Building help
- Thread starter Banksy
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2011
- Messages
- 222
What MB you got?
Personally, I'd just upgrade the mobo, add more RAM, and get a new video card (I'd wait till one is on special).
This is just my opinion though.... but most likely you will need to upgrde you power supply as well, depending how big yours is.
This is just my opinion though.... but most likely you will need to upgrde you power supply as well, depending how big yours is.
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2011
- Messages
- 177
I'm assuming you want a peppy gaming rig.
I'd just grab a kick butt Gaming Card, and go with what you got.
Your power supply is fine. (If its a quality one) Even your motherboard is fine, its an AM3 board.
Your running an Phenom II with 4 cores at 3.2 ghz.
Your cpu is fine.
Your memory is fine, unless your moving up to windows 7 and doing some serious multitasking, 4 gigs is plenty of memory for a gaming rig.
I mean If you want to upgrade, I guess you can Is it going to improve your gaming experience by leaps and bounds? Not likely most games are not really taking advantage of all the cpu power you have right now.
If you want a lil extra push, you could just go buy a water cooler, slap it on your cpu and overclock it to 3.8 ghz and add a faster gaming card. Eco "Cool It" makes a decent one for $60 thats a sealed unit, quiet as a whisper and keeps all but the most aggressive overclocks, nicely cool.
You are not going to get a massively huge performance increase in games by spending $500 on a mobo/cpu/mem combo.
A killer card. like this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102918
yea, you will get a nice boost.
It would be nice to have a faster mobo chipset, but not sure its gonna matter all that much to be perfectly honest. I think your rig is fine.
But I would definately upgrade my video card. 6970 would be nice
Spend $250-350 on a killer card, you'll not need to upgrade for 3 more years.
When your hard drive starts filling up, throw a samsung f3 1 tb in there. $50 w/ free shipping this week at newegg. Nice fast drives.
I'd just grab a kick butt Gaming Card, and go with what you got.
Your power supply is fine. (If its a quality one) Even your motherboard is fine, its an AM3 board.
Your running an Phenom II with 4 cores at 3.2 ghz.
Your cpu is fine.
Your memory is fine, unless your moving up to windows 7 and doing some serious multitasking, 4 gigs is plenty of memory for a gaming rig.
I mean If you want to upgrade, I guess you can Is it going to improve your gaming experience by leaps and bounds? Not likely most games are not really taking advantage of all the cpu power you have right now.
If you want a lil extra push, you could just go buy a water cooler, slap it on your cpu and overclock it to 3.8 ghz and add a faster gaming card. Eco "Cool It" makes a decent one for $60 thats a sealed unit, quiet as a whisper and keeps all but the most aggressive overclocks, nicely cool.
You are not going to get a massively huge performance increase in games by spending $500 on a mobo/cpu/mem combo.
A killer card. like this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102918
yea, you will get a nice boost.
It would be nice to have a faster mobo chipset, but not sure its gonna matter all that much to be perfectly honest. I think your rig is fine.
But I would definately upgrade my video card. 6970 would be nice
Spend $250-350 on a killer card, you'll not need to upgrade for 3 more years.
When your hard drive starts filling up, throw a samsung f3 1 tb in there. $50 w/ free shipping this week at newegg. Nice fast drives.
Last edited:
How would you recommend http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835227007
Currently these are the ones I'm most likely to buy.
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004PFVNIY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&m=A1BVYXEL822RF0[/ame]
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001U3S5S0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=A23NVCSO4PYH3S[/ame]
I'm also looking for a case between $50-100 & cooling.
My powersupply is: Energon EPS-650W
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004PFVNIY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&m=A1BVYXEL822RF0[/ame]
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001U3S5S0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=A23NVCSO4PYH3S[/ame]
I'm also looking for a case between $50-100 & cooling.
