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Machine upgrade

Jinghamm

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Posted December 11, 2012 at 11:15PM

I have a desktop thats about 5 years old that i was looking to upgrade with mostly new components to make it a mid range gaming PC as i currently play on a pretty shitty laptop, and its painful, to say the least. So basically im looking to spend around £300 on the upgrade, and with that i was hopeing to get a decent processor, new graphics card, a new motherboard and some more ram. The hard drive should still be okay and the power supply may be an issue but i can sort that out afterwards if it isnt enough! So here goes, this is what i found and i'd appreciate some feedback on what you think, and possible suggestions to something else.

Processor: This is my more budget idea: AMD FX-6 6100 Black Edition 6 Core 3.3Ghz Socket AM3.. | Ebuyer.com

Heres my slightly less one: AMD Bulldozer FX-8 8150 8 Core 3.6Ghz Socket AM3+ 8MB.. | Ebuyer.com

Motherboard: This seems a bit of a bargain to me, and a few friends i asked said it would do the job just fine: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 Socket AM3+ 7.1 Channel Audio ATX.. | Ebuyer.com

Graphics card (where i need most help):

This one seemed quite a lot but i was recommended it by a IG mate who said it would be a worthy investment: Gigabyte HD 7850 OC Windforce X2 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI.. | Ebuyer.com

This oen is almost half the price of the other one, but i didn't know really how much"worse" it would be: Gigabyte HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 VGA DVI HDMI PCI-E Graphics.. | Ebuyer.com

RAM:

This one was also reccomended to me, seemed like a good idea, i think 8gb should suffice for me! Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1866Mhz Memory Kit.. | Ebuyer.com

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Chronos the 2nd

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Posted December 12, 2012 at 6:58AM

Compare your graphic card choices here. As you can see the 7850 slaughters the 7750.

I don't really know much about AMD cpu's but I know that 8 cores is overkill, and so is 6 to be honest, most games only use 2 cores with the exception of a few that use 4 cores for multiplayer, if I was in your situation I would seriously consider getting an i5 2500k.

You don't not say what your current PSU is but it will be necessary to upgrade that if your current PC is an ancient 5 years old.

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Jock1e

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Posted December 12, 2012 at 8:22AM

You can only use 8gb ram if you use a 64 bit version of Windows.32 bit version will only take 4 Gb.

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Secret-Squirrel

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Posted December 12, 2012 at 9:21AM

"im looking to spend around £300 on the upgrade, and with that i was hopeing to get a .......... new motherboard ......."

Don't forget that you'll also need to buy a new copy of Windows, and when you've taken the cost into account, it maybe a lot less faff and only slightly more expensive to buy a pre-built mid-range gaming PC.

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retep888™

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Posted December 12, 2012 at 11:41AM

Jock1e Quoted:<< You can only use 8gb ram if you use a 64 bit version of Windows >>

Where did you get that information from? As far as I know, unless you're using Win 7 Home Basic or due to your motherboard's limitation,upto 8 Gb Ram can be used otherwise upto 16 GB for Home Premium & even more for Professional or above.

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Woolwell

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Posted December 12, 2012 at 12:37PM

Jock1e - I have 16Gb on W7 64 bit.

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