Upgrade for brother in law

Musty Pie

Musty Pie

Musty Pie

Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2009
Posts
6,488
Location
Hertfordshire
Hi guys I am after a little bit of advise with reference to my brother in laws pc.

He has been using the same old dying hardware for quite a while now and it is now time for him to upgrade.

I cant remember the exact spec of this current system but its something similar to the below:

AMD phenom black (old phenom chip)
Asus motherboard (with copper ram coolers)
4GB of DDR2 RAM
GTX 285
600W PSU (recently replaced as the old one died on him, although this is still a rubbish one)
couple of sata HDD's (one raptor and a few normal storage drives)
Windows 7 64 bit
Antec 900 case

He is looking to spend between £500-£600 for an upgrade and really the only viable thing he can keep is his case and his HDD's.

He mainly uses his machine for gaming and plays the COD series exclusively. He recently got black ops 2 which runs "OK" on his system but certain maps/scenarios can see his FPS drop to below 20.

He games on a view sonic monitor with its max res @ 1680×1050 although its possible he might upgrade to full HD res or higher after Christmas.

What would be the best suggested spec for him for at least the following:

Motherboard
CPU
RAM
GFX
PSU
Cooler

Chances are he will install on the raptor drive for now and upgrade to an SSD in the future when he has some more cash.

Would prefer Intel specs for now please!

Thanks in advance.
 
It says 64 bit in the OP.

Not sure about OEM or retail I know about it being tied to the hardware etc but again no worry about that as I might be able to get him a legit windows 8 LIC through work so its the hardware we are interested in at the moment.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 660 EX OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Assassin's Creed III PC Game £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Intel 330 Series 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail **Grand Store Opening Deal** £71.99
1 x PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 400W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - White £49.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £29.99
Total : £600.94 (includes shipping : FREE).



dont get the heatsink for now and get an ssd imo, will see more of a performance increase from a stock cpu + ssd compared to a oced cpu + hdd

what brand is the psu? could possibly get away with not buying a new psu...in which case, you could get this:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 660 EX OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Assassin's Creed III PC Game £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Intel 330 Series 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail **Grand Store Opening Deal** £71.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £29.99
1 x Thermalright True Spirit 120 REV A CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/AM2/AM3/FM1) £24.98
Total : £575.93 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
Hmm not keen on a 440w PSU and i think he might have better in his rig already but again will have to check

Personally would drop the SSD from the top spec and spend on a better PSU for future proofing. But thanks for the starts so far
 
Doomedspeed said:
Under 300w full system load?

WAAAAHHHHAAAAATTTTTHT??

That's perfect, didn't know the card was such a hippy.
Click to expand...

i know right? lol

Musty Pie said:
Hmm not keen on a 440w PSU and i think he might have better in his rig already but again will have to check
Click to expand...

as i said, if you could check on the brand and model of the current psu, you could possibly get away with not getting a new psu

Musty Pie said:
Personally would drop the SSD from the top spec and spend on a better PSU for future proofing. But thanks for the starts so far
Click to expand...

people tend to overestimate the power needed to run their rigs. if you see the link i posted
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/660
you can see that the total system draw for the gpu i specced is 287w which is less than 70% of the total power the 400w pc&c psu can provide, giving you ample headroom for overclocks
 
And running 3x mech drives and possibly a Sata ODD too?

Again sorry for my ignorance its been a while since I looked into power draw and useage of new hardware.
 
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