Evening ladies and gents, Current box has done me 3 years of excellent service now, but it is starting to struggle and I'm looking to upgrade a little. It definitely needs the extra memory, but to be honest I haven't been paying attention with this stuff. Any advice much appreciated. Merry Boxing Day! Budget: £500ish Main uses of intended build: General work/internet use, video/photo editing, the other half playing a lot of LA Noire & Skyrim. Parts required: I'm thinking- GPU - MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card SSD - Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive RAM - Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit Previous build information (list details of parts): Lian-Li PC-A10 Core i7 920 2.66GHz 8 MB cache LGA1366 Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache Asus P6T Deluxe 3GB G.SKILL NQ PC10666 DDR3/1333mhz HD 4850 512MB Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 750W Samsung SM-2493HM 24" Widescreen Windows 7 (64) Monitor resolution: 1920x1200 Storage requirements: SSD for boot, 1 TB data will you be overclocking: no Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): no Extra information about desired system:
Upgrades look good. Although you might want to wait until early 2012 as AMD will be releasing new high end components which could result in price drops on the GTX 580 line of Nvidia cards.
I wouldn't go for a GTX 580 right now as the 7970 is due to go on sale 9th of Jan and will be a better card (for more money tho) and will likely bring the price of the 6970/580 down. I am not very familiar with the LGA1366 architecture as I missed it out, is triple channel RAM necessary? Be wary of the Vengeance RAM heatsinks, they are quite large and can foul CPU coolers but is excellent otherwise. M4 SSD is a great choice Edit, Your current mobo doesn't have a SATA 3 port so speed will be reduced on SATA 2 (will still be very fast compared to HDD tho) You can buy a PCIe SATA3 /RAID controller to overcome the problem without changing boards
Thanks for looking it over. Guess I'm waiting a couple of weeks on the GPU then. The memory definitely will fit in, and I'm pretty sure it should be triple channel (happy if this is wrong though!). Not much further room with the LGA1366 upgrade-wise I guess, but memory isn't cripplingly expensive these days even if it's a dead end. Any suggestions on the SATA3 controller dizzi? Not something I have much experience with. Thanks again, glad for the help.
There's always a 2nd hand 970 hexcore. LGA1366 is certainly triple channel, although it can run dual channel as well.
I've read many good things about Highpoint Rocket PCIe - SATA 3 controllers... was on the Custom PC / Bit-Tech recommended list for sometime (before SATA 3 was common on new motherboards) Quick glance at Scan and I saw this one: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/high...-v2-x1-to-sata-6gb-s-non-raid-controller-card There is no raid support but it would do the job if all you want is full SATA 3 speed from an SSD. Might be a good idea to google some Highpoint Rocket reviews or guides to make sure your getting the right one for you
Brilliant, thanks boss, everything ordered except the graphics card. Cheers all. (My post count per day has skyrocketed...)
Good upgrade, I'd opt for a HD6970 or a GTX 570. They're a tad cheaper (a lot cheaper) and offer almost as much performance.
Upgrade so far has made a very noticeable difference. Should have bought an SSD earlier. It's brilliant. Quite keen to get a GPU now, bearing in mind I'm upgrading from a trusty 4850, is it really worth the extra money for the 7970?? The cheapest I've seen is £460ish which is almost the entire budget I had in mind originally...
There is a premium on the price right now as its brand new tech, the best performing single GPU available and there seems to be a shortage of them. Whether that price will come down in the near future is guess work. It sits reasonably above its nearest competitor so I would imagine these prices will stay until Nvidia hits back with something or cuts its prices. If you go for a 5xx or 6xxx series card such as a 570/580 or HD6950/70, you are gonna see a big leap in performance over a 4850.
I'm tempted to try and find a reasonable second hand 570 for the time being, it seems decent enough to do what I want. Unrelated to that, had a go at a small (dutch courage assisted) oc on the 920 as well, it's really not as complicated as I thought! Cheers muchly mate.
