Ok, so here is the deal: I'm in near future getting a significant amount of cash to spend on whathever i want, abut 500-600£. I do not have very much experience with pc so i don't really know what i will have most benefit from. I mean like it's tempting to run off and buy a gtx590, but i will never even use half of it's potential. So here is my build at the moment: Fractal Design Define R3 (Case) P7H55M-USB3 (Mobo) Intel Pentium G6950 (CPU) CoolIt ALC Vantage (CPU-cooler) which i got for 20£ 2*2gb Corsair XMS3 (RAM) 320gb WD Caviar Green (HDD) Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 (VGA) Chieftec A135-550W (PSU) Tandberg sumthing, very old, 2002 i think (screen) Okay, so your initial thoughts might be to replace the crappy Tandberg, i have though of that also. But besides that, what would you buy in my place? Would you buy a LGA 1155 processor or wait for LGA Q4 2011 or Bulldozer? would you buy an SSD? I would greatly appreciate it if you help me out with your thoughts. Thanks
Out of curiosity are you overclocking your CPU? I would almost certainly get a SSD (OCZ Vertex 3 or wait for Crucial's C400 range and see which is best) and right now this display is a total bargain and would be a great investment.
Depends on if your budget will double or triple in 6 months when the new intel platform is released as that is what it will cost. Sandybridge is a decent investment over what you have, you would need to replace the psu Would cost about £580 total for mobo CPU and ram + psu. No point replacing the screen unless your buying a more powerful card as the 6850 bearly cuts it at 1920x1080 now in the future it will be scraping the minimums of native Rez for gaming. If that's your main concern you would need to be looking at 470 or above in older cards 560 or above in newer cards. You can get 480 for around £180 in sales on scan and for the price it's a cracking card if a little loud and hot but it still performs very well better than any card around that price even if you can overclock some of them to get close.
Your best upgrade path: Lynnfield CPU (i5-760 or a cheap i7-860 if you can find one), SSD and new monitor. Definitely a new monitor!! I'd love to recommend you one of these: http://www.asus.com/Display/LCD_Monitors/PA246Q/ because they are cheap P-IPS panels, although it's not really ideal for gaming. The Dell U-series recommended around also sounds good - best make a monitor thread and see what people suggest. Everything else looks perfectly fine for now, unless you feel the need to add 4GB more memory. If you're unsure about overclocking try using the Turbo Key II or AutoTune in the BIOS, or TurboV software in Windows. Make sure you're running the latest BIOS too (update it from a USB flash drive FAT32 formatted within EZ Flash 2). It's not worth updating the board if it's working well. http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1156/P7H55USB3/#download
like bindi said pop an i5 in there, ssd and screen. i don't see any reason to upgrade to sandybridge, the performance differences are negligible for the cost.
I am overclocking my CPU, it was the main purpose for getting that CPU. I had it as high as 4,4Ghz but i think i have damaged either the board or CPU, so now it won't run at over 3,8Ghz without BSOD. SSD is on the buylist, but are you sure i have to buy OCz or Crucial's 400 series? I see on my preferred internet reseller that the Crucial C300 64gb disk is on about 100£ which seems a good buy. Replacing my graphics card is not an option. I do actually rarely play very high demanding games and when i do i have no problem with playing on lower resolutions. I know SB is good value, especially the 2500K. But i somehow feel that Bulldozer will be worth waiting for. I hope they will give very much bang for the buck. I also feel that AMD socket mobos are way more stylish then the Intel socket chipsets. Buying an i7-870 or 860 will, as you say, offer great value. My only concern is that i have damaged my mobo while overclocking my G6950. Is there any way to test it? I will look into all your screen reccomendations, and your other reccomendations for that matter. Thanks for the help!
I'd say definitely the Lynnfield/SSD route. It could work out fairly cheap too since i'd imagine that logically there's a big market in second hand Lynnfields at the moment due to all the 'must-have-now' boys forking out for SB's. I wouldn't imagine you've 'damaged' it as such, i would imagine it would be giving some major issues if you had. Perhaps it just isn't transferring heat through the thermal paste as well as it was.
The second hand markets in Norway isn't quite big, as it is with mostly everything in Norway. I could buy one from eBay, but i do not know how shipping will work. Does it cost alot to ship it to Europe? btw, the CPU stays cool even at 100% load but when i try to run it at a clock which requires higher Vcore then 1,2125 it gets BSOD after 5 minutes in Windows.
i'd give that psu a look...it's made by a fairly new company to the psu world named Sirfa...and for being so new in a time where quality psu's are easier and easier to come by, sirfa is making a name for themselves with poor regulation and ripple suppression...very inconsistent as an oem... given that you are having stability issues with your cpu, it could have a little to do with a sub-par psu...just a thought...no sense in dropping a good chunk of change on new kit, only to have the performance crippled by instability...
You sayin' sumthing there, trig. I recently tried to install Linux, but kept gotting an error stating "Hard resetting link". When i googled my problems it showed that it could be a PSU problem. Is there any way to test stability of my PSU? But just as you it's no use upgrading when the PSU is my problem, it's just as less use to buy just another PSU -_^
there is, but the equipment is high dollar...not something you wanna shell out on lol... just take a look at the psu thread on the top of this forum...any questions about specifics post back here and i'll be glad to help...but yeah, i'd start there.
