Spend £300 for me?

Gretzky99 · 15 May 2013 at 21:34

Hi all

I'm gonna have £300 spare at the end of the month to upgrade my computer and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions. At the moment it runs games well enough that I don't want to shell out everything on a new gpu or cpu, I want to have a bit of fun with it.

Antec 900 gaming case
i5 2500k 3.30Ghz (with a Xigmatek Loki SD963 CPU Cooler)
MSI B75 Motherboard
8Gig of Corsair RAM
HIS HD 7850 IceQ
700Gig & 1T Western Digital hard drives
550W Ocz PSU

Some of my ideas were; a new case, specifically the Corsair Obsidian 800D, but at £229 it might be a bit overkill for my fairly budgeted system (although it'd ultimately be an investment). Thought about water cooling, but I'd want to water cool the cpu and gpu and that might get a bit pricey. Maybe a solid state hard drive? Any other cases I should consider?

For under £300 what combo of bits and pieces would you go for?

Thanks in advance for any advice/suggestions
Al

RJC · 15 May 2013 at 21:37

Z77 board which will allow you to overclock the cpu, new case and SSD:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Desktop and Notebook Kit - (MZ-7TD120KW) £92.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Case - Black £61.98
Total : £259.06 (includes shipping : £11.75).

Gretzky99 · 15 May 2013 at 21:51

Thanks for the speedy reply. Think the case is a bit plane, and I do like having that window there. The SSD and motherboard are worth thinking about tho. I have an MSI P67A C45 motherboard sitting around, should I use that over the B75 or are they both average?

Gav_881 · 15 May 2013 at 22:05

SSD and a custom loop kit, save the rest for GPU CPU upgrade time or SSD with your swanky case.

Personally i would just get an SSD and wait on the rest until you want a new GPU or CPU.

RogerMesenseless · 15 May 2013 at 22:14

Gav_881 said:
SSD and a custom loop kit, save the rest for GPU CPU upgrade time or SSD with your swanky case.

Personally i would just get an SSD and wait on the rest until you want a new GPU or CPU.

Whats the point in a custom loop if you can't overclock?

Gretzky99 · 23 May 2013 at 16:36

Just an update, and to check if my choices seem reasonable. Thanks RJC for the advice:

MSI Z77A-G45 DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
Corsair Carbide 300R Windowed Case £69.95
Samsung 120GB SSD £79.99

On top of that I am going to either go for:

Corsair Hydro H80i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler £76.99
or
OcUK Tech Labs - Corsair H60 Performance Intel Liquid Cooling Solution £39.95

My last question is; is the H80i worth the extra cash for 'Corsair Link'/extra performance, or will I get a good enough overclock with the Tech Labs H60?

Thanks again guys

Idleman · 23 May 2013 at 16:44

Just get a decent air cooler.

Gretzky99 · 23 May 2013 at 17:15

Well I have a Xigmatek Loki SD963, I am guessing that doesn't fall into the decent air cooler category. Any suggestions?

Idleman · 23 May 2013 at 17:24

All fairly good coolers, just be sure which ever one you chose fits in your case.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler - Black (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £69.98
1 x Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £62.98
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E SE CPU Cooler TY-143 Fans (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
1 x Thermalright HR-02 Macho CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366) £39.98
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 612S CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £32.99
Total : £337.91 (includes shipping : £10.00).