Some Advice on Upgrades

[Boylett]

Hi All,

Just wanted some feedback on the components I'm thinking about buying to upgrade my PC, I am currently running an old intel P4 3.06ghz, 4gig of DDR2 Ram, which i wish to replace, however I am looking to carry over my 750watt PSU and GTX 260 Graphics Card, along with my current HDD and Optical Drives.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/165238 - Coolermaster Storm Scout Case

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173451 - ASUS P7P55D iP55 Socket LGA 1156 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172755 - Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 8MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167791 - Zalman CNPS10X Extreme Ultra Quiet Socket 1156, Tower Processor Cooler

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158711 - Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz i5 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V

I mainly use my PC for MMO Gaming, running Voice Chat and IM Clients in the background, and would also like to be able to play music at the same time. I'm a bit of a Noob when it comes to choosing componants so would like peoples thoughts on if this set-up would do the job (i'm mostly doubting my memory choices) and im looking to spend around £500, so there is some wriggle space but not huge amounts.

Thanks

 

[Boylett]

oh and im happy to order from other known suppliers other than ebuyer

 

[Silvune]

Case: personal choice, most likely a good one, not likely to make any major improvements without spending £20 more.
Mobo: The second PCI-E slot is not useful for putting a (second) graphics card in, so if you want to be able to crossfire/SLI then you should change it. The price of changing will depend on if you have brand preferences or want to have USB3/SATA6Gbps.
Nice CPU.
Here's a review for that heatsink http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2475
RAM: Personally I would go for this over the one you listed: Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Ballistix Memory Kit CL7 (7-7-7-24) 1.65V Altho yours is good as the voltage is 1.5V which is good for a number of reasons. Such as overclocking, lower power consumption (not much), less heat. The downside to yours is the high latency, but you can always try lowering the timings.

Out of curiosity, what PSU do you have?

Other sites that have used are Scan & Novatech. And some other sites that look good to me are: Aria, LambdaTek & Overclockers.co.uk - which have cheap yet quality Patriot 1600mhz RAM.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

If you're prone to waiting that long between upgrades then that's fine because the CPU's that will be released on motherboards that arn't one-and-done will be still old most likely once another 5-6 years has passed.

However if you want to upgrade more often than that, getting something that allows upgrades - even for the CPU - would be better. If you wanted to do that I'd say to go with a AM3 build. With that graphics card you could even buy a cheap triple core CPU and wait till later for a even better one. (it would smash your P4 pretty hard too)

 

[Boylett]

Cheers for the replys guys, the PSU is a "Highpower"??? Modular, it was a spare of the moment purchase from my local PC World as my standard one blew up and my friend works there so he could get me a discount.
I am not looking to do much in the way of Overclocking maybe just some light tweaks, but want a system that will last,

With regards to the Motherboard, a friend of mine did recomend getting a USB3/SATA6Gbps compatible motherboard, as far as brand, im not to anal about it, aslong as it avoids the Foxcomm socket that has been causing i5 problems and is a reputable manufacturer would i be able to get much better for not to much money?

Also, are there i5 boards that i could straight swap to an i7 if i feel i need a boost?

 

[Boylett]

Also, im not keen on an AMD build, i have had problems with AMD processors in past and im not overly keen to revisit the expense!

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

That's what my friend said, and apparently he had also had problems with his intel core 2 duo computer. So when I helped him build what I was suggesting he was surprised how stable it really was. I was like "welcome to every computer I have ever owned" (which is mostly AMD for stuff that's exclusively mine)

But you didn't answer the part about how much you would like to be upgrading and/or how long until you do it again. That i5 mobo can use some i7 860 or whatever it's called but those aren't much faster and can be beat by overclocking the i5. But it won't see anything faster than what's already there. If you're stuck on intel and want to upgrade then go for the higher socket that will get the six core CPUs. If you'll be waiting like 5-6 years again and don't care about incrementally upgrading then like I said, the i5 would be fine.

 

[Silvune]

The Asus P7P55D-E series and Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD series have USB3/Sata 6GBPS and don't have the foxconn socket.
ASUS P7P55D-E P55 £120.70
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 £10.94
Again these are not worth crossfiring on. And you can put Lynnfield i7s in these: i7 860 and i7 870. I doubt you will need anything above an i5 760 for awhile.
Haven't really heard of highpower. If it was me I'd replace the PSU before adding a second high end graphics card.

I'm using an AMD processor, had no problems with it. But the i5 is good, so if it doesnt compromise your build by comprosing elsewhere then it is worth getting.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Exactly. I wasn't saying the i5 in and of itself is bad, just that it's a dead end as far as anything higher than what's gonna be there to start with. Whereas with AMD I've got a AM2+ mobo (the first 780G chipset mobo) that came out in the beginning of 2008 and I'm using it with a current CPU. You simply cannot do that with intel.

 

[Boylett]

I think im looking at upgrading the PC more progressivly now then previously, and and perhaps an AM3 build might be the better idea. In future I am looking to add another Graphics card. I would prefer a mobo with USB3/SATA6Gbps which also uses DDR3. On first Sight i would guess that my best choice that is of similar performance to the i5 (i dont mind it being lower if i can upgrade in future)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164047 - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 8MB Cache
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/174240 - Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT-UD3H AMD 790GX Socket AM3 (has SATA6Gbps but no USB3.0)

 

[Boylett]

Or i could spend the money saved on the processor on http://www.ebuyer.com/product/188030 - Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 790FX Socket AM3

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

There's also this
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/196392
USB3 but no SATAIII

I was gonna suggest a gigabyte because that's what the one I was talking about earlier was.

Honestly any of those three will be fine, probably the first one you posted would be the easiest to use. Why do I say that? Because you should be able to easily add a PCI-e USB3 card and just use it as is other than that. Something like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815735001&Tpk=usb3%20card
could easily be bought and added later when you actually need it.

If you hadn't said already that you're planning on crossfire I would have pointed you at the 770 gigabyte board with USB3 and SATAIII.

 

[Boylett]

Okay so thats a Mobo kinda sorted, but is that processor i linked up to the task? or can you recommend better value in the same bracket?

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

You picked the right one. That's the fastest one besides the 965 which really just starts off one multiplier faster, and since both are black editions they are easy to overclock.

You might want to try finding some cas7 1333 DDR3 RAM, but those usually use a voltage higher than the 1.5v standard and you have to make sure you get all the settings like they're supposed to be. But the ones you picked before should work fine too, and use the 1.5v standard, and are probably easier to get to where they're supposed to be in the BIOS.

 

[Boylett]

Awesome, just one last query, those Gigabyte Mobo's dont seem to like the idea of SLI gpu's and tend to all be ati Crossfire? is this a trend accross the gigabyte range?

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

This is a trend across any good AMD motherboard. You seem to already know that SLI is nVidia and crossfire is ATI. Then there's the fact that ATI is owned by AMD. So nvidia will only allow sli on motherboards with its chipsets.

Thing is, the AMD/ATI chipsets are what's epic awesome as far as that goes and so those're all crossfire only. Unless you get a nvidia mobo (which isn't recommended) you're pretty much stuck with crossfire for multi-GPU solutions. (which doesn't bother me, since to start with I doubt I'll ever do it.)