PSU so should be fine.
 
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