Topic: PC Techies report in. Components upgrade advice needed.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Right, here is what is in it at the moment.

Processor: Intel Pentium D 820, 2.8ghz apparently.
Motherboard: RC410-m2 rev 2.1, can't find another more information.
PSU: 380w, looks like a generic brand.
Graphics: nVidia 7300GS 512mb, can't find the brand.
500GB HD
250GB HD
1GB generic RAM (2x512mb)

It's an Acer Aspire T650, which is getting a bit old in the tooth now. STALKER is where it finally choked and stopped being able to play the newer games without too much strain, it can handle TF2 with some frameskipping and everything turned right down.

I've been looking into upgrading it piece by piece but the motherboard can't take anything that's currently worth owning so it would make a lot more sense to get everything at once and start from scratch.

I'm aiming to play the games that are currently out with the graphics somewhere between 'respectable' and 'impressive'. Specifically I'm aiming for Fallout 3, STALKER: Clear Sky, Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, etc. Not too arsed about Farcry 2 and Crysis, would be nice to have a look but not being able to play them at amazing quality wouldn't be the end of the world. Monitor is 22" and runs at 1650x1080.

This in mind, could I go any cheaper than this set of stuff?

Asus P5Q Pro - £94.98
Asus HD4850 512MB - £115.80
Intel C3D E8400 - £130.03
OCZ RAM 4GB (2x2GB) - £34.98

Which comes to £375.79.

I'm informed that the processor will likely drop in price in the next few weeks, but apart from that can I downgrade any of this to save myself much cash? E5200 might do the job at £62.03. Might it be worth dropping down a generation of hardware?

Never actually done anything like this before. Everything I know has been found out tonight.

[Barney_Rubble]

All your links are belong to us fucked.

[Barney_Rubble]

Here's a couple of places to compare.

http://www.scan.co.uk

http://www.spotonuk.com/

I just checked the MoBo at each, and your ebuyer one appears cheapest.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Fixed, I was using Ebuyer as more of a reference, will start actively seeking out cheaper sellers when I've decided on what I'm buying.

[Barney_Rubble]

With doing such a major component upgrade, you should decide what your budget can handle, and get the best components you can afford. You might save a tenner here and there on some items, but you probably won't get much cheaper than what you've posted right there. The price for that 4Gb RAM for instance is quite something.

I only really take notice of new PC bits when it comes to buying stuff. Can't be arsed keeping up with all the trends and updates and new stuff and that, a mate of mine usually keeps me in the picture. As and when, suits me.

[JohnSullie]

You will need a new PSU for that stuff you are buying I wouldn't trust a 380watt generic  one with the new stuff you are buying,I'd go for ATI 4870 if you can pump a few more quid in also,also note the cards of today are fucking massive!,besure it will fit in your case.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

With doing such a major component upgrade, you should decide what your budget can handle, and get the best components you can afford. You might save a tenner here and there on some items, but you probably won't get much cheaper than what you've posted right there. The price for that 4Gb RAM for instance is quite something.

I only really take notice of new PC bits when it comes to buying stuff. Can't be arsed keeping up with all the trends and updates and new stuff and that, a mate of mine usually keeps me in the picture. As and when, suits me.

I'd rather not be constrained by a set budget and end up slightly below what I want, or end up spending more than I need. The budget is flexible, I just know I'm on one.

How about swapping the processor for an E6600? Seems like it should be able to hold up and it's about a third of the price.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

You will need a new PSU for that stuff you are buying I wouldn't trust a 380watt generic  one with the new stuff you are buying,I'd go for ATI 4870 if you can pump a few more quid in also,also note the cards of today are fucking massive!,besure it will fit in your case.

Considering I posted looking for advice on how to keep the price as low as possible I'm definitely not looking to throw more money at a graphics card. It'll all fit in,  the PSU is a concern but either a 450w or 550w Corsair will be installed if I keep this case, or will get a 500w inside the case if I choose to buy another.

[wacko]

Normally when upgrading a motherboard, the first thing I look for is forward compatibility. Better to get a board with the latest socket that you can stick a new processor with twice the power in after two years.

[JohnSullie]

Regarding the E6600 I have one in a Pc here,great little chip and lots of room to overclock it when you see fit,I havent had a problem with any of the latest games on the wishlist you've mentioned with it,re the case,what case is it?.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Normally when upgrading a motherboard, the first thing I look for is forward compatibility. Better to get a board with the latest socket that you can stick a new processor with twice the power in after two years.

I honestly can't see myself doing that. In two years I'm going to be living away from home with a laptop and only being home a few weeks of the year. It being able to do the stuff now is what I'm really bothered about, and keeping up with new releases for the next year or so.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Regarding the E6600 I have one in a Pc here,great little chip and lots of room to overclock it when you see fit,I havent had a problem with any of the latest games on the wishlist you've mentioned with it,re the case,what case is it?.

