JoeBloggs Posted December 1, 2014 Posted December 1, 2014 Hi all, I'm not up on current specs at the moment, but I am wanting to upgrade my current setup as it is well over 4 years old now. Intel Core i7 950 Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 Corsair XMS3 12GB DDR3 1600MHz ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 Used for a few games, WoW, COD, BF3. Few VMs etc. These are the items I would like to replace. My budget is around £400-£500. If any enthusiast would like to help it would be much appreciated!
3s-gtech Posted December 1, 2014 Posted December 1, 2014 I couldn't recommend replacements for all of those parts in that budget, but simply switching the graphics card out for a GTX 970 or 980 would give you substantial gains. If you choose a 970, it'll give you a good couple of hundred quid for an awesome SSD If your focus won't be on games so much, go for a Z97 motherboard with Intel 4690K and 16GB of fast DDR3. Will leave you with the same graphics card though, and in gaming terms you'll barely notice the change.
JoeBloggs Posted December 1, 2014 Author Posted December 1, 2014 I have an SSD already! Well the motherboard is pretty much buggered and the gfx card is dead! so I need to invest in something!
3s-gtech Posted December 1, 2014 Posted December 1, 2014 GFX first What's wrong with the mobo? it may be worth seeing if you can pick up a used LGA 1366 board to tide you over, as Nehalem is still fairly capable in most circumstances.
JoeBloggs Posted December 1, 2014 Author Posted December 1, 2014 Asus Z97 Intel Core i5 4690K Kingston Hyper X 8GB 2133Mhz GeForce GTX 750Ti "Low Profile" 2048MB GDDR5 Comes in at £504
3s-gtech Posted December 1, 2014 Posted December 1, 2014 That's a good setup, but I'd be interested to see how much faster it would be against your current rig, especially in games and in real world usage. The 750Ti is a corker no doubt, but it seems to be at most 25% quicker than the 6850 when the frame buffer isn't a hindrance (though much new stuff will eat 2GB). They're easy to sell though, and you could get something more powerful in the future and have an awesome machine.
JoeBloggs Posted December 1, 2014 Author Posted December 1, 2014 Don't think it will be loads faster but should be a decent improvement Intel Core i7 950 vs i5 4690K
3s-gtech Posted December 1, 2014 Posted December 1, 2014 Will also be more frugal on power, and should overclock fairly well too. 1
flyinghaggis Posted December 1, 2014 Posted December 1, 2014 (edited) I'd just buy a replacement motherboard off ebay TBH and see if you can get it working again. The graphics card bargain of the moment is the recently released Geforce 970 4GB which you can grab for around £250. If you source a replacement motherboard and install that you'll have a fantastic system capable of running anything for around £300-350. A modern CPU won't be hugely quicker than your i7-950 whereas you'll get a very noticeable jump in performance gaming on a 900-series GPU. By way of strange coincidences I have the exact same Asus motherboard as you with an i7-920 in my PC actually! I keep looking at upgrade options but I've never really found anything to justify the cost of changing. The only thing I've upgraded in the 5 years I've had it has been to replace a faulty GeForce 470 video card with a GeForce 770. Now it runs everything maxed at 1080p with ease Assuming it keeps soldiering on I'll probably buy a new SSD when Windows 10 is released as the 80Gb one in it just now is choc full and won't survive the upgrade to Windows 10! There's an interesting thread on OCUK about X58 owners buying 6 core Xeon 5650 CPU's off ebay, overclocking them and achieving performance that's faster than most modern CPU's. 1366 X58 Xeon 5650 - Overclockers UK Forums The X58 platform will live forever I can't believe I've owned a CPU for 5 years and I'm still happy with the performance it offers........! Edited December 1, 2014 by flyinghaggis 1
JoeBloggs Posted December 2, 2014 Author Posted December 2, 2014 Been having problems the last few weeks. The PC was randomly restarting due to critical kernel-power 41 (63). Happening ALL the time. This eventually killed off my GFX card and one of my SSDs!! The RAM slots have errors. I installed brand new windows, still restarts, linux, still restarts. I've bought a new better PSU, still restarts. Has a new GFX card in the moment a crappy cheap one, still restarts. All the RAM doesn't show up, even in BIOS. I put just 1 slot in some and it won't boot. One stick in a certain slow and it will boot. Still randomly reboots with that error! Been fine for 4 years just recently started happening
ICTDirect_Dave Posted December 2, 2014 Posted December 2, 2014 I can do you a good Xeon workstation for that kind of price. Something like a Dell T5500, or HP Z600/800 with a decent hex core X5670 2.96GHz Xeon, plenty of ram and a GTX 750 Drop me a PM if you're interested? 1
Sunnyknight Posted December 2, 2014 Posted December 2, 2014 *sees topic* i7 5820k - Around about £250 retail. Can get it new from ebay for about £190. Asus P9X79 - Around £150 retail. Can get it new from ebay for about £100. Corsair Veng Pro Red 16gb @ 2133mhz - Around £150 retail. Can get it new from ebay for around £120. Now comes the biggest problem. The GFX. You've already spent, on the low end, around £410, high end, your over your budget by £50. A 970 sets you back another £280. Where you go from here, i'm unsure. If i'm to be honest, you could just replace your mobo as mentioned by FlyingHaggis and just buy a 780ti. That's just my 2 pence though, there is nothing wrong with your spec (bar the gfx of course). I leave you to your choice. If i was to be COMPLETELY honest, increase your budget, and i'll build you a machine which will last a good 3 years+ that you'll enjoy more than... 'happy time'. haha. 1
JoeBloggs Posted December 2, 2014 Author Posted December 2, 2014 One part of me says, yeah the spec is ok could just replace mobo. But then I think it is 4 years old so hopefully been some advancements? My mobo, cpu, ram & gfx at the time 4 years ago cost me about £600. So was hoping £500 now would get me a half decent improvement?
Sunnyknight Posted December 2, 2014 Posted December 2, 2014 Simply put... no. No it will not. Spend 100 on a mobo and 400 on a gfx. If it isnt a massive boost... ill let you run me over in a bunnyhop... thingy... and record it.
JoeBloggs Posted December 3, 2014 Author Posted December 3, 2014 upped my budget a bit.. looking at getting this now Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H-BK - Devil's Canyon Core i7 4790K CPU & Motherboard Bundle Sapphire AMD Radeon R9 285 Dual-X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit £639 1
Sunnyknight Posted December 3, 2014 Posted December 3, 2014 Booooo on amd! Haha only kidding. Nice spec. See what a extra 100 or so can get you? 1
3s-gtech Posted December 3, 2014 Posted December 3, 2014 Just remembered that AMD have dropped the price on the R9 295X2 to £500. Forget the rest, just buy that 1
flyinghaggis Posted December 3, 2014 Posted December 3, 2014 (edited) The Devils Canyon i7-4790k is definitely the chip to have at the moment budget permitting. Video card wise I'd still say go green (Nvidia) or go home but YMMV Edited December 3, 2014 by flyinghaggis
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