Upgrade options

Pighardia · 12 Feb 2011 at 23:16

Hi everyone,

just built this system, you all helped a bit:

Phenom ii x4 965 be
Asus m4a88td-v evo mobo
MSI ATI Radeon HD 5850 Twin FrozR II 1024MB
samsung spinpoint f3 1tb
4gb corsair xms3 ram
antec truepower new modular 650w psu
cooler master elite 430 windowed case
windows 7 ultimate
Arctic power freezer 7

I scraped the money together and built it gradually, choosing my compoments with budget in mind,( all came to around £600). Looked at a Sandy Bridge build but decided to go with the 965 BE and i am very happy with the set up.

Now, if only I had waited a few weeks, as today i won a poker tourney and find my self with some spare cash. I reckon i will put £200 aside for a potential upgrade or 2.
I am set on another spinpoint 1tb hdd for around £40 and probably a Blu-ray drive.

If you had that system, and £200 for an upgrade, What would you do?

crossfire? more RAM?

obviously, the set up is manly for gaming.

Thank you.

Pighardia · 12 Feb 2011 at 23:25

anuraj said:
A better cpu cooler.

Thats what i was thinking. And i only fitted it this morning lol!!!

Pighardia · 12 Feb 2011 at 23:40

i'm not sure of the benefits of crossfire for me. i posted another thread about it as i do all my gaming on my 32" HDTV which has max resolution of 720p. not sure that the benefit is really worth it at that res?

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 00:09

anuraj said:
Can he get a 5850, blue ray drive and f3 for that much money. I need to do a check

could manage it for £220 elsewhere

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 01:50

Another thing i was wondering is, as i am getting another identical hdd, would it be worth/would you recommend running them in raid0? i will back up anything important to an external hd, so i won't really be bothered about losing data if one goes wrong.
Also, would i get a significant increase if i crossfire hd5850's if i only game at 720.
cheers,

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 15:55

thank you for you thoughts guys.

Cookeh said:
RAID0 does make things faster, but if it's mainly for gaming you won't notice a massive differnence - perhaps shave milliseconds off load time.

But as i am definitely getting another hdd because i am running out of space (over 450gb of steam games alone) so i will have two 1 tb drives, would you set up raid or not?

btw, i havn't really got much on there at the moment, as the systems only been up for a few weeks, and i can just transfer games to an external and then back on to new install of windows,
cheers.

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 15:57

Cookeh said:
At 720p there is no need for another HD5850.

Spend the £200 on a new monitor, say a 24" that has 1080p

that is something that i have been considering, in fact, i've seen a 32" 1080p HDTV for £299, and i could probably get £200-250 for my tv, so i am currently thinking about what to do there.

edit- £250 might be a bit ambitious

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 20:37

Probably order this lot.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Iiyama ProLite E2208HDD 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black £119.99 (£99.99)
Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATAII Optical Drive - Retail Black £57.98 (£48.32)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99
(£34.16)
Sub Total : £182.47

(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £38.74
Total : £232.46

Still not sure about Raid though. Any thoughts as i'll have 2 hdd's?

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 21:05

al4x said:
If I were you I'd sell the 5850 and get a 6950 flash it to 6970

This has occurred to me.

Question for everyone- If you did all of your gaming on a 32" HDTV at 1280x720, would the £50 difference(roughly) between the 5850 and 6950 be worth it?

PS. at the moment, i do have a 20" monitor at 1280x1024, but its quite old and not in the same league as the tv in terms of picture quality.
cheers.

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 21:31

yeah, i use powerdvd on my laptop's blu ray at the moment.

Pighardia · 13 Feb 2011 at 21:45

al4x said:
After all this I'm gonna go for get a new tv, especially with a screen that size 1080 will be a big improvement..

Yes mate, i'll probably do this anyway, i've had my TV for about 18 months. it is high quality. reviews at the time suggested that i would be better off getting it than 1080p tv's at a similar price!. Anyway, prices seem to have gone down a bit now so i'll get what i can for it and get a decent 1080p tv.

cheers

Pighardia · 14 Feb 2011 at 11:34

Thanks guys,
Just sold my TV for £220, ordered a full hd for £299.( not bad before 10am considering i decided to do it at 10pm last night!!!)
Also ordered these

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATAII Optical Drive - Retail Black £57.98 (£48.32)

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £40.99 (£34.16)

Creative A40 2.0 Speakers (51MF1640AA001) £10.49 (£8.74)
Sub Total : £91.22

Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £19.99
Total : £119.96

And still have some spare for anything else.
Anyone here use a speedpad? i currently have a wolfking warrior on its last legs, was looking at this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=KB-007-BE