Upgrade on a budget - Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Bryonis

Bryonis

Reputable
Oct 5, 2014
2
0
4,510
Hello everyone,

This is my first post on Tom's Hardware, though I have read the wisdom found here many times before. I am looking at updating our old desktop pc, which has the job of running Archeage for my other half. It is having some issues with stability at present, with it crashing during play (infrequently) and/or rebooting the computer upon exit (frequently). I did some investigation and have not been able to sort out the problems, which led me to think that it could do with a facelift anyway.

It currently consists of:

CPU: Intel i5-2500k 3.3ghz
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68V-Pro
GPU: XFX Radeon HD 6950 2gb
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaw 2Gb(2x2gb)
CPU Cooler: Antec h20 620
Storage: 1tb Seagate 7,200rpm HDD (main drive) & 120gb OCZ Agility 3 SSD
PSU: Coolermaster GX 550w
Case: CM 690 II

What I am hoping to do is to use the Case, PSU, both HDD and if at all possible, the CPU cooler (I will have to check what other brackets I have for it) to make a low cost, but effective machine. Well that is my intention. After reading the Build A Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC On A Budget, I am looking at the following system, which I would like to overclock (first time ever!):

CPU: Athlon X4 760K
GPU: MSI R7 260X 2GB GDDR5
Motherboard: Asus A88XM-A Socket FM2+ DVI HDMI 8 Channel HD Audio mATX Motherboard
Memory: Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Vengeance Blue Memory
CPU Cooler: Any suggestion should I not be able to use my pre-existing Antec H20 620?
Storage: Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 6Gbps 2.5inch 7mm with 9.5mm adapter SSD as my main drive, with the other two acting as additional storage for all the pictures etc we have knocking about.
PSU: Use the Coolermaster GX 550w we already have.
Case: CM 690 II we already have.

Total of £420 (once I have finalised what I am getting I will shop around).

To my novice eye, that looks fairly reasonable, but there are always things I miss. As this will not be made of amazing (and expensive) components I would like to reduce my mistakes to make it run smoothly. If there are any suggestions you think that could improve the above, without adding a lot of extra money, that would be grand.

Thanks all for your help,
Bryonis
 
Solution
H
You should first get to the bottom of your instability issue, because ideally you'd want to keep the i5 with its motherboard and just get better RAM/GPU/SSD.

First get your CPU/GPU to run at stock speed and settings to make sure that the instability is not caused by an overclock. Since you only experience the crash/reboots during gameplay or when you quit, the problem could be caused by the game.

At stock speeds your CPU should not be higher than 3.7 GHz, and your GPU should have core clock at 800 MHz with memory clock at 1250 MHz.

You will be able to observe those values using CPU-Z and GPU-Z respectively. Altering CPU speed is done in the BIOS. Altering GPU speeds can be done using MSI Afterburner. Also might want to keep an eye on...
Sort by date Sort by votes
H

huilun02

Splendid
Feb 29, 2008
4,324
0
24,960
You should first get to the bottom of your instability issue, because ideally you'd want to keep the i5 with its motherboard and just get better RAM/GPU/SSD.

First get your CPU/GPU to run at stock speed and settings to make sure that the instability is not caused by an overclock. Since you only experience the crash/reboots during gameplay or when you quit, the problem could be caused by the game.

At stock speeds your CPU should not be higher than 3.7 GHz, and your GPU should have core clock at 800 MHz with memory clock at 1250 MHz.

You will be able to observe those values using CPU-Z and GPU-Z respectively. Altering CPU speed is done in the BIOS. Altering GPU speeds can be done using MSI Afterburner. Also might want to keep an eye on CPU cooler functionality and temperatures.

CPU-Z: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
GPU-Z: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2398/techpowerup-gpu-z-v0-7-9/
MSI Afterburner: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

To confirm it isn't your game causing the problem, run another CPU/GPU intensive application.
To check your RAM, run memory diagnostics
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-sg/windows7/diagnosing-memory-problems-on-your-computer
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
Solution
Bryonis

Bryonis

Reputable
Oct 5, 2014
2
0
4,510


Hi Huilun02,

Thanks for the in-depth reply. After I made the post I did another look on CPUboss (don't ask me why I didn't check before) and it was saying the same about i5 2500k. So I think I will keep hold of the board and CPU (solves my worry about finding another cooler). That said, I will get on and check those programmes you linked below and get back to you guys!

Any suggestions on GPU/RAM/SSD (again keeping the costs down) are appreciated!

Thanks,
Bryonis
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom