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Upgrading old PC

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  • GPUs
  • RAM
  • Components
  • CPUs
  • Motherboards
Last response: in Components
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July 25, 2014 5:21:00 AM

Hi everyone.

I'm looking to upgrade my ageing PC. It's an i7 920 @ 2.7Ghz, 6Gb of RAM, with an ATI Radeon 4800 series GPU.

I basically want to replace the Motherboard, GPU, CPU and RAM. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

I want a PC that will play current games at or close max settings at 1900 x 1200/1080 resolution (I will upgrade my 20" Samsung monitor to a Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" monitor in the next few months) for the next year or so - but with the capacity to upgrade the GPU and CPU after that.

For that reason, I was thinking of the following set-up:

Z97 motherboard (brand and model recommendations welcome - I was thinking of an MSI Z97 Gaming model, but which one?)

GTX 760 2Gb or possibly an R9 280X 3Gb

8Gb or possibly 12Gb of RAM (model advice needed, and would 16Gb be overkill?)

i5 4670K or possibly an i7 4770k CPU

My power supply is a Corsair 750W unit. Happy with my existing hard drives and peripherals.

Budget-wise, I have between £400 and £700 to spend - I don't really want to go beyond that.

Any thoughts, opinions welcome. I've always bought PCs from the likes of Cyberpower but have installed an additional HDD and network card in the current one, so I'm pretty much new to the whole PC-building lark. For that reason I don't want / need the complexity of a liquid cooled, neon lit set-up - just decent components that aren't going to be a nightmare to set-up, and will allow me to play the likes of Elite: Dangerous , Arma 3 and Star Citizen at decent detail settings etc.

One final question - my existing PC has 2 x fans - would I need to by additional ones for cooling?

Many thanks.

More about : upgrading

July 25, 2014 5:29:19 AM

If you want to go for an MSI Gaming go for a Gaming 3 or 5

R9 280x as it's a little better than the 760 and it's cheaper

8GB of RAM is all you need for now, but you can always upgrade in the future.

Go for an i5 4690k, the i7 is overkill right now and the 4690k will do you a while. You could also get a Noctua cooler so you can overclock.

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July 25, 2014 5:41:15 AM

TprSmid said:
Hi everyone.

I'm looking to upgrade my ageing PC. It's an i7 920 @ 2.7Ghz, 6Gb of RAM, with an ATI Radeon 4800 series GPU.

I basically want to replace the Motherboard, GPU, CPU and RAM. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

I want a PC that will play current games at or close max settings at 1900 x 1200/1080 resolution (I will upgrade my 20" Samsung monitor to a Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" monitor in the next few months) for the next year or so - but with the capacity to upgrade the GPU and CPU after that.

For that reason, I was thinking of the following set-up:

Z97 motherboard (brand and model recommendations welcome - I was thinking of an MSI Z97 Gaming model, but which one?)

GTX 760 2Gb or possibly an R9 280X 3Gb

8Gb or possibly 12Gb of RAM (model advice needed, and would 16Gb be overkill?)

i5 4670K or possibly an i7 4770k CPU

My power supply is a Corsair 750W unit. Happy with my existing hard drives and peripherals.

Budget-wise, I have between £400 and £700 to spend - I don't really want to go beyond that.

Any thoughts, opinions welcome. I've always bought PCs from the likes of Cyberpower but have installed an additional HDD and network card in the current one, so I'm pretty much new to the whole PC-building lark. For that reason I don't want / need the complexity of a liquid cooled, neon lit set-up - just decent components that aren't going to be a nightmare to set-up, and will allow me to play the likes of Elite: Dangerous , Arma 3 and Star Citizen at decent detail settings etc.

One final question - my existing PC has 2 x fans - would I need to by additional ones for cooling?

Many thanks.



PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Y3YKK8
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Y3YKK8/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£162.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£24.25 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus Z97I-PLUS Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£104.80 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X Video Card (£283.14 @ Aria PC)
Total: £635.16

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

what case do u have ?? and yes adding couple of more fans will make your case cooler...
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July 25, 2014 5:47:23 AM

I agree with Taafe. I'd get the MSI Gaming 5.
Forget the 760, you want the 280x. 760 lags behind a bit and enough to make the 280x what you want.
2x4GB RAM 1866 CL9. 16GB is overkill.
Unless you need to do video editing a lot I'd get the 4690k.
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July 25, 2014 6:43:12 AM

Thanks for the advice guys.

