System Upgrade for ~£300

greyloki

greyloki

greyloki

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13 Sep 2011
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6
Hey folks,

First time poster here - registered purely because I'm amazed by the amount expertise on these boards!

I'm currently running a PowerColor HD 5770, Asus P5NE-32 SLI Plus, Intel C2D 3.2GHz (I think this is the Q6600), 4GB of value Corsair DDR2 RAM, and a 400W Corsair PSU.

I'm looking to upgrade the speed and graphics performance of my system - I was originally looking at upgrading the GPU and changing out the CPU for some variant of quad core Phenom 2, but the cost of then having to upgrade the mobo, PSU and RAM didn't appeal.

My thoughts are now to upgrade the GPU to an HD 6870, most likely the 1GB XFX variant. I did briefly look into running two 5770s in crossfire(?) mode, but it seems that that particular model has been discontinued... D'oh.

I was also looking at upgrading the CPU, but staying with the 775 socket - however, it seems that all the cheap 775 CPUs I was seeing a few months ago have evaporated, and a viable upgrade (i.e, to a lower-clocked quad core, perhaps?) is still coming in at around £160.

So really, I would like your thoughts on my plans - is it worth keeping the P5N and trying to work with it a little longer, or should I be looking at an almost entirely new system, with updated CPU, GPU, PSU, RAM and Mobo?

Unfortunately, I think my entire budget for this is likely to be around £300, going up to £400ish for a mega upgrade.

Oh, the system itself is used for general desktop use, and medium gaming use - COD4, Borderlands, Source games, a little SupCom.

Thanks in advance for any advice,




~Loki.

Edit: Just had a look at the OCUK store - there seem to be some fairly nice deals there, especially in terms of the component bundles, and the lower-end prebuilt gaming systems. Are these worth looking into further?
 
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To be honest, for the games you have mentioned I think a 5770 would still play them fine once you upgrade your cpu. I was running a single 5770 and went from an Athlon x2 to a i5 quad and all my games showed a remarkable increase in FPS.

Anyway, some of the more seasoned people will be along shortly to help :)
 
how about the following, no gfx card included, but i think the gfx card you have at the moment should hold up for what your currently listed as playing, adding a 6850 or 6870 would take the cost to around 425-440 depending on offers available when you order, plus i'd advise on getting a new psu if you went for a new graphics card :


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)

Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99 (£19.99)

Sub Total : £248.30
Shipping : £8.00
VAT : £51.26
Total : £307.56
 
mp260767 said:
how about the following, no gfx card included, but i think the gfx card you have at the moment should hold up for what your currently listed as playing, adding a 6850 or 6870 would take the cost to around 425-440 depending on offers available when you order, plus i'd advise on getting a new psu if you went for a new graphics card :


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)

Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99 (£19.99)

Sub Total : £248.30
Shipping : £8.00
VAT : £51.26
Total : £307.56
Click to expand...

throw in the psu upgrade in there, antech true power 650w for £70 or 550w for £60.

new graphics cards due out in 3-6months so hold off for the time being, get the rest of the system upto spec now save up and get one of the newer cards.
 
Wow, that was quick!

I see that everybody is recommending Intel i-somethings, either i5 or i7; is this because they give the most bang for the buck?

Are AMD definitely not worth looking at? I've used Intel/nVidia for quite a while, got fed up with their bloated drivers on linux and switched over to ATi, i'm just wondering if a switch over from Intel to AMD is also worth it.
 
for the games you've listed amd quad core would do fine, main reason for going i5 2500K is in case any newer games take your fancy.

as an idea , amd spec :

OcUK ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Deus Ex PC Game £131.99 (£109.99)

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £94.99 (£79.16)

Asus M5A88-V EVO AMD 880G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £91.99
(£76.66)

Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £69.98 (£58.32)

Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99 (£19.99)

Sub Total : £344.12
Shipping : £10.00
VAT : £70.82
Total : £424.94
 
If you want to go with AMD, their bulldozer cpus should be out before the end of the year and should compete better with intel i5/i7 series processors...
 
So i've looked around a little more, it seems that i5 is currently the way to go; the majority of the articles i've read seem to indicate that the i5 series are one of those gems which 'Just Work', for a fairly decent price.

I had a little play at putting together a 'build' of my own - what do you guys think?

Intel Core i5-2500 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - £163.99
Asrock Z68 PRO3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - £99.98
OcUK Battle 650W Dual Rail High Efficiency Modular '80 Plus' Power Supply - £49.99
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - £39.98

Total (Inc VAT, Ex Delivery) - £353.94

Can the normal i5-2500 take a good overclock, or would it be better to pay the extra for the i5-2500k? I didn't add in an extra CPU cooler, as from a couple of reviews i've seen, it seems that the stock low-profile cooler seems to do the job pretty well. Does a top-down fan interfere much with case airflow? Is there even a need to OC an i5 for the kind of use i'd be getting from it?
I could always drop down the 8GB of DDR3 to 4GB, but for the sake of ~£17, I figured it would be better to buy the extra 4GB now, rather than paying for two separate 4GB kits.
I added in the PSU because it has the extra 4/6pin PCI-e connectors, which would be needed for just about any GPU upgrade I care to make in the future, from what I can see.
 
the K series are the only processors that overclock the plain 2500 doesnt, i'd go with the 2500K, and the retail version not oem (oem has no cooler iirc).

for what you listed no real overclock would be needed, but as mentioned previously its nice to have if you come across newer games that could make use of the extra processing power.

only reason it interferes with air flow is that its not forcing warm air away from the cooler to an exit fan.
 
You need the 2500k to overclock as it's all done on the multiplier now.

Non k version = locked multiplier = no overclocking :( .

K version = unlocked multiplier = overclocking dream :D .

You want a quality psu not the OCUK rubbish.

The ram is ok but has terrible timings.

If overclocking you will need a half decent cooler.
 
OK, new spec:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - £169.99
Asrock Z68 PRO3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - £99.98
Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus' Certified Power Supply - £59.99
Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - £23.99

Total (Inc VAT, Ex Delivery) - £353.95 (An extra penny!)

This has the 2500K rather than the stock 2500, but with no additional cooler - I figure I can run it as a stock CPU for now, and OC if and when it's required.
Mobo stays the same.
Upgraded to a Corsair PSU, i've used them before and i've never had any issues at all.
I changed the RAM back to your recommendation - is it 'better' to have less RAM at a faster speed than more RAM at a slower one?
Speaking on the case of cooling, i'm still not sure if I should be aiming to have a positive case pressure (i.e, more intake than outlet), or negative pressure with more exhaust?
 
ram http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-094-KS

psu http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-117-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= better psu all around.

mb if you want possibility of xfire/sli http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-368-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

if you want to 'push the boat out a bit' then http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-054-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990 seems to have gone up by ~£5.

you can get away with the stock cooler for upto like 4ghz but a aftermaket cooler will give you lower temps/noise plus headroom to push it further.
 
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I'm not sure that I would ever run to an SLI setup - the past couple of builds i've had, i've always bought parts with the plan of using SLI as a cheap upgrade, then held out for so long that the parts became discontinued(!).

That's good news about the cooling - I doubt that i'll be OC'ing much, but it's great that there's so much headroom in the system, even with the stock cooling.
 
ram wise i've never noticed any real difference when it comes to timings on ram, and speed wise with the 2500K from what i've seen its really required to have "fast" ram.

build in post #12 looks fine.

as for cooling, i've never worried too much about positive or negative pressure, just about making sure cables are a tidy as you can make them and the air flow is as good as possible.
 
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