My powersupply is: Energon EPS-650W
Last edited:
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2011
- Messages
- 177
Because I've used that exact setup to cool a X6 1050 running at 3.8 ghz with temps under load of 56c. If you like quiet, if you like running cool and if you want some free horsepower I say go for it.
A good aftermarket heatsink and fan is gonna run you $30, spending $50 after rebate is IMO a heck of a deal considering that will allow you to get anywhere from 10 to 25% more muscle from your cpu with no risk. Corsair H20 makes a decent unit also, but I can tell you, ALC's tech support is 2nd to none. I had a bad fan bearing making noise, I emailed them, they sent out a new one asap, no problems.
Banksy both of them links you sent are about 20% more expensive than the same card/hard drive on Newegg. Same Chipset, 340 at Newegg, same hard drive $50 with free shipping at Newegg.
To be honest, your question is poorly asked. Before I can give a complete answer you need to tell us exactly what you primarily going to use this pc for, including what kind of games you play and on what kind of monitor with what resolution. If your using it on a 19" monitor. I wouldn't even upgrade the card.
Sandy Bridge gives a nice boost, but will it be a game changer for playing a TF2 or CSS or any games played at less than 1680x1050, I say, the difference will be minimal and your ability to "feel" any difference will virtually non existant.
On paper? The Benchmarks? Yes, You'll see higher numbers with Sandy Bridge, In real world Daily Game Play, not much, or put another way, not enough of a boost to justify spending the money to upgrade to SB right now.
If your cpu was a dual core, and less than 3 ghz I'd say yes, definitely upgrade mobo/cpu/mem but as of right now, with the current crop of games out that ARE NOT OPTIMIZED for quad core cpus anyway, I'd say spend the money on a good card, more storage and save your money. You can use them both a year down the road when sandy bridge bleeding edge stuff is half the price, then take that $400 you have left over and spend it more efficiently. The reality is, the cost will only go down with waiting.
But that's just me. I'm a utilitarian type guy. If it works, and its not broke, why fix it?
NZXT Classic Cases, Gamma, m59 are fantastic budget cases and can sometimes be caught for less than $50 with free shipping from Newegg. always include at least one decent 120 mm fan and sometimes 2,
BTW buy from newegg, you'll be glad you did. Their prices are competitive if not cheaper and their customer service is the best around.
I looked up the specs on your 650 PSU, actually they are not bad. My biggest concern is, after doing this for going on 20 years, I've never heard of them. Usually not a good sign, but I've been surprised before.
A good aftermarket heatsink and fan is gonna run you $30, spending $50 after rebate is IMO a heck of a deal considering that will allow you to get anywhere from 10 to 25% more muscle from your cpu with no risk. Corsair H20 makes a decent unit also, but I can tell you, ALC's tech support is 2nd to none. I had a bad fan bearing making noise, I emailed them, they sent out a new one asap, no problems.
Banksy both of them links you sent are about 20% more expensive than the same card/hard drive on Newegg. Same Chipset, 340 at Newegg, same hard drive $50 with free shipping at Newegg.
To be honest, your question is poorly asked. Before I can give a complete answer you need to tell us exactly what you primarily going to use this pc for, including what kind of games you play and on what kind of monitor with what resolution. If your using it on a 19" monitor. I wouldn't even upgrade the card.
Sandy Bridge gives a nice boost, but will it be a game changer for playing a TF2 or CSS or any games played at less than 1680x1050, I say, the difference will be minimal and your ability to "feel" any difference will virtually non existant.
On paper? The Benchmarks? Yes, You'll see higher numbers with Sandy Bridge, In real world Daily Game Play, not much, or put another way, not enough of a boost to justify spending the money to upgrade to SB right now.
If your cpu was a dual core, and less than 3 ghz I'd say yes, definitely upgrade mobo/cpu/mem but as of right now, with the current crop of games out that ARE NOT OPTIMIZED for quad core cpus anyway, I'd say spend the money on a good card, more storage and save your money. You can use them both a year down the road when sandy bridge bleeding edge stuff is half the price, then take that $400 you have left over and spend it more efficiently. The reality is, the cost will only go down with waiting.
