Upgrade advice

Hawkesbury

Hawkesbury

Hawkesbury

Associate
Joined
23 Nov 2009
Posts
252
Location
GB
Hello,

A friend of mine would like to upgrade his Dell XPS8700. He has about £250 and would like to see some visual improvements.

Current specs are:

4th Gen Intel Core i7-4770 processor (8M Cache, up to 3.9 GHz)
12GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz - 4 DIMMs
2TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive + Intel SRT 32GB SSD Cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1.0GB GDDR5
PSU is an unbranded 460W.

I was thinking that the a new PSU and a GTX960. Or is it worth ignoring the PSU and getting a 970?

Any thoughts?
 
I believe the psu in the XPS8700 is a Delta built unit with a 32A 384w 12v rail and has a pair of 6 pin pci-e connectors for the gpu. It should be fine for a 960 but personally I would replace that before going for anything that's more powerful. I know the 970 is very power efficient but I wouldn't like to run one from that psu.
 
I think you've already figured it out with a new PSU and 960. That'll be a pretty nice upgrade.

The 650Ti might sell for enough to fund a 120gb SSD too. Not sure how dells cope with trying to shift the OS to a different drive though
 
Many thanks. Haven't spent much time looking at the cards but is there an optimum card within the 960's. They all seem quite similar.

PSU - do i need to be looking at 600W or is that overkill considering that the cards are quite efficient?
 
A qulity 500-550w psu will more than suffice. Does Dell still use it's own connections though or will a normal psu's connectors fit them these days? The psu should not need replacing for a GTX960 as total system power draw will be less than 250w.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £193.67
(includes shipping: £11.70)
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Last edited:
Many thanks pastymuncher.

If the PSU will be alright with a 960 I will suggest he leaves it.

In real performance is the ASUS GeForce GTX 960 DirectCU2 OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 worth the 16% more it costs than Gigabyte GeForce GTX 960 OC 4096MB?
 
I honestly think a gtx 970 will run ok on that psu. However it's not that advisable. The gtx 960 while ok is a bit pants to be honest an Overclocked 970 is as almost as good as a gtx 980 stock I know I went from a 970 to a 980.

I would go for a 500w psu and get a gtx 970 there will be some deals on soon so it really would be worth it over the gtx 960.
 
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