Quick one - could I fit the above components in an NZXT Phantom 410 (the mid-tower model in the range) or would I need the full-tower Phantom or 530?
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July 25, 2014 6:49:39 AM

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.99 @ TigerDirect)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($144.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($88.97 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 280X 3GB DirectCU II Video Card ($279.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $743.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-25 09:49 EDT-0400
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July 25, 2014 7:18:31 AM

Mid tower is plenty of space for the setup. Full tower is massive and not needed for your build.
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July 25, 2014 9:16:25 AM

TprSmid said:
Thanks for the advice guys.

Quick one - could I fit the above components in an NZXT Phantom 410 (the mid-tower model in the range) or would I need the full-tower Phantom or 530?


nzxt phantom 410 is a very good case and will fit all those components easily.....
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August 5, 2014 2:22:19 PM

Gents, forgot to ask - what cooling would you recommend for the CPU? I want to keep the cost down but equally I want something relatively quiet. I probably won't be overclocking the CPU, at least not at first.
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August 5, 2014 6:50:49 PM

Hyper 212 Evo, cheap and effective :) 
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August 5, 2014 8:03:40 PM

Agreed. Cooler Master Evo is great. If you want slightly better performance and dead quiet..Noctua NH-12S
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August 29, 2014 6:48:18 PM

envy14tpe said:
Agreed. Cooler Master Evo is great. If you want slightly better performance and dead quiet..Noctua NH-12S


Hi again.

Ok, I finally got round to buying the various components. I'm happy with the actual physical bit of installing the new GPU, CPU, RAM etc on the new motherboard, but had a few questions about HDDs / SDDs.

On my current (i.e. old) PC I had an OEM version of Vista, with a free upgrade to Windows 7. So I presume I'll need to purchase a retail version of 7 or 8.1 given I've got a new Mobo (unless I can sweet talk a Microsoft salesperson into updating my registry key - does that ever work?).

Questions:

1) I think I'm going to buy a Samsung 840 Evo 250Gb SSD to run the OS from and possibly some games too. If I wanted to try to migrate my existing OS etc to the new PC, how do I do that? I think the Samsung comes with migration software (I've haven't ordered it yet).

2) I want to use my existing HDDs (1 x 500gb, 1 x 1Tb) as storage media in my new build. But the 500gb HDD will still have my current Windows 7 install on it. How do I delete that without losing or crippling all the other programmes on there that I want to keep?

3) Basically I hadn't given any thought to the HDD / OS issue, and it seems a total minefield. Any advice on how best to move the two HDDs I have to the new build without having to format them (there are loads of photos and music files on there I don't want to lose), and how best to keep costs down related to purchasing a new OS (e.g. is it cheaper to call Microsoft and ask for an upgraded key, or do I purchase an OEM version of Windows 7 from an online retailer etc) would be much appreciated.

Essentially, the new spec will be something like:

Asus Z97-A motherboard
Powercolor R9 290 OCS+
Intel 4690k (+ Coolermaster Hyper TX3 Evo)
8Gb AMD 2400Mhz Gamer Series Ram (free with the GPU)
Samsung Evo 840 SSD 250Gb
1 x 500Gb HDD
1 x 1Tb HDD

Thanks in advance for your helpd guys, much appreciated!
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August 29, 2014 6:59:22 PM

1) Sorry to say...migrating isn't a good choice. The best thing to do is a fresh intstall on SSD. You need to make a Windows 7 boot USB drive. Then boot from there and in BIOS set to AHCI mode.

2) When installing OS onto SSD the SSD should be the only drive connected. In the BIOS you also set Boot Order of your drives. Since you will select SSD as first boot then the OS on the HDD won't be chosen. After you install OS on SSD then you can power off and plug in the other 2 HDDs and reboot.

3) Since you own a real Windows 7 copy you don't need to buy a new one.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1240779/seans-windows-8-inst...
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August 29, 2014 7:40:57 PM

You are better off restarting with a fresh build. It might be slightly more expensive, plus you could also re-use parts from your old comp.
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