So now I am considering upgrading my pc and start to use it more, I tend to do casual gaming and photo editting and maybe video editing. The pc I currently have is fairly old. Is the motherboard viable to upgrade and get a decent gpu? I have about £200-£300 to spend to upgrade. Which parts would you upgrade? __________________ Core i5 750 // MSI P55-GD65 // G.Skill Ripjaw 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz// Gigabyte Radeon 4890 HD 1GB// Corsair 650W TX Series PSU // 2 x Seagate 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm
I would look for a cheap second hand I7 for your motherboard and then buy a decent GPU. Something like the RX 480 4gb would be good. https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-40x-as.html For an example, and something along these lines. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Cor...196650?hash=item1ec41c20ea:g:MOAAAOSwCU1YwBj1 Would be good for modern gaming. Then when the price comes down maybe think about going 16gb RAM but not essential.
Ack, totally forgot that ! Yeah it should be doable. Wow, I'd like to be in his house when he goes SSD, new CPU and GPU
CEX sell the i7 860 for £50 Combine that with a much more usable 256GB SSD, and it'll leave you plenty for a decent GPU
I'd second getting a 250GB SSD, as 120Gb is a bit limited and games fill them up rapidly. There's an i7 860 locally on Gumtree at £40, but IIRC, CEX give a 2 year guarantee, which is well worth the difference (the other one would have to be posted too...).
Wow, never thought about looking at CEX for a processor but it looks like there are some really good deals there.
If the motherboard supports it you can get an I7-a-like Xeon for about £30. With the board being MSI though that's not terribly likely, though I will do some research.
Yup it works, just make sure you install the correct bios. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Xeo...105466?hash=item3add40a8fa:g:M8AAAOSwXeJYDo9U
Wow, thanks for this info and the links. Didn't think it would be possible to get a decent setup with the motherboard. Did think about ssd upgrade a while back but now will definitely upgrade to that as it's a must now adays. I'm guessing the i7 is worth a little extra over the xeon?
The i7 is clocked slightly higher which technically makes it better, but we aren't exactly talking night and day here.
True that, is it worth upgrading my i5 to i7, I have been looking at the i7 870. Bench mark suggests it's a lot faster, nearly double figures comparisons.
If you can find one really cheap, sure its worth it, but considering the age of the platform as a whole I really wouldn't spend more than £50 or so, which brings up back to the Xeon option. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-X3450-vs-Intel-Core-i7-860
For sure, however I was hoping I can just get a ssd and gpu because I will need to also get a heatsink and fan for the 2nd hand i7 860/870 processor.
Personally I'd ditch the entire platform and sell the 1156 board on the bay because people are crazy there! Sell the cpu and ram too before they become worthless. Board will get you around £50 (Believe it or not someone is aiming for £100 at the moment, I wish them luck!) Cpu £30 Ram £30 So there's £110 (take into account fee's and postage) Add that to your £300 Say £400, Find a few quid more and buy this: £422.50ish if you get free postage. This will give you a clear upgrade path to a better cpu whilst still beating the proposed i7 860 in most tasks. If you want to come back into budget ditch the 240gb ssd and go for a 120gb. It depends on your gaming habits, if you only play a few games at a time 120gb will do, you also have the option of storing your games on the 500gb spinner if needs be, it only effects load times.
I'd opt for either a cheap Xeon from fleabay or skip the idea of a cpu upgrade completely, but regardless of which one start saving for a proper mobo / cpu / ram upgrade somewhere down the line rather than messing around with crippled dual cores.
Thanks for this, it is worth considering selling my current parts. However currently I think I am going to get a ssd and gpu because I can always take them across to my next build. Hopefully within this year I can get a new mb, CPU and ram. Then it will bring it to current standards.
SSD I have got the Samsung ssd 850 250gb and just did a test using AS SSD. Removed all my other hhd and setup using AHCI via Bios. See results below: EMT02B6Q storahci - OK 103424 K - OK 232.88 Read Seq = 262.89 MB/s 4K = 29.72 MB/s 4K-64Thrd = 192.12 MB/s Acc.time = 0.069 ms Score: 248 Write Seq = 253.92 MB/s 4K = 60.55 MB/s 4K-64Thrd = 152.65 MB/s Acc.time = 0.046 ms Score: 239 Combine score of 625 Is that the results that are realistic to my setup? Around the web I have read and seen people getting read and write of 500MB/s. So my results are really disappointing. Although I assume the cpu etc I have plays a large role into my results. I have installed Windows 10 on it and it seems to be running fine. Couldn't find no support for windows 10 compatibility but I just went ahead and installed. Still waiting to purchase my GPU.
