Would these work together fine?

naisdes · 18 Mar 2013 at 18:08

Hey all, I've got an ageing PC lying around here bought from that PC shop down at my local retail park. It has an AMD Phenom 9650 Quad Core with 4GB of DDR2 RAM, Radeon 4350 and a 350W PSU. It's in this ugly Advent ATX case but I think I can reuse this case fine. I'm planning to upgrade it and I haven't yet decided on my budget so hence why I'm posting two builds. So let's say, a £300 build, and a £400 build.

I've already bought a Corsair 500W PSU, so all I need is a motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card. I'm not going to be overclocking it so I don't need any K editions and I think the standard HSF should suffice.

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D2V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £41.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £25.99
Total : £292.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail *£169.99
1 x Sapphire HD 7850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Tomb Raider & Bioshock PC Games *£137.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D2V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard *£41.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) *£25.99
Total : £387.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).

The only thing I'll be doing on it is playing TERA on maxed settings at 1920x1080. I previously had a mini-ITX build with an i3 2100, 4GB DDR 3 RAM, Radeon 6850 1GB and a XFX 550W PSU which played it fine, so I would be looking at a minimum performance similar to that. I've since sold that PC, hence why I want to upgrade this old one.

I also plan to stick a 128GB SSD in there at a later date to install Windows 7 and TERA on, then reuse my 500GB HDD for data etc. I recently got that Intel RST enabled on an Ultrabook I bought that had a mSATA 32GB SSD with a 750GB HDD. Is this something I could setup later?

Any suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!

Incrauze · 18 Mar 2013 at 18:19

The motherboard I've picked has SATA III which will benefit for the SSD you will be using later on and also 8GB will be better for gaming,

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Tomb Raider & Bioshock PC Games £173.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £38.39
Total : £364.75 (includes shipping : £9.50).

dacads · 18 Mar 2013 at 18:22

Why not just build from scratch?

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £59.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L7 430W '80 Plus' Power Supply £39.95
1 x **B Grade** Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £37.16
1 x Adata XPG Gaming v1.0 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AX3U1600GC4G9-2G) £35.99
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte H61MA-D2V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £30.00
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B5ST SATA ReWriter - Black (OEM) £18.95
Total : £530.00 (includes shipping : £12.50).

naisdes · 18 Mar 2013 at 20:16

Thanks for the suggestions so far. 8GB sounds good since it won't stretch my budgets much, and that Gigabyte motherboard looks like just the thing too. I see that both of you have recommended I stay with the i3 3200, which I understand as my i3 2100 handles TERA fine. I was wondering though whether a 7850 might be an overkill or if it will be bottlenecked by the i3 and thus I should spend on an i5 instead?

That's one thing I've never been sure about when deciding on builds; which processors match which graphics cards best.

As much as I would love to splash out again on a full build because it's fun building it all from scratch, I have plenty of spare parts so it's not necessary. Thanks.

naisdes · 19 Mar 2013 at 00:23

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £38.39
Total : £267.77 (includes shipping : £9.50).

Ok that's what I have decided on for now. That looks pretty much set. Now I just need a graphics card and I think I've narrowed it down to two:

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Asus GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Borderlands 2 & Assassin's Creed III PC Games £169.99
1 x HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H785QN2G2M) with Tomb Raider & Bioshock PC Games £161.99
Total : £343.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).

From what benchmarks I could find, they say the GTX 660 is better than the Radeon 7850 and both are priced around the £160-170 price range. Any thoughts please?

dacads · 19 Mar 2013 at 00:31

Might be worth splashing an extra £10 out on the 3570k so in future you can overclock it with a Z77 motherboard

naisdes · 19 Mar 2013 at 00:38

Thanks but I won't be doing any overclocking in the future.

Incrauze · 19 Mar 2013 at 07:27

naisdes said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £38.39
Total : £267.77 (includes shipping : £9.50).

I would go for the Intel i5 3570K for a bit more price as if you're thinking of selling the system later on, it will worth more than the standard 3570

naisdes said:
Ok that's what I have decided on for now. That looks pretty much set. Now I just need a graphics card and I think I've narrowed it down to two:

YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** Asus GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Borderlands 2 & Assassin's Creed III PC Games £169.99
1 x HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H785QN2G2M) with Tomb Raider & Bioshock PC Games £161.99
Total : £343.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).

From what benchmarks I could find, they say the GTX 660 is better than the Radeon 7850 and both are priced around the £160-170 price range. Any thoughts please?

The Gigabyte HD 7850 I suggested has a higher stock core speed than the HIS which will be good as you're not overclocking the graphics card or you can get the GTX 460