Case is just a bog standard Acer type thing, loads of room though. Only PCI slots used are the graphics and a TV tuner, the TV tuner will be chucked out though. Don't think it even works.

PSU is, upon closer inspection, made by FSP Group. Never heard of them.

[wacko]

I honestly can't see myself doing that. In two years I'm going to be living away from home with a laptop and only being home a few weeks of the year. It being able to do the stuff now is what I'm really bothered about, and keeping up with new releases for the next year or so.

Fair enough, then. If you're giving it away, it's not something you should be spending your money on.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Fair enough, then. If you're giving it away, it's not something you should be spending your money on.

I wouldn't call leaving it in the house giving it away. For a start the person who owns the house feeds and clothes me well enough for me to be able to save money and sink it into the PC to waste my free time playing video games. It'll be mine whenever I'm at home, too, mind.

[JohnSullie]

Hope that case does the job for ya,I know the current Nvidia cards are about 10 and a half inces long,the Ati ones are about and inch shorter or so I hear,I'd try and find out the size for deffo and measure up(might be in the specs of the card you posted),I had awful problems trying to install a G260 a few weeks back in a fairly new Antec case,but hum ho you might be fine.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Hope that case does the job for ya,I know the current Nvidia cards are about 10 and a half inces long,the Ati ones are about and inch shorter or so I hear,I'd try and find out the size for deffo and measure up(might be in the specs of the card you posted),I had awful problems trying to install a G260 a few weeks back in a fairly new Antec case,but hum ho you might be fine.

Yeah, looks like I have enough space. Not got a ruler to hand but there's about an inch short of a sheet of A4.

[PaulV]

How about swapping the processor for an E6600? Seems like it should be able to hold up and it's about a third of the price.

E6600 should be fine. I am running Fallout 3 at 1680x1050 on a E6550 with a 1GB Nvidia 9800GT (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=2267820 and 4GB RAM. I almost always buy my parts form Ebuyer as their returns policy has always been excellent - the graphics card being an exception as the price wasn't too bad and I needed it in a hurry.

Make sure that you get a decent power supply since as well as being power hungry, you are likely to need an extra 6 pin connector to power the PCI Express graphics card and make sure that your case is big enough to fit the video card. The 9800GT I got is about 2cm longer than the 8600GT it replaced, and I had to move a disk drive to fit it in the case.

[JohnSullie]

Yep paul makes a great point on the psu which I forgot about, you will need a compliant psu with the extra  6 pin connector.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

E6600 should be fine. I am running Fallout 3 at 1680x1050 on a E6550 with a 1GB Nvidia 9800GT (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=2267820 and 4GB RAM. I almost always buy my parts form Ebuyer as their returns policy has always been excellent - the graphics card being an exception as the price wasn't too bad and I needed it in a hurry.

Make sure that you get a decent power supply since as well as being power hungry, you are likely to need an extra 6 pin connector to power the PCI Express graphics card and make sure that your case is big enough to fit the video card. The 9800GT I got is about 2cm longer than the 8600GT it replaced, and I had to move a disk drive to fit it in the case.

How is it looking, Paul? Love the Fallout series, really want to be able to experience this one to somewhere near the maximum of its potential. Had to ramp any/many of the settings back?



Didn't have a clue about that PSU stuff, thanks. Looks like I am replacing it straight off then.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17883751

Was looking at the forums over on that place and this fella puts up recommended builds every month. What do you reckon on his £300 one? Maybe upgrade the processor a little bit?

http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=37928&whichpage=1

Or the cheaper gaming one here?

[Barney_Rubble]

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17883751

...What do you reckon on his £300 one? Maybe upgrade the processor a little bit?

Defo. Wouldn't touch a Celeron.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Bollocks. Cunting shitty arse fucking bollocks. Been saving up to do this for months and now most of the money has to be swiftly diverted into a phone because mine has just had the screen shatter while it was sat in my pocket. Only had the phone for three weeks.

.

[Barney_Rubble]

 

[mig]

Bollocks. Cunting shitty arse fucking bollocks. Been saving up to do this for months and now most of the money has to be swiftly diverted into a phone because mine has just had the screen shatter while it was sat in my pocket. Only had the phone for three weeks.

.

unlucky there. surely a phone won't cost as much as the upgrades though? you could always start by simply getting a new motherboard and processor just to provide the backbone for your upgrade.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

unlucky there. surely a phone won't cost as much as the upgrades though? you could always start by simply getting a new motherboard and processor just to provide the backbone for your upgrade.

Phone will take enough of a chunk out for it to be totally impractical.

