Hey guys my computer finally gave up the ghost after 7 years of loyal service Just aswell really as i'd gone as far down the upgrade path as possible. I plan on using my old case, PSU and drives but im in need of a new CPU, mobo, memory and GFX card. So i've come up with this: CPU: Intel Core i5 760 2.8GHz (Lynnfield) COOLER: Thermaltake Frio MOBO: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 MEM: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC10666 GFX: 9800GX2 (donated by my cousin) All from aria.com as they're local and i've had good dealing with them in the past. Total price excluding the GFX card is about £350, i'd like to keep it around that price if possible. Main uses are for gaming. Do you guys see anything wrong with the components or can you recommend something better for the same price? Cheers
Hi mate, I'd just look at your memory. For just a little extra you could get better. Without realising it my dominator 1600 was running at the bios default of 1066, when I changed it to the correct speed the difference was noticable pal. Good luck
1600MHz memory that is all (what you have there is 1333MHz). They're supposed to the nearly the same price .
Couldn't you save a bit of money by getting the GA-H55M-UD2H? Also, you could get the Titan Fenrir from Aria for £1 less.
Yeah I was eyeing up the H55M-UD2H but because of the H55 chipset you only get a 16x PCIe and 4x PCIe slots, where as with the P55 you get both lanes at 16x full speed, at least thats my understanding. With the toss up between the frio and fenrir, there's a fair difference in performance from the reviews i've seen, its not major but for an extra quid I might aswell get the frio. Its gonna be a lot more noisy because of the amount of air it pushes over the fins, but tbh i'm not too fussed about the system being quiet. On the memory issue, it's been a while since i've chose any, but when I bought DDR(400) WAAAY back, you had to match the speed of the modules to the speed of the front side bus to ensure maximum performance. So if I buy some PC3-12800 memory would I have to overclock the CPU fsb from 166MHz to 200MHz to get the most out of it?
If it's clocked too high the RAM underclocks itself so it's not bad. It gives you room for some nice overclocking, and if the prices are still about the same between 1333MHz modules and 1600MHz modules then 1600MHz is totally worth getting. Remember that you also have the BIOS to go to and tweak if you want a 1:1 ratio.
Ah thanks for clearing it up, yeah the 1600MHz modules are only £3 more expensive or so, might aswell get those eh? If it means a bit of overclocking then thats fine, with the huge frio cooler I should be ok
