Upgrade / New Build ?

1882

1882

1882

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Joined
25 Feb 2013
Posts
7
I first bought a PC back in 2013 so that I could play Counter-Strike and some other games with my friends. A couple of months ago the original graphics card died so I was gifted another off a friend but it has sadly suffered the same fate (Could the PSU be causing this?). I do not know a lot about computers but have tried to gather the list of everything that is in my PC. If you need to know any other details please ask.

I still use the computer for general everyday use but I am getting the itch to get back into Counter-Strike. I would like to keep the budget around £600 (£700 max).

Motherboard - Z77A-GD55
Processor - i5 - 3570k
PSU - OCZ ZS Series 550w
Ram - x2 4GB Ripjaw
Graphics Card - Radeon 7950 3GB
Storage - 1TB HDD & SanDisk 120GB SSD
Case - Fractual Design Define Cube Case
Cooling - Cooler Master Hyper 412s Cooler & x2 Fractual Design Silent Series R2 120mm

As stated I do not know a lot about computers but I think that is all the information that you need to suggest upgrades. Counter-Strike will be the main game along with some other shooters but also GTA / Red Dead when it comes. Many thanks and look forward to your reply's.
 
@1882 guessing PSU was bought along with 2013 and out of warranty ?

member @EsaT now a lot about PSUs and their models - might be able to advise , rest of the system personally looks fine .

guessing you tried your GPU and hand-me-down GPU in your friends rig to confirm they are dead?
 
PSU certainly could kill graphics cards, but if card had already been in lots of use it could also have already been in weak condition.

While that ZS serie had, rarely for OCZ, high quality capacitors it was definitely cheap outdated design PSU.
And suspect it used undersized components, because up to 60mV ripple when new is plain mediocre performance:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=248
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/ZS_650W/8.html
Getting idea of current condition of capacitors would require having access to oscilliscope.
Visual inspection just isn't reliable and all but really expensive multimeters are bad at catching any higher frequency AC voltage.
 
^^^

try both cards in your friends system to confirm they are dead , they current one does work in his then PSU . but either way sounds like PSU could be worth changing . If they are in warranty and the cause of a death of a part, you can claim although its a pain in the backside
 
Your CPU is still fine grunt-wise, though you could try overclocking it. With regards to the GPUs, have you recently replaced the video cable? IIRC some Displayport cables accidentally had a live pin which killed GPUs.
 
Hi all, thanks for the reply's.

orbitalwalsh said:
@1882 guessing PSU was bought along with 2013 and out of warranty ?

member @EsaT now a lot about PSUs and their models - might be able to advise , rest of the system personally looks fine .

guessing you tried your GPU and hand-me-down GPU in your friends rig to confirm they are dead?
Click to expand...

Yep, the PSU is from 2013 and is long out of warranty. If the rest of the system is fine, would you be able to suggest a new graphics card / psu for me or will anything in general do?

Just tried both of the cards in my computer again. My original GPU is definitely dead though my friends one displays the screen, albeit with lots of black lines across it which get worse with mouse movement. Have contacted my friend to try it out in his computer.

Quartz said:
Your CPU is still fine grunt-wise, though you could try overclocking it. With regards to the GPUs, have you recently replaced the video cable? IIRC some Displayport cables accidentally had a live pin which killed GPUs.
Click to expand...

I will look into overclocking it once I get a GPU and / or PSU sorted. Only changed the cable when it first started playing up to ensure it wasn't the cable that was faulty.
 
Bumping this. Getting new parts for xmas so I can finally game again. Will be getting graphics card and psu just in case. Can anyone suggest any decent ones at around £400-500 that will work well with the system until I can update the rest of it.

Many thanks.
 
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