I'm not looking to buy at the moment as I've got basically zero funds currently. But I like to think ahead so I'm currently pondering a future build. My current PC for gaming (my brother's but I can borrow it if he's not using it, was a decent enough PC when I bought it about 3 years ago, but as time's gone by it's not as good as it was. Due to a flaky mobo and generic case/PSU (the later a decent but noisy Seasonic) I'm not intending keep anything, but at the same time, I'm not looking for a huge increase in performance, more cooler, quieter, more stable build. Any gaming is likely to be at 1280x720/800/1024 or 1366x768. Due to a wish to continue playing some old DX9 titles (they apparently work in Vista so 7 shouldn't be an issue), I'll be staying with a 32-bit installation which does obviously limit me at the top end, but shouldn't I would think cause many issues at the above resolutions? My previous build was as follows: Premium ATX Midi Tower with Seasonic 750W PSU ASUS P5Q E8400 with Intel CPU Cooler Samsung 4GB DDR2-800 Hitachi Deskstar 320GB HDD 9600GT 512MB (Non-Passive) Due to a wish to maximise silence and cooling I was thinking of going with a Fractal Design case - either a Define R3 or a Define XL with the Enermax Pro 82+ from the latest Buyer's Guide (unless anyone can recommend a quieter one) with an SSD (Maybe C300 or M4) as a boot drive and either a single HDD or a 4-disk RAID 5 array for storage. As far as the other components, I've been pondering two options: a) Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 (for Quick Sync) Intel i5-2500S with Scythe Shuriken Rev B Corsair 4GB DDR3-1600 Radeon HD6670 Passive or b) Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H AMD A8-3850 with Scythe Shuriken Rev B (is this FM1 compatible?) Corsair 4GB DDR3-1600 I'm not really considering pairing the AMD build with a discret GPU as I believe that the only real strength of the APUs is the graphics element? Which - if either - of the above A or B would be the best match (aiming for a 10-25% increase in performance) for my old build and if not, what changes to the 4-5 variant components would you recommend to achieve the above goal? Shamrock Holmes
The E8400 is still a great chip so if you don't have much money just clean the old girl up! Consider spending a little on a better CPU cooler and then overclock towards 4GHz (I have an E8500 at 4GHz and stable). Add a quality Corsair PSU and a quiet graphics card maybe even a cheap SSD as a boot drive and you'll notice one hell of a difference for not too much money. Also there is no reason to not make a new installation 64-bit you'll only be limiting the PC with 32-bit.
Yeah I'd got for an SSD and overclock the E8400. The AMD APU actually won't perform much better than the E8400 and as for the GPU a 460 would be plenty unless you don't want to spend that much. You can occasionally find 5770 going cheap.
If you wan't to improve your gaming performance you may as well forget about the two options you've listed. The GPU is what is holding you back. A 1GB GTX 460 can be had here for less than £100 and would be a decent upgrade. If you can spend a little more a 6870 or 560ti would be great too! As others have said, you should definitely OC the CPU (or buy a Q6600 for £50 and OC that), a SSD is a great upgrade (64GB should hold windows and the essentials), and buying 32 bit W7 if you don't already have a copy is an absolute mistake as it will limit you to 3GB of RAM. The Fractal is a great choice of case though, and you can't got wrong with an Enermax PSU.
If it is any help I have just bought a Fractal Design R3 case. It is a lovely minimilistic design. Big and bold PC cases just aren't for me and I certainly don't need a window to the inside with LED lights in. Well, actually a window might have been nice, but am not bothered about window dressing. More importantly, the case was easy to build a PC in. Convenient motherboard tray with holes to feed cables to round the back. The only trouble I had was that my PSU CPU power leads were not long enough to pass through the back and back out at the top to plug into the motherboard. I am on the hunt for some extension cables or something to rectify this. Well worth it with a 64GB SSD too. I couldn't believe the difference it makes.
To clarify, my reason for sticking with 32-bit is that the only applications that will benefit from the upgrade are the games that I play, which as they were designed to work on XP at the latest don't have 64-bit executables so AFAIK would run no better - if at all - under Win 7 64. And 3GB addressable is sufficient to run all the other programs that I am running. As for the CPU, while performance is broadly adequete, the mobo and cooler are both indequate due to regular instabilities and high noise respectively so I doubt they'll last long term at stock, never mind OC'd so if I'm replacing both I figure I might as well replace the CPU at the same time and get the benefits of a cooler, more efficient chip. That said, i respect that the cost difference isn't necessarily going to make that much of a difference by itself but do you think that the i5 build would be suitable for purpose (I'd gain USB 3, SATA 6, extra SATA 3, Turbo Boost and extra memory bandwidth in the package even if the base line performance is similar and Im guessing multi-threaded apps would get a bump too) Shamrock Holmes
