Upgradig GF's PC

Chris87

Chris87

Chris87

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6 Oct 2014
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Hi Everyone.

I want to upgrade my GF's PC a little for Christmas.

I have a budget about 200-250£

I brought her below system from OCuk in 2013 but could do with a little upgrade she plays WoW and do a fair bit in Photoshop.

AMD X4 Raid" AMD FX-4 4100 3.6GHz DDR3 Quad Core Gaming System
KFA2 GeForce™ GT620 2048MB GDDR3 64bit DVI/VGA/PCI-E Graphics Card
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX)

I was thinking about changing GPU and Memory
need a new gaming keyboard and mouse as well.

I am a bit unsure on what to get though so any help would be appreciated.

Christian
 
WoW is quite CPU intensive if I remember, maybe a Z97 board with a Pentium G3258, overclock the hell out of it to 4.5ghz and enjoy the cheap performance boost.

And grab a 670/680 cheap as they've fell a fair bit.
 
What Photoshop work does your GF do, large projects or small stuff?
4GB RAM isn't great but will manage if the PS work is small allowing you to focus on other areas of the PC, GPU is good upgrade.
 
A Geforce 750 Ti and an additional 2x 2GB should do wonders.

A quick check: she does have a 64-bit OS installed, right?
 
She only do small projects in PS but she do spend a good amount of time
with it though. and she like to have spotify running in the background which seems to
drain her performance a bit with doing both.

And yes Win8.1 64-bit installed on the system.

Just want to give the system a boost so that the next WoW expansion runs alright for her.
 
SSD? Obviously cuts down boot times but will also mean that Photoshop starts faster. It's been a while since I had PS but I seem to remember it taking a fair time loading all the filters and generally faffing about before you could use it. Would also mean that loading and saving larger files - which are often larger whilst working on them than the finished version - would be faster.
 
Having recently upgraded my machine on a budget, one of the best things I did was the addition of an SSD and a fresh install of Windows, so I'd say this is a must
 
ThaReaperGuy said:
WoW is quite CPU intensive if I remember, maybe a Z97 board with a Pentium G3258, overclock the hell out of it to 4.5ghz and enjoy the cheap performance boost.

And grab a 670/680 cheap as they've fell a fair bit.
Click to expand...
The FX4100 has gotta be one of the slowest (if not the very slowest) for light-thread CPU intensive games such as WOW.

I would recommend the above as well. If getting 2nd hand is not an option, then could get a 750Ti instead of 670/680.

Pentium G3258: £50
Entry level Z97 motherboard: £70
Extra 2x2GB ram: £30
750Ti (or 2nd hand 670/680): £100

Total: £250 (though not money for a 3rd party CPY cooler, it would mean the stock cooler has to be used, and overclock would probably have to settle for 4.00GHz at a lower voltage comparing to higher voltage at 4.50GHz)

And SSD in the future if there are spare cash.
 
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You don't necessarily need the SSD to be big enough to hold all the data. As long as the case is big enough you can keep the spinning rust for larger data and use the SSD for boot and work in progress. A 128GB Crucial M550 or OCZ Arc will give you decent performance for about £60 or double the space for about £100.
 
Cenedd said:
You don't necessarily need the SSD to be big enough to hold all the data. As long as the case is big enough you can keep the spinning rust for larger data and use the SSD for boot and work in progress. A 128GB Crucial M550 or OCZ Arc will give you decent performance for about £60 or double the space for about £100.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with this - I got mine (60gb) for 30 quid, and I'll grab a bigger drive in the near future when funds allow
 
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