If I just got the CPU and motherboard now then it'd still be borderline useless because the graphics card is really, really poor. I wouldn't be able to do much with it until I could afford to do the rest, which would just be pointless to go through with at the moment because prices are changing every day or two on the major websites at the moment. I've seen prices go down when I refresh on Overclockers.

If I just got the graphics now and plugged it into what I have the PSU wouldn't be able to take it and there'd be a bottleneck caused by the CPU and whatnot.

I'll stick this thread somewhere safe for a few weeks, or just cave and aim for an Xbox 360. I WILL play Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead.

[Armin]

Rob, if I were you I'd get a cheap phone and get on with it. The memory's a great deal. Get this P43 chipset MB instead, you're not going to use the additional features on the Pro unless you're overclocking or running a crossfire dual gpu etup:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149276 - £68

That will run the latest 45nm cpu's, so your relatively futureproofed whilst you downsize the cpu to the 5200 - the best bang per buck available:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148715 - £62

Although the 4850 would be ace you can still improve on your existing card with a 3850 at half the price:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144318 - £68

Ok it's not as good a system, but it will be a big improvement and the board will still be there for you when you're ready to get a better cpu, memory or gpu?

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Upon closer examination it turns out the PSU is in fact 300w, not 380w, and I have been fooled by a speck of dirt. That'll teach me to keep stuff clean.

Without a case or PSU and with Armin's suggestions on board, it'd come to £243.71 total. Which, for a PC of that power, is a hell of a deal really. Would only be another £80 for a complete system with this Antec Sonata III case which is apparently the standard case for a sub £500 games box. could get this Coolermaster thing for £50 which seems like another great deal.

Incredible that if I had the money I could have a PC like that on my doorstep on Tuesday morning for £300. In bits, albeit, but still incredible value.

My funds at the moment are about £400, but I've got to account for living allowances, replacing my phone, Christmas and everything else in the next few months so can't just splash it all out as I might like to. I might have just been able to justify it if it wasn't for that pissing phone. That RAM is a good deal so I might get that now and sit on the rest. Apparently with the new stuff coming out all the current CPUs will likely drop in price a bit so maybe that might help.

 

[Armin]

You know best what your outgoings are so that may be the best idea. Remember though that there will always be new products emerging and if the pound depreciates that may push costs up rather than down. I'm one that has a tendency to 'hang on' but the downside to that is that you could wait forever for the next product launch/price drop. Still, this close to xmas you may be better off waiting.

I have the Antec Sonata myself and I'd say it's well engineered and value for money. You could easily get a cheapo equivalent though, say, http://www.ebuyer.com/product/108273 and add a £15 550w psu to go with it. It's only a box ultimately and my Antec lives in a cupboard in any case

[JohnSullie]

Antec cases are for the most part sexy, shame on you Armin for shoving it into a cupboard.

[Rob Jones Maybe?]

Antec's Sonata is apparently a quiet case, which is a pretty nice touch because my current PC sounds like it's trying to take off. Either that or bore through the floor and into the living room. A new PSU, a bit of a better case and some hardware that doesn't need to stretch quite so far might help that out.

I won't be waiting for price drops, mostly because I am incredibly impatient. I'm also utterly itching to play some of the stuff out at the moment and could really do with the distraction from some things that are troubling me. Would be nice to catch Left 4 Dead while the servers are still packed, too. I might see how far the family are able to stretch and see if I could top that up to cover the entire system and spend boxing day knee deep in computer bits and bobs.

I've pretty much set myself on the

Core2Duo, as high as I can afford
ATI 3850/4670 or upwards, aiming for  4850
P43 or P45 motherboard

set which seems to be the standard for my price range at the moment. I can't see that changing radically. All the x38 and x48 stuff sounds like more than I need, 4 cores seems to hold very few advantages for me and the graphics card just seems to be where it has settled for the time being.

[mig]

oh btw, you might want to wait for a new processor now. the core2duo's are getting replaced later this month by the i7 processors.

[PaulV]

How is it looking, Paul? Love the Fallout series, really want to be able to experience this one to somewhere near the maximum of its potential. Had to ramp any/many of the settings back?

Its looking great. Pretty much taken the default settings suggested by the launcher (which I think were high) except for upping the resolution to 1680x1050 from 1440x900 to match the native resolution of my screen. Runs smoothly - set to 4 sample AA, 8 samples Anisotropic, HDR, Vertical sync full screen. i may play around with stuff a bit more to increase the draw distance.

[Martyn.]

Asus P5Q Pro - £94.98
Asus HD4850 512MB - £115.80
Intel C3D E8400 - £130.03
OCZ RAM 4GB (2x2GB) - £34.98

Looks pretty good. I would definitely go with the HD4850, even if it means getting an E5200.

