Smartest upgrade path from here?

Chiasek · 31 Mar 2015 at 13:06

I posted in mid 2011 about getting a gaming PC for around £500, bought the parts from here and built it myself. It remained my main PC for the next 2 years, then I got a macbook and I was only using my desktop for gaming. I've now barely turned it on in the past 6-8 months because I wasn't playing games as much and my macbook was better at pretty much everything else.

Well now I have some money to work with and want to get it going again. I've thought about getting an SSD and just doing a fresh install but I also kind of want to properly upgrade. I mainly play CS:GO, Fallout and Just Cause 2 but I'll probably want to play GTA5 if it does ever come out. I just don't want to be struggling to play stuff at 1080p.

My PC right now:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti Twin FrozR II 1024MB
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2 (AM3) Motherboard
RAM: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
PSU: BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W
Case: Coolermaster 370

I also have an optical drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor and Windows so no worries there. I can obviously reuse any of the above, I was never quite sure of the case though, it always felt kind of flimsy. I definitely want 8GB of RAM if I am upgrading. Audio is a lot more important to me now than it was then so I'd want a motherboard with good onboard sound if not a sound card.

I'm just looking for what the smartest upgrade path would be. I'm fairly flexible on money but don't want to spend much more than like £300-400, certainly not £500 anyway. I don't have all that much knowledge of what's good at the moment, when I was getting the above spec, everyone here was getting Sandy Bridge or waiting for Bulldozer

Chiasek · 1 Apr 2015 at 07:19

Thanks, it seems to me like the smartest choice may be the route with the Intel CPU, otherwise I'm just buying another mediocre PC requiring a full upgrade in a couple of years. I also would like a new case, is there any suggestions for a good budget one that comes with a couple of fans and isn't too much bigger than the Coolermaster 430 I've got now? I'm thinking £40-50~.

Chiasek · 18 Apr 2015 at 13:10

stulid said:
Your GFX card is then the next thing thats holding you back.

This kind of stuck with me, I don't see the point in doing an upgrade if I'm still not really going to be able to play GTA nicely, I want a PC that'll work well for a while and not constantly be thinking that I need to upgrade this other part of it.

Here's what I've come up with:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £277.98
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **WorldWide Exclusive** £269.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £49.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99
1 x CM Storm Speed RX Mousepad - Medium £9.95
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
Total : £739.87 (includes shipping : ).

I can reuse a HDD, optical drive, CPU cooler (Hyper 212) and the power supply. It seems that the power supply somewhat limits me to Nvidia but the 970 looks pretty good anyway. I need a new mousepad and of course will need more thermal compound as I'm reusing an old cooler. Also I watched some videos on this case and quite liked it.

Is this a good buy now or should I wait until after Computex? I've seen a lot of people talking about it but I'm not sure if I'd benefit from waiting at my budget? I still can't afford the top components anyway. Is Nvidia releasing anything around that time or is it just AMD?

Chiasek · 18 Apr 2015 at 13:15

stulid said:
That is a good buy.

At computex AMD should announce the 300 series with Nvidia supposedly releasing a GTX980ti to compete and Intel may release Broadwell CPUs.

I'm not in too much of a rush to buy, is it worth waiting for Broadwell do you think? Is there any indication of how much better it may be and what price increase there may be?

Chiasek · 21 Apr 2015 at 14:55

Thanks for all your help Stulid although I've found someone that wants to buy my entire PC and I think I should take the offer rather than trying to individually sell 4 year old components. This means I need to change my requirements again as I need an entire system. I'm basically just hoping for a quick overlook of my basket, I've specced the 750w PSU because it's on offer and modular firstly but also so that SLI 970s are an option in the future. I also don't want to be in the same situation I am now where there are single cards that my power supply is unable to power.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £277.98
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **WorldWide Exclusive** £275.99
1 x Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT250BX100SSD1) £79.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 750W "80 Plus Gold" Semi-Modular Power Supply - Black £76.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £49.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99
1 x Raijintek Themis Evo Professional CPU Cooler £27.95
1 x CM Storm Speed RX Mousepad - Medium £9.95
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
1 x Bitspower cable tie set 20 pieces 120mm UV Red £2.99
Total : £853.80 (includes shipping : ).

