Upgrading Rig

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I've been considering upgrading my current Rig recently, and am looking for some advice/suggestions.

I'm currently rocking an ABIT AB9 (not Pro) with 4GB RAM and an Intel C2D (6400 @ 2.13GHz). It's also got an NVidia 8800GTS 640MB GFx card

All of this is giving me a rating in the Experience Tool of 5.3



I'm using an x64 Machine, but apparently the Mobo can't manage more than 4GB RAM.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what to replace it with?

I reckon I can leave the GFx as-is for now, since it is still rating high, and giving me good performance with games.

I think I'm going to need to replace the MOBO, CPU and as a result, most likely the RAM too, but I'm not entirely sure what to get (I dont really follow the Hardware that closely). I'd like to get something for a reasonable price (I was considering one of the bundles with all three combined, as I had read that they were tested together and so should be better quality).

Any Suggestions?

 

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http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_55004.html

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/239260

if ya want to go that high in price, but that would be fine, your bottleneck would be your graphics card as to be honest they are old as hell now, still good dont get me wrong, but really old now.

 

If you're looking to just replace the motherboard, the Asus P5K range are still going strong, are very well made, and are very reasonably priced.

The last two PCs I've build has had one at the core. The only downside with the specific model I'm using at the moment is that it's Micro-ATX (no idea why I purchased a Micro-ATX board with an ATX case, but there we go).

 

If gaming is your concern, then the Athlon X3 chips are very cheap and give excellenct single core performance which is important for games. About 60 quid will get you a 3.2Ghz X3, and the mobo's for them tend to be quite cheap also (but you'll still get what you pay for).

 

Depends on budget really as well.

If you can afford one then the Core i7-2500K is one of the best bang for the buck (I'm in Canada so can get away with saying that) CPUs at the moment, pair this with a P67 chipset based motherboard as you have an additional GFX card anyway, and you can throw up to 16GB of RAM on to it.

If you just want cheap(er) RAM then head over to Crucial.com/uk and find the correct matching RAM for whichever board you choose, otherwise if you're after faster with heat spreaders etc then the GSkill Ripjaws series offers a lot of options at reasonable prices (over here at least). Used to use GeiL RAM when I was in the UK.

As for the actual motherboard, again budget dictates quality/spec. Asus / Gigabyte seem to be the top dogs these days.

Hardware site links for reviews etc:

www.anandtech.com
www.tomshardware.co.uk
www.hexus.net
www.guru3d.com
www.overclock3d.net
www.jonnyguru.com (PSU specific mainly)

 

I would definately get a Gigabyte motherboard as they are reasonably priced and top quality, never had one died on me either.

 

Cheers guys. Looking around I came up with the below:

I7 930 2.8GHz (Socket 1366) £242.60
Asus P6X58D-E X58 (Socket 1366) £156.99
Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz Dominator £ 88.29

What do you guys think?

Edit: I should mention I have a WD Caviar Black 2TB drive in this system, so I could make use of the 6Gb/s throughput on the SATA sockets right away.

 

The 1366 socket is dead, don't bother. It's replacement will be out Q3 or Q4 this year.

Check www.cpubenchmark.net for comparisons of that CPU against the new second generation Core i-series processors.

The i7-930 has a comparative rating of 5829 vs the i5-2500k of 6715 (and that's without the fact the 2500k will over clock on air to at least 4ghz at standard voltages).

The i5-2500k is £167 from Dabs vs the 930 at £242 from your source.

Currently the 1155 socket is the only one to bother looking at using in the Intel range unless you're willing to wait.

 

Looks ok to me. Thats a good board too. If your into overclocking that cpu will go to 3.5GHz easy.

I disagree that the 1366 is dead yes the i5s, i3s are good too but there's still performance to be gotten from the 1366 setup. Although the i5 cpu you mention is quality I got one running at 4.9GHz when I built a rig for someone.

 

The only reason to go down the 1366 route currently would be if you have a requirement for 24GB of RAM over the 16GB you can fit onto a 1155 board, or you are rendering and chewing up all 12 cores/threads on a top end CPU. There is no cost or performance benefit, in fact it will cost you more for worse/similar performance.

 

Yep but since Fergal is a programmer he may at times do some work at home so the more ram etc the better for his compiler.

 

Don't worry too much about that to be honest. Although I have the devsuite on my home pc, I dont do too much of it off this machine, and the works laptop isnt as high spec.

I did go looking at the i7, but on closer examination, the primary benefits of it (Hyperthreading, etc) is only really of benefit if your applications make use of it. Since most games apparently dont, there isnt much reason to go for it, but I could go for this:

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz (Socket 1155) £167.98
Asus P8P67 Pro R3 P67 (Socket 1155) £141.08

Looking at the specs of the Motherboard, I'm slightly confused regarding the RAM to be honest. It reports a capability of running DDR3 2200, but apparently that actually runs at a lower speed. Would I be better going for one of the higher speeds, or stick with DDR3 1600 as before?

 

You will be ok with that rig. Some Asus boards default toa certain speed regardless of how high the speed is and you have to change the speed in the bios.

I have an asus rampage formula with 1333MHz ram installed when I started it up the ram was defaulted to 800MHz and I had to change it in the bios which is no big deal.

Thats a decent board though as is the cpu.

 

I recently put together a box with a gigabyte motherboard and an AMD Phenom II x6 CPU. Absolutely love it.

 

Fergal, I am in the same boat as you bro. I also need to update my CPU, RAM and I the video card as well... I was actually thinking of going with AMD Phenom II 1090T Black Edition Six Core Processor, good price and performs well. For memory I like to use Crucial Ballistix DDR3 memory, in an 8GB configuration, and for video card it would probably be the ATI 6870... Still undecided as to what motherboard to get though.

 

If I were in the market for an upgrade right now, I'd wait for confirmation that Intel have resolved the probs with the Sandybridge SATA controllers and then get a Sandybridge i7 with a corresponding mobo.

From what I've read, they offer much better value for money than the older i7s and are more overclockable.

 

Yikes, how many pins, last time I took any interest in building my own machine I was buying socket 462's Do people still overclock their pc's? Now you mention it though I do fancy grabbing a screwdriver and heading on over to an online component emporium.

 

You dont really need to overclock a pc these days with that many threads but you still can. The new Sandybridge CPUs overclock like nothing before them and its even easier with the UEFI Bios. When I overclocked the 2.93GHz sandybridge for someone when I built him a rig all I did was increase the multiplier to 42 (I think) and got it 4.9GHz that was with 6GB Ram @ 2000MHz. The system took 13 seconds from power onto fully booted into Windows

 

Cheers guys. A colleague pointed me at overclockers today, and turned up these:

Krypton Ankylosaur
Radon Allosaur

After speaking to them, it looks like you can stick another £40 quid onto it and boost it to 8GB RAM.

 

I buy all my stuff from overclockers. Their sevice is fast and reliable and if you want something that isn't in the specs of their pre-builds you can phone them and they will do it for you. I'd go for the Krypton, I know someone who has it and its a beast.