Will you be running the 64-bit version of Vista? If not, I would be highly tempted to get 2GB or RAM, but get PC8500+ instead (will be around the same price as the 4GB you have now).

I know you are trying to build it cheaply, but it is still very worthwhile investing in a high quality PSU. Corsair are a great make.

[Ycuzz]

Necroing this, as the title seems fitting.

Would like some input/thoughts on new components I need. Mainly motherboard, cpu and cpu-fan.

Computer is mainly for work, (office stuff, not very system demanding) and general browsing, but mostly gaming. I'm not doing nor planning heavy streaming/video-editing/picture-galore-whatnot etc

Another requirement is quietness... This box sounds like it's in blast mode.. fairly often, (and Mrs Yc ain't best pleased..)

From other sources I've been pointed in the direction of:

the Asus Pro-gaming boards (B150 chipset)
An Intel Skylake i5-6500 (or 6400)
this Noctua fan or
this other Noctua fan

Not one for needing ooltra-souper-douper-grafix nor the fastestest speedz available to mankind, but I'd like games to run fast and smooth.

Budget; not sure what prices are all over, but about £400-600ish.

Not really 'locked' into anything yet and any and all help is appreciated.

Thanks.

[Slick_Beef]

For what it's worth, I have an i5-6600 processor, and the basic fan it comes with does not make a sound, aside from a brief whirr when you first turn it on. I frequently play demanding games and live in a hot country but don't have any issues with either noise or overheating. If you're not getting the 'K' models designed for overclocking then I really wouldn't worry splurging on a fancy fan/heatsink.

[Ycuzz]

Thanks, that's good to hear. Overclocking isn't something I'm going to bother with - which is also why the Asus B150 gaming mobo's has been recommended to me.

[Titi Camara]

Necroing this, as the title seems fitting.

Would like some input/thoughts on new components I need. Mainly motherboard, cpu and cpu-fan.

Computer is mainly for work, (office stuff, not very system demanding) and general browsing, but mostly gaming. I'm not doing nor planning heavy streaming/video-editing/picture-galore-whatnot etc

Another requirement is quietness... This box sounds like it's in blast mode.. fairly often, (and Mrs Yc ain't best pleased..)

From other sources I've been pointed in the direction of:

the Asus Pro-gaming boards (B150 chipset)
An Intel Skylake i5-6500 (or 6400)
this Noctua fan or
this other Noctua fan

Not one for needing ooltra-souper-douper-grafix nor the fastestest speedz available to mankind, but I'd like games to run fast and smooth.

Budget; not sure what prices are all over, but about £400-600ish.

Not really 'locked' into anything yet and any and all help is appreciated.

Thanks.

The 1080p Gaming PC – Best Gaming PC under £500

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400 – £56
Motherboard: MSI H170M Pro-VDH – £79
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB 2400MHz, 2 x 4GB – £34
Graphics card: AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB – £173
SSD: 120GB Kingston SSDNow V300 – £3
HDD: WD Blue 1TB – £39
Power Supply: Corsair VS450 – £33
Case: BitFenix Nova – £26
Cooler: Included with CPU

Total: £475

[Ycuzz]

Hehe, was wondering when you'd show Titi

Thanks for that, will now make me research even more.. hmm.. As nice as it might be tho, not looking for a complete new box.

What's your opinion on the longevity on the components (cpu+mobo)?

[Ycuzz]

Hmm... found a package deal

Intel® LGA1151 Core i5-6600K
ASUS Z170-E, Socket-1151
HyperX Fury DDR4 2133MHz 8GB kit
Akasa CPU Cooler AK-959CU

NOK 3.999,- is ~ £ 375

Thoughts?

[Titi Camara]

Although from an outright performance POV that's totally sound buddy it's not a great in terms of price vs. performance. The below combo works out at approx. - £180 + £83 + £42 + £50 = £355

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-piledriver-fx-8-eight-core-9590-blk-ed-4.70ghz-5.00ghz-turbo-socket-am3-processor-oem-cp-360-am.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-990x-gaming-sli-amd-990x-socket-am3-ddr3-motherboard-mb-547-gi.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/corsair-vengeance-pro-blue-8gb-2x4gb-ddr3-pc3-14900c9-1866mhz-dual-channel-memory-kit-cmy8gx3m2a1-my-374-cs.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/be-quiet-dark-rock-advanced-cpu-cooler-hs-001-bq.html

So that lot works out cheaper and will be 30% more powerful (based on CPU rankings tables). The mobo is also SLI/Crossfire ready so down the line if you wanted add a second graphics card it would literally just be a case of dropping it in

[Titi Camara]

What did you decide to do buddy? You bought anything yet?