Hey all, Wanting abit of advice on reccomendations on current build ideas that everyone has. I have around £900-£1000 to do it with. My partner into gaming and will give her my old machine. Currenty my system build is: Intel Core i5 2500K (Overclocked to 4.5ghz) Cooler: Dark rock Advanced Mobo: MSI P67A-GD53 (B3) RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Jet Black GFX: GTX 560Ti Case: Antec 300 Hard Drive: Utter rubbish one. No idea what it is. Power Supply: Antec Truepower 650W Monitor: Basic 21" DVD Drive: Basic Mouse: G5 Keyboard: G15 I'm wanting to get a better build for that money which I know is possible. However I'm also wanting everything to be neat and tidy inside aswell. Any ideas then that'd be great.
There is nothing wrong with the core part of your current rig. You will find you might get a few more FPS with a more expensive GPU but its not going to be worlds different. The monitor and HDD are the glaring holes in your current setup. A nice big 24 or even 27" IPS monitor will make your gaming experience better than any GPU upgrade. What i really see is that you do not need a new PC for yourself, you want to buy a PC for your partner to play games on. What kind of games does she like? How often does she game? Is it a hobby that is worth spending £900+ on? Generally you can get a gaming experience 80% as good by spending half the money. I suggest you keep your current setup, but get a new monitor for yourself. Spend around £200-300 (havent been in the market for a new monitor for a while, but this will get you a really good 24" or a decent 27". Personally i have a 27" that is nearly 3 years old and i love it, the sheer size makes so much difference. I have TV playing on one side of the screen, firefox open on another and ebuddy in one corner. I can see everything comfortably, you cant do that on a smaller screen). Then buy your girlfriend a machine for around £600 or whatever is left after the monitor. This will still get you a good system (probably about level with what you have now) that will last for a good few years before struggling to keep up with new games.
Problem is in all honesty is I'm looking to just upgrade due to the fact I fancy a change. While your logic is pretty much 100% sound I'd still love the oppurtunity to build a new comp from scratch and have the money to blow on it. My partner is relativley new to games but the main one im looking to get her into is Guild Wars 2. Obviously this will require a slightly more powerful machine. With that said could you just humor me and give me your opinion on the specific build I should be looking at?
That build is solid and I'd go for a system the same as you currently have, my build is quite similar. Except I have a GTX 570 (Stock GPU no after market cooler etc) and Corsair HX 750w PSU. My monitor is an LG IPS231 1920x1080 res. Depends on what you need the system to do. Do you need or want a i7 2600k? Going for a Z68 or even a Z77 Mobo will be worthwhile. I am itching to change my ASUS P8P67 to a Z68/Z77 board. Simply as with a BIOS update later on you can upgrade to Ivy Bridge in the future. The build you have right now is solid and to simply get more FPS upping the GPU anty is the way to go. With IB and Kepler coming you might be best to wait as prices on current 500 series nVidia's will come down.
IB and Kepler? sorry I'm slightly out of the loop here. Possible to explain about what's happening pretty soon?
IB are Ivy Bridge, the new Intel processors. They should be out by June, but some sources are still reporting April. They're not going to be a massive step up in terms of performance but will offer lower power consumption and better integrated graphics. Kepler are the new Nvidia graphics cards. They'll probably be pretty powerful and pretty expensive. When they are released however prices of older cards should hopefully drop.
This is true although not quite correct, Ivy will use less power than sandy, and in testing so far it's only been between 10 and 20% faster than sandy, they key with ivy, which everyone seems to be forgetting is the 22nm fab process and 3d transistors means MONSTER fricking overclocked, expect 5.4Ghz to be attainable for daily use easy peasy and I reckon we will see really good chips be hitting the magic 6Ghz mark, obviously this is slightly guess work, but using a bit of logic it sounds pretty possible
Thanks guy much appreciated. So logically speaking it's better to wait to see these new graphics cards and cpu's to judge wether the overclocking capabilities are worth waiting and saving for the upgrade?
Pretty much, building a Z68 rig now with the intention to upgrade it in a couple months is a waste of money
Pretty much yeah, Z77 boards are looking really nice. Spec and asthetics wise. but not going to come cheap either. For example The G1 Sniper is looking sexeh as hell. but no idea on price just yet. Wish I had the funds to go with what I'd like too do.
Yeah. Should be interesting anyone got any links on the respective price expectancys? Also how much difference between the i7 and the new models are we talking? Aso same with the GPU values?
The top of the range i7 3770K (i7 2600K equivalent) tested here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k Prices should be similar to sandy bridge when it was released, the site says around $332, which is £205, then with 20% VAT on that, it'll be around £240-250
Just been looking at these new Ivy Bridge CPU's via the link that was given (cheers mike), they don't really seem to be worth the upgrade considering it's only 5-10% increase over the current sandys. However the obvious part would be the factor off upgrades via BIOS updates for future releases. So fingers crossed they'll actually give us the ability to keep the same mobo and use it for future cores. (Think I've got my head round it please state if I don't!) The new Nvidia graphic cards look awesome and if under the same pretense they become what they state they will be, your looking at faster, cheaper better cards for the same price as the 570's and 580's are now... kinda hard to believe if I'm honest.
Like I said ivy bridge is only about 5-10% faster AT STOCK, once you over clock them there is more of a substantial difference, as they will over clock considerably higher than sandy bridge. As the only test's I've seen comparing and Ivy and sandy have been stock results, and also considering the chips haven't been released yet, its probably best to wait until they are, as Mikeyman said, building a SB rig now is a bit mad. Also Ivy bridge will be the last CPU's on the 1155 socket, after this it will be Haswell on an 1150 socket and the two will not be backwards compatible.
Only oc test ive seen showed them getting very hot compared to SB. Im hoping that they wont be though, shouldnt be long until more tests pop up now. Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
So is it actually worth waiting for the haswell? Seems like theres no transition into the new boards? So logically speaking we'll have to replace everything possibly next year? If ofcourse you want to keep up to date. Thanks for the update bdigital - worryingly enough thats what I've seen recently aswell.
If you have the money and insist on getting the latest and "greatest" then go for it. People are suggesting waiting for Ivy Bridge or Haswell. I bought my system last September I didn't want to wait as I didn't own a PC at the time. I don't feel the need to upgrade until my system isn't capable of doing what I want it to do. Though of course if I had the money thats a different story all together.
It's not about getting the latest and greatest at all. Since I was old enough to afford my own paper round I have saved to get medium based machines. This specific issue is merely based on general opinions to wether or not the cost is viable for the actual outcome. If so the logic behind my reasoning is purley based on getting a better machine for afew months more saving. I think those of you who stated to wait are correct and I'll watch this with great interest. One thing I would like to ask is what PSU, Case, keyboard, mouse and headset would you guys reccomend?
