Upgrades Advice?

Indie

Indie

Indie

Soldato
Joined
11 Jul 2006
Posts
4,530
Location
Cradley, West Midlands
Hi All,

My friend is wanting to upgrade some parts of his PC so he is able to play games such as BF3 on high settings.
has no interest in overclocking
budget of approx £230 for the CPU and PSU to spend now
£160-170 for an upgrade in March for GPU

his current rig is:
Gigabyte H61 mobo 1155 (unsure of exact model atm)
Pentium G620 (SB 1155)
GTX 520
300W PSU (weird brand I've never heard of!)

PSU
My first thought is to be rid of the PSU, no brainer to me. So looking at the new modular Corsairs, something like the CX600M

CPU
Now for the CPU, he's been looking at getting an i5, But would the IB i5 be okay in the H61 mobo? just worried that it might be a little dated. Any recommendations?

GPU
He's quite adamant that he wants the EVGA GTX 660 SC 2GB card... but if there is anything else in the same price range that would be better then I'm all ears! not too familiar with the modern NVIDIA cards.

Many Thanks :)
 
So it will be a better idea to go for the SB rather than the IB with this mobo?

Or would it be more wise to save up extra and spend on a new mobo? maybe like a H77 or something?

EDIT: had a bit of a google of the H61 and IB compatibility and it seems to be mixed thoughts. latest firmware/bios will work seems to be the consensus, but then reading the opposite on other sites as well...
 
Well you could buy it and try, if it fails you can return it within 7 days with the perfect reason.
 
i'd wait to see what tomorrows weekly deals hold. OCUK tend to drop the price of their intel processor every 3-4 weeks and i think there about due to again, as elswhere you can get the 3570k I5 fr around 160-165 quid and ocuk drop to about the same price in the weekly price drops.

this would then allow you to get decent PSU aswell.
 
yes will certainly see what tomorrow brings... might just go for the IB chip and see how it goes.

if anybody has any more info though, would be really appreciated!
 
If you could find the model of the motherboard Gigabyte are very good with there CPU support lists (e.g. for GA-H61M-USB3-B3) and this will tell you which BIOS version is required.
Based on the price and budget you might as well go for IB in my opinion
 
Even better - spoke to him last night and he's said he can allow more budget for a decent mobo, has around £80 so would make sense to go for one of the Z77-D3H's

Thanks for your help guys :)
 
Nvidia 660 is very meh for the price, we usually suggest the 7850/7950 as it's better bang for buck. The GPU overclocks very well, dead easy to do as well, he shouldn't be scared of OC'ing

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £155.99
1 x Seasonic G series 550w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £76.99
Total : £232.98 (includes shipping : FREE).



Haswell is rumoured to land in the spring. Might as well look to change the mobo bundle then, he can flog off his current kit to help fund the upgrade.
 
i'd wait to see what tomorrows weekly deals hold. OCUK tend to drop the price of their intel processor every 3-4 weeks and i think there about due to again, as elswhere you can get the 3570k I5 fr around 160-165 quid and ocuk drop to about the same price in the weekly price drops.
Click to expand...

turns out i was right... 3570k and 3770k are both on sale this week ^^ should allow you to get the 3570k and good PSU like one hono spec'd above.
 
He's only like 15 so he was very "want it now" regardless of how much sense an upgrade makes... but either way, went with a D3H mobo, i5 2570K (from yesterday) and the Corsair 600M. just short of £300...

I've tried my upmost hardest to make him see sense in the 7850 (I own one) but he's determined he wants the 660 in March!... all I can say is that I've given my advice and the advice of my comrades!
 
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