What would you do?

[Zomboii]

Hey,

I'm not a novice PC builder, but I've also not built a PC for a good 5 years, so was wondering if I can get some advice from you lovely people.

I've got a 4 year old machine which I've just installed Win7 64 on and realised how old the machine is (it runs alright, but it got a grand Win 7 Score of a touch under 3). So...I've decided that it's prob time to upgrade a few bits. I've got to take in to consideration that my case mounts the MoBo upside down (initially got a card with a big built in heatsink and pipe from various chips on the MoBo and it soon fried!) and that I run 2 x 24" monitors.

I don't really mind too much about money; I mainly use it for work but I play a few games too. I'm not too bothered about overclocking, but like bells and whistles to play about with. I'm not sure I need SLi or Crossfire, maybe just a meaty single GPU will do.

What would you upgrade with this machine? I'm thinking MB, Graphics, CPU, some more ram and maybe relace a couple of those HDDs for 1Tb drives.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Martyn

Current PC Spec:
MB: DFi Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR
CPU: AMD 64 X2 4400+
RAM: 2GB old school Ram
Graphics: 2x7800 GTx
Case: Lian Li PC-V1100
Audio: Audigy 4
HDDs: 74Gb 10K prm Raptor Boot drive
3*250Gb HDD
PSU: 1Kw Tagan modular PSU

 

[Poontun]

Your basket

Product Name Qty Price Line Total

Intel X25-M Mainstream 160GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SSDSA2MH160G2C1) £364.99
(£317.38) £364.99
(£317.38)

Asus ATI Radeon HD 5850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £204.99
(£178.25) £204.99
(£178.25)

Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM £142.98
(£124.33) £142.98
(£124.33)

MSI P55-GD65 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £131.99
(£114.77) £131.99
(£114.77)

Fractal Design Define Midi Tower Case - Black Pearl (No PSU) £84.99
(£73.90) £84.99
(£73.90)

G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL8D-4GBRM) £72.99
(£63.47) £72.99
(£63.47)

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £61.99
(£53.90) £123.98
(£107.80)

Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler (LGA1366/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM2+/AM3) £58.98
(£51.29) £58.98
(£51.29)

Akasa Dual 2.5" SSD/HDD Mounting Kit £6.99
(£6.08) £6.99
(£6.08) Sub Total : £1,037.27 Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00 VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £157.09 Total : £1,204.36


You say money is no object but you could scale it down in a few places.

 

[Zomboii]

Cheers for that.

I'm prob going to keep my case, as it's a pretty bad ass Lian Li beast, and not sure about the SSD (seems like a lot of cash - I'm happy with my raptor as my boot drive atm).

I've been having a read up on 5850 and the 5870, although I think the 5870 is too much cash for the extra performance. Any reason you went with the Asus card, or are they all pretty much the same?

So...the big question I've got is AMD or Intel? I've not been keeping up with current events in the CPU world, so I don't know what the current state of play is. Is Intel a clear winner? Also, is it worth shelling out the extra for the 860 or the 920?

MB - I'd rather shell out more on a good MB, is this one good...or can i get better?

Thanks for your help - appreciate it.