upgrade advice for an old (ish) guy.

Moorron

Moorron

Moorron

Associate
Joined
12 Aug 2004
Posts
825
Location
Telford, UK
Good evening lads, I would really like some advice on a future upgrade I want to make and as ive been out of the pc market/hobby for some time, I am clueless what to buy. Please spec me if you have the time as my 32nd birthday is next week and I think I got some £’s coming my way.

My current spec is as follows:

E6300 @ 2450 mhz CPU
Gigabyte 965P DS3 mobo
2x1 Gig Geil PC2-5300 ram
Ati 4870 512mb GPU
Reserator 1 on the CPU
Sata HD
Togan 650w PSU
XP 32 bit.

I think that’s all correct!

Problem I have isn’t games, which I play but only old ones (BF2) so my GPU is ok at the moment. My problem is ive just bought a HD Video camera and Pinnacle studio 14. My current setup just about manages to cope but is awful to use and hence the upgrade is needed.

I want a mobo, cpu and memory upgrade so I can still use my GPU, reserator and PSU with. At this stage that is all I want, but I don’t know if it would be a good idea to get a much better HD (SD too much sorry) to help it all along if you lot think I would be mad to not upgrade. Same goes with windows 7, which I use at work and like but if there is little increase in performance (64 bit) then I can leave it out for now.

I don’t have a budget :D but don’t like wasting money on the very best as I feel there is a premium just for that alone. So I was thinking i7 920 or higher or maybe the new AMD versions. I wouldn’t mind overclocking too if its mild like my current E6300.

If we said £500 for the cpu, mobo, mem and HD (if you think so) it would be good. Can anyone confirm if my reserator will fit the new cpus too and if it does please save me the money missing the cooler out.

A long ‘spec me’ post but the more info you lot have the better guidance I will get.

Cheers lads.
;)
 
This spec.

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66GHz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - OEM Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66GHz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - OEM £167.99
(£142.97) £167.99
(£142.97)
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard £156.98
(£133.60) £156.98
(£133.60)
OCZ Obsidian 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600Mhz Triple Channel Kit (OCZ3OB1600LV6GK) OCZ Obsidian 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600Mhz Triple Channel Kit (OCZ3OB1600LV6GK) £114.99
(£97.86) £114.99
(£97.86)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £57.99
(£49.35) £57.99
(£49.35)
Sub Total : £423.78
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £75.82
Total : £509.10
Click to expand...
You'll need a new waterblock for the reserator, no idea on which one though, I know nothing about watercooling but the one you have wont be compatible unless its a recent purchase.
 
Sounds great. Only thing you could change which might make a lil difference is the HD. If you don't really need a full tb in hd space, then you could go for the western digital caviar black 640gb sataIII 64mb cache hd (£54.99) instead. Same 7200 rpm, only sata 3 connection and a cache twice the size. While nothings really making use of the potential speed inc of sata 3, the bigger cache would come in handy and you get a 5 year warranty along with it.
 
its looking good, im just looking at the waterblock now. The internet is telling me my water cooling can just cope with the extra 70 watts of power the I7 produces but if it doesnt i can add a fan or even a small rad into the loop. seems silly to have it sat in the loft doing nothing.

I think the faster HD is better, im using a bit of space for my vids but i wont need 1TB just yet.

Will i notice a large difference in performance for the above combo over my current one? i take it its not just the MHZ's but also the newer tech + 2 extra cores? Its taking my PC 1 hour to produce a 30 minute 720P vid at the moment, what can i expect with the new tech?

Cheers.
 
A Phenom II X6 is also worth considering for video encoding use.

Here is an alternate components list:

Phenom II X6 1055T ~ £167

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-267-AM

Asus M4A89GTD PRO ~ £108

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-392-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1782

4GB low latency 1600MHZ DDR3 ~ £100

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-180-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

Samsung F3 500GB ~ £45

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-081-SA

This is a single platter hard disk.

The total comes to around £420 excluding delivery.

The newer Caviar Black drives seem decent but whether they are worth the premium over other cheaper drivers is uncertain:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18467/1

BTW,SATA 3.0 will not make much difference with a single hard disk currently.

This article tested the 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard disk which has a SATA 3.0 interface and 64MB cache and there seems to be no difference in performance when using a SATA 2.0 interface:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/02/20/sata_6gbs_on_your_new_motherboard/
 
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