Upgrade Time

[barbelblanker]

Hi, hoping you can help.
I used to be scan these forums almost daily and be completely up to speed, but I am now pretty clueless as to what to do.

My homebuilt PC takes 30 minutes to 'warm up' before it will boot. I have checked the board, power supply etc. Reseated everything and tried a different power supply.
At my wits end, so being my birthday is coming I'm thinking its time to upgrade.

At the moment I have:

AMD Phenom(tm) II X2 550 BE - Overclocked @ 3.65GHZ stock volts
M4A78 Motherboard
AMD Radeon(TM) HD 6850 Series - Overclocked @ 850/1150 stock volts
4GB Dual Channel 1066 DDR2
2 x 250GB SATA Drives
IDE DVDRW
IDE CDRW
Powertake 550w PSU

I am 90% sure its either my motherboard or PSU causing the boot problem so will definately look at changing those. MY HDD's are slow so need replacing too.

Wiht my 6850 I play @ 1680x1050 and the games I play, Total War series, various RTS/ War games, it works OK. Would an upgrade be worth it at this point?

I have a good case, keyboard, mouse, monitor,

Any suggestions as to what i should do? I have up to £500 to spend.


Many thanks in advance, and sorry for all the questions!

 

[Lemin]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 600w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020060-UK) £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £57.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £31.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £16.94
Total : £457.87 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 

[Doomedspeed]

Good one lemin,

though personally i'd get the hyper 212 cooler rather than the freezer 7.

 

[dacads]

And a XFX 550w PSU instead of the Corsair

 

[Gav_881]

if your planning on swapping out the 6850 go for a 7950 or get an x-fire capable mobo and drop a second card in

 

[barbelblanker]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

My shopping basket below. I thought I would add a SSD drive for the OS = worth it and a good idea or??

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £69.98
1 x Mach Xtreme Technology 60GB 2.5" SATA 6GB/s MX-DS TURBO PREMIUM Edition SSD £60.98
1 x XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB1600C9DC) £31.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £26.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £543.90 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 

[Bacon?]

Defintley worth it. Although this is just an extra £20

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-004-PL&groupid=1657&catid=2101&subcat=2103