But that's just me. I'm a utilitarian type guy. If it works, and its not broke, why fix it?
NZXT Classic Cases, Gamma, m59 are fantastic budget cases and can sometimes be caught for less than $50 with free shipping from Newegg. always include at least one decent 120 mm fan and sometimes 2,
BTW buy from newegg, you'll be glad you did. Their prices are competitive if not cheaper and their customer service is the best around.
I looked up the specs on your 650 PSU, actually they are not bad. My biggest concern is, after doing this for going on 20 years, I've never heard of them. Usually not a good sign, but I've been surprised before.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2011
- Messages
- 177
Yea, no need for any more memory than 4 gigs then.
I say, buy that video card, see how it runs then make a decision after you see the results.
The difference between what you can have with a mild overclock, (you can probably achieve this 3.7 ghz with a good aftermarket air cooler,) and a sandy bridge i7 is here.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...compare,2761.html?prod[5030]=on&prod[5042]=on
On some benchmarks, its a nice bump, but it actually loses on some others. Point being, although you can get more overall from it, I doubt its worth the expense at this point in doing so.
btw I have a 2.8 Phenom II x2 825 running at 3.4 ghz. On a stock x6 1050 retail heatsink and fan. So pushing yours up to .5 ghz is probably not going to be tough to do.
Read my Gaming Guide in my signature. It's a nice little primer and brings up some good points and links to helping you decide on your hardware. Its a shame Newegg doesn't ship to Denmark.
I say, buy that video card, see how it runs then make a decision after you see the results.
The difference between what you can have with a mild overclock, (you can probably achieve this 3.7 ghz with a good aftermarket air cooler,) and a sandy bridge i7 is here.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...compare,2761.html?prod[5030]=on&prod[5042]=on
On some benchmarks, its a nice bump, but it actually loses on some others. Point being, although you can get more overall from it, I doubt its worth the expense at this point in doing so.
btw I have a 2.8 Phenom II x2 825 running at 3.4 ghz. On a stock x6 1050 retail heatsink and fan. So pushing yours up to .5 ghz is probably not going to be tough to do.
Read my Gaming Guide in my signature. It's a nice little primer and brings up some good points and links to helping you decide on your hardware. Its a shame Newegg doesn't ship to Denmark.
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2011
- Messages
- 26
I agree with crackdaddy, a new graphic card is the best investment.
CPU is top notch AMD, AMD is perfect for gaming. You don't have to buy intel if you don't do anything else but gaming and internet.
For some comparison:
As you can see, the difference between AMD and Intel on gaming performance isn't that big, it's mostly progamms in which the difference becomes noticeable.
@crackdaddy
What do you think of crossfire XFX HD 6870 1024 MB DDR5 DisplayPort (HD-687A-ZDFC), as you can see in thise comparison the 6870's give better perfomance for 100 dollars more.
Than again it all depends on budget, do you want to spend the full 800 or save as much as you can?
Again, the choice between 4 or 8g ram is up to yourself. If you don't run many programms at the same time 4g is more than enough. But 50 dollars will get you 8G.. again ur choice xD
CPU is top notch AMD, AMD is perfect for gaming. You don't have to buy intel if you don't do anything else but gaming and internet.
For some comparison:
As you can see, the difference between AMD and Intel on gaming performance isn't that big, it's mostly progamms in which the difference becomes noticeable.
@crackdaddy
What do you think of crossfire XFX HD 6870 1024 MB DDR5 DisplayPort (HD-687A-ZDFC), as you can see in thise comparison the 6870's give better perfomance for 100 dollars more.
Than again it all depends on budget, do you want to spend the full 800 or save as much as you can?
Again, the choice between 4 or 8g ram is up to yourself. If you don't run many programms at the same time 4g is more than enough. But 50 dollars will get you 8G.. again ur choice xD
