Upgrade help please

davethe11 · 18 Aug 2011 at 09:46

hi folks, looking to upgrade the following two systems:

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200
DDR2 4GB GSKILL
8800GT 512
Corsair HX 650W PSU

The second system is very similar, but has the following psu:

Corsair VX 450W PSU

Both are 1920x1200, W7 pro 64, gaming (Civ5, Lotro, be nice to play newer fps games with higher settings), one machine does some video editing/encoding.

Budget is 450 for each system, but this is breakable by say 50 quid if there it is really worth it (of course I'm waiting to here your thoughts on the 450W PSU, maybe even the 650W).

I've been out of the hardware loop for a bit, but from some reading I'm thinking this for both systems:

i5 2500k 3.3 LGA1155 (everyone seems to be raving about em)
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB)

Motherboard I'm unsure, Z68 seems the best to go with, but neither machine will use the integrated gfx, but the video editing machine may see an SSD ugrade in the future (referring to the cache feature of Z68 of course). Therefore maybe a cheaper but more featured P67 may be good (Asus P8P67 LE B3 Edition maybe?).

Graphics card, well I'm really out of touch. SLi/Crossfire seems a no-no considering the PSU's are not high Wattage, but then you may suggest I have to upgrade those anyway. I'm really looking for a single card solution that will shine on 1920x1200 resolutions (Civ5 is a real dog at the moment, even when selecting DX9). From some browsing here on ocuk, Nvidia 460's seem a possible option, but to be honest i've always upgraded to mid-level gfx cards and it would be nice to really upgrade to something a bit more uber (do we still use that word anymore?).

thanks for any help and advice
dave

iamtheoneneo · 18 Aug 2011 at 09:52

my advice?
have a look on MM and see if you can get yourself an i7 chip, mobo and some ram - should set you about £230. spend the rest on gpu thats more than just a mid-range card.

davethe11 · 18 Aug 2011 at 10:00

Is i7 really worth it for gaming? I thought HT would not have any advantage for gaming? Maybe video encoding would see a benefit, but I suppose it depends on the software thats being used. Thanks for the suggestion, I've been browsing the MM, but I'm a bit out of touch with current hardware so I thought speccing a new build would at least be a starting point for me.

Marine-RX179 · 18 Aug 2011 at 10:10

If you got the budget, it's better to just build around the 2500K and a mid-range graphic card.

I think what iamtheoneneo is suggesting to you to get the last gen i7 on 2nd hand (not i7 2600K). But in my opinion, it's best to go for 2500K platform instead, as people won't be letting go their last gen i7 parts for too low a price anyway.

davethe11 · 18 Aug 2011 at 10:32

thanks Marine-RX179, I'm a little reluctant to go last gen, mainly due to a lack of knowledge and a desire to retain future upgradeability, what socket are these last gen i7 chips?

iamtheoneneo · 18 Aug 2011 at 13:37

yeh i was talking LGA1366 chips (which havent been replaced yet) as sandybridge was a replacement for 1156.

the reason i suggested it is mainly price...your looking at about £350 for sandy cpu,mobo and ram which would leave £100 for GPU so not even enough for a 460 and then you were talking about wanting a more beefy card .
and as we all know that cpus over the years havent really changed all that much and the older i7s can still keep up with the sandys and gaming performance is always much easier to obtain with a better gpu.

but like i said all depends what you want, where your happy making cuts etc.as £450 is quite a tight line to get everything you ideally would want.

and how are you with overclocking? bc if you feel you wont be able to oc for whatever reason then maybe ditching the K variant chips will help spread the cost to a better GPU.

davethe11 · 18 Aug 2011 at 14:40

Thanks for the advice chaps. Will definitely overclock, my rigs have been overclocked since my P3 (which is still doing someone some service lol). You say that the upgrade I'm looking at is gonna be tight on that budget, that's good advice and what I was looking for really. I understand that overclocking is different these days on these i5's, maybe rather simple for a quick and decent overclock from what I've read, I've no desire to stress test and tweak too much anymore, I like a stable overclock on air (maybe an after market hs and fan in the future).

MM may be the way to go, I've bought on there before in the past, but I really wanted to get a new setup specced so I have at the very least a baseline to compare deals on the MM with, I can pull up the spec and do my own research then.

Perhaps the main concern at the moment is the PSU, what kind of PSU would you recommend running an i5 2500k, say a Nvidia 460, with 8gigs of RAM?