I am ordering today I promise, gotta make use of the deals

Chiasek · 21 Apr 2015 at 15:24

Thanks, these are the things I wouldn't notice.

Are you sure it comes with paste though? There isn't any in the description or the pictures and in the unboxing pictures here, I can't see any tubes of paste unless it's pre-applied?

Chiasek · 21 Apr 2015 at 18:17

Unfortunately I have already ordered and didn't look back here in time.

Thanks for all the help anyway, at least the one I ordered is pre-overclocked I guess.

Chiasek · 21 Apr 2015 at 19:22

I'd just had the order confirmed email so I made a post in the customer service forum. Hopefully it gets read and the changes made before they start to put my order together.

Thanks

Chiasek · 23 Apr 2015 at 16:24

Hi, just had the parts delivered and about to start the build. I've got what may be a stupid question though.

The PSU came with a european kettle lead, I have a UK one though. I can just use the UK kettle lead though right? I feel like it's obvious that you can but also if I'm wrong there is a chance of destroying components.

Chiasek · 23 Apr 2015 at 21:33

stulid said:
Yes use the UK one and all is fine.

One thing (and I havent seen a PSU with this feature for ages) in olden times some PSU had a 110/240v switch on the rear, make sure (if it has one) thats it on 240v before hand and never ever flip it over back to 110v.

Also OcUK should have added a UK kettle lead in with the PSU anyway? nothing in the boxes?

Anymore questions no matter how silly just ask and I will give you an answer

You're right, they did supply one although I only found it after I'd used the one I already had. I'm posting this from my new PC. Just installing the Nvidia drivers now.

Thanks very much for your help but I think I am all done now. Done some moderate cable management but there's no window so I'm not that bothered.

Chiasek · 23 Apr 2015 at 21:52

Alright fine, a very small amount of cable management

. On my previous computer, the GPU's power connector was at the end of the card so I could've put it through to the back of the case and then back out the hole in the middle. On this one however, it was pointing out of the side and that didn't seem like the best idea so I just did the cable straight from PSU to GPU and folded the cable into 3 and tied it so that it wasn't loose, same with the sata ones. It looks really bad now I take a photo haha.

Maybe I'll spend another half an hour or something tidying a couple of things up.

I didn't end up swapping for the reference 970 because they shipped it before they saw the post. They offered to let me RMA and then order another but the postage made it about the same price factoring in GTA for £30. The real win is that I made a black, red and silver colour scheme without realising :cool:

Chiasek · 23 Apr 2015 at 22:16

stulid said:
Well done

You will be able to get that folded up cable mostly behind the tray, keep at it.

If its to stay on carpet maybe think about flipping the PSU over so the fan isnt sucking the crap out the carpet.

Thanks, it isn't staying on the carpet, it sits on the wood panel to the left, I just pulled it out for the picture

Chiasek · 23 Apr 2015 at 23:28

stulid said:
Cool.

So you know what you have left to do to it right?

1:- Cable management.
2:- OC the CPU.

I need to get my priorities in order

I'll get onto those things tomorrow, enjoying my PC far too much at the moment

Also just realised I took that screenshot while it was going at a ridiculously slow speed, it's at 4MB/s now

Chiasek · 24 Apr 2015 at 15:11

I don't really know what I'm doing with overclocking but I got this using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility without changing the voltage at all. I can't imagine it's 100% stable for that reason but it's gone through a couple of 5 minute stress tests without any of the cores touching 60°. Didn't even really notice an increase in sound of the fans.

I'll watch a couple of guides then properly do it in the bios.