Going to finally be replacing my q6600 rig she has served me well but time to retire the old beast! Im looking for something a bit smaller this time i currently have a i3-540 knocking about i'm looking to use as well as my old PSU was looking to use a bitfenix prodigy case assuming i can find the relevant sized motherboard that will accommodate the I3 so that just leaves 4gb of ram and a mid range graphics card. i have the rest eg motherboard etc. so looking for recommendations for motherboard, ram, and graphics card! Regards
itx or mATX? Budget? What games do you want to play or software you want to use? Please help us help you
Unfortunately the motherboard RocketPotato suggested (P8Z77-I Deluxe) will not fit the i3 540; it's an LGA1156 chip while the board only supports LGA1155 chips. Scan is selling this board at the moment which suits your requirements perfectly. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/inte...d-sata-pcie-20-(x16)-graphics-on-board-mini-i However, performance wise I doubt you'll be satisfied by how much of a "beast" the i3 540 is since its performance compared to the Q6600 is close to being parallel to each other or even worse in some cases D: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=143 My suggestion? Take RocketPotato's P8Z77-I Deluxe and slap a i5 3570K on top, finish it off with a closed-loop CPU cooler and you'll be happy for a good few years
