Hi everyone, I'm new to the forums as a new poster, but a longtime reader. anyway, I'm looking for advice for what parts to upgrade on my rig, as i'm hasn't been massivly upgraded for 3/4 years! On advisment by Fingers66, I'm now using a template for easier reading and so forth. - Budget: £800 - £1,000 This is just for the system itself. Main uses of intended build: Gaming, Graphcis Design Parts required: OS, CPU, MB, GPU, RAM and Cooler (Would like keep the PSU and Case as these are new, and the HDD's if possible.) Previous build information (list details of parts): OS - Windows XP Home SP3 CPU - Intel Core2Quad Q9450 OC'ed at 3.0 GHZ, coupled with a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 MB - Asus P5N-D GPU - Xpertvision 9600GT OC'ed RAM - 2GB DDR2 HDD - 2x 320GB Hitatchi/Samsung Drives in RAID 0 Sony DVDRW Drive -And I've added new parts in the last couple of months, listed below. PSU - Coolermaster Silent Gold Pro 1200W Case - Coolermaster HAF-X with Sharkoon red neon lighting. Monitor resolution: Currently 1920 x 1080 (22in) Storage requirements: 1TB will you be overclocking: Yes Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): Will require SLI/Xfire, and maybe watercooling in budget allows. Extra information about desired system: N/A - Any advice would be welcomed. Thanks.
Have a read of the bit-tech buyers guide first: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2011/03/10/pc-hardware-buyer-s-guide-march-2011/1. Then read this thread on how to outline your requirements: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=182284. Then come back and edit your first post - you will find that you will get a lot more valuable input.
You could make a nice sandy bridge build on that budget: CPU: i7 2600k - £239 Mobo: MSI P67A-GD53 - £111 RAM: 8GB memory - £72 Cooler: Thermaltake Frio - £37 GPU: 580 - £383
Recently upgraded from a 4 year build myself and found the following more than capable... CPU: i5 2500K CPU COOLER: Gelid Tranquillo MOTHERBOARD: Asus P8P67 Deluxe (Great connectivity) RAM: Corsair Memory XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) (I went 4GB but since you do graphical work!) Pretty good bedrock for the rest of your build.
Thanks for taking the time to lay it all out more clearly . I would suggest the Asus P8P67 Pro motherboard, it has all the features needed at a good price and overclocks well. 8GB of RAM is great, just choose a CPU cooler that will not interfere with the RAM (easier to get 2 x 4GB DIMM's). Due to the Sandy Bridge chips running very cool, even when overclocked, it really comes down to money in my opinion. The Gelid Tranquilo is enough for an overclocked 2500K/2600K and is £25, the Thermaltake Frio is very good (but noisy under full load) and is £37, the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced is also good and is £40-ish and the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro is very good but is over £50. If it was me, I'd go for the Tranquilo (I already have one). Bit-Tech have recently reviewed both the Be Quiet! coolers so have a browse. The GPU is the tricky one. Any decent gaming GPU will also fulfil any graphics design work you need to do, it boils down to the gaming aspect. You haven't mentioned the games you play but with your budget, you can stretch to a GTX 580 - you won't ever need more for a few years. The trick is getting a quiet one so that it doesn't hurt your ears when not gaming.
Stretch for a 580 Fingers? With a budget between £800 to £1000 for this upgrade I'd say that a 580 or equivalently powered card is par for the course. With the parts I listed and an extra £73 for Windows 7 the total comes out to £915. That's enough room to replace what I recommended with a more expensive motherboard than the one I mentioned like the Asus Deluxe or Pro, or he could change the cooler to something smaller and possibly get two 2x4GB kits and run 16GB of memory on it and still be in budget. However, if Diesel's not interested in maxing out his budget budget, I would stick with what everyone so far has suggested (gelid tranquillo, asus p8p67 pro/deluxe, etc).
Dae and Fingers: I was originally going to get the 580, but I'm just thinking of power consumption and noise levels, as those 580 I read can be quite power hungry under load (and I get moaned at for the power consumption of the current setup, which is about 370-90w under load) I was either going to get a 6xxx series AMD Radeon, or just buy a GTX560Ti or 2 and Oc the hell out of it to higher performance levels and wait wait until the 6 series of Nvidia GPUs are released. SandyBridge sounds perfect though.
if i was building new right now and had the budget for choice parts, cpu: i5 2500k £141 motherboard: evga p67 $244 (not available in UK yet?) gpu: evga gtx580 (hydro) £486 ram: mushkin blackline 2x4gb £74 ssd: mushkin calisto 120gb (replace with sata3= ?) £170 hdd: samsung f3 1TB £33 cpu cooler: ek supreme hf waterblock £50 rad: ek 280 £55 res: phobya balancer £19 pump: laing ddc + ek replacement top £52 + £15 fittings: ek 13mm compression £30 (for 10) total: £1369 the water cooling puts you over budget, but might give you an idea about how much. obviously savings can be had by replacing for cheaper brands components, but i like these brands as i've had nothing but good experience from them. i've also listed prices in rough averages, as there is some fluctuation between various etailers.
CPU: i5 2500k (easily better than i7 2600k as virtually no extra performance but £80 more!) CPU cooler: Be Quiet Dark Rock Advanced MOBO: ASUS P8P67 (great for pretty much everything, no point in paying more for pro etc unless you're planning on using dual GPU's) RAM: 8gb (2 x 4gb) corsair vengeance GPU: evga gtx580 (hydro)
