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Thread: Budget PC upgrade

  1. #17
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    • Maccer101's system
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    Re: Budget PC upgrade

    Despite me not loving the case as it feels abit cheap (only because it is) the Coolermaster CM330 (or 335) is probably the best of the sub £30 cases, as cooling is excellent and the stock fan is okay.

    I now only run a rear 120mm fan on it (stock 1200rpm CM fan) and my OC'd intel E2180 idles around 25-30 degrees using a OCZ Vanquisher cooler (equivalent to the Akasa one you are looking at)

    The tooless fittings are a bit rubbish and the PCI retention bracket flips open so I just use screws on everything. I recently suspended the HDD in a 5.25" bay using StretchMagic and the whole thing runs very cool and quiet.
    HTPC1 - Coolermaster CM330, E2180 + Zalman 9500AT, GA-P31-DS3L, 2x1Gb PC6400 , Antec Earthwatts 430w , Fujitsu 2.5" 40gb HDD, 8600gt, Hannspree 32" LCD TV - Kubuntu 8.04

    HTPC2 - Silverstone TJ-08, Asus 690g, Athlon LE1300 + OCZ Vanquisher, 2x512mb PC5300, Dell 350w PSU, Fujisu 2.5" 40gb HDD, 8600gt, Toshiba 33" CRT TV - Ubuntu 8.04

    Laptop- Lenovo T41, Pentium M 1.6ghz, 768mb PC2700 RAM, 40gb HDD - Ubuntu 8.10

    NAS - Dell Case, Jetway J7F5 Mini-ITX, 1gb PC5300, Enermax Pro 82+ 425w, 1TB Hitachi - FreeNAS 0.69 on 256mb CF

  2. #18
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    Re: Budget PC upgrade

    Sorry for not getting back on here sooner I was up late last night doing some last minute research (I had to stop as i thought my eyes were going to bleed!).

    Thanks for everyones input and help with the selection. It was very much appreciated. As always the budget got totally stuffed. Heres what I ordered last night (early this morning really):

    From Ebuyer
    AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz - £119.20
    ASUS HD 4850 512MB DDR3 - £112.99
    ASUS M3A-H/HDMI 780G Socket AM2+ - £65.21

    From Scan
    4GB Corsair (2x2GB) TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800) - £33.34
    Coolermaster Centurion RC-532 - £27.59
    700W FSP700-80GLN - £32.19
    500GB Hitachi 0A35415 Deskstar P7K500 - £38.53
    LG 16x Internal DVDROM, Black, SATA - £9.53
    120mm Coolermaster Blue LED On/Off Fan control panel - £5.13

    Add in postage for Scan and its just over the £450 mark. The package from Scan is on its way and surprisingly so is the Ebuyer package - even though I selected free delivery.

    I'm going to reuse the DVD burner I've got as I've got a black bezel up the attic somewhere... I'm also just gonna go with the stock cooler on the AMD in the short term. Should allow me to do a light overclock.

    Next step will be the build, depending on when the ebuyer stuff arrives i suppose. Can't wait now - like a kid at christmas

  3. #19
    Senior Member Pob255's Avatar
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    • Pob255's system
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    Re: Budget PC upgrade

    If you want to get the budget back under

    AMD 7750+ Black edition is a good start
    2gb memory, absolutly fine atm.
    Reasons behind thes, depending on the games you get you may need to get another couple of gb later on, in a year or two, but it shouldn't be too pricey and there will probably be quite a bit of cheap 2nd hand memory about by then.
    That CPU should be fine for a while yet and not really bottle neck anything, at the same time this is a good budget cpu and upgrading the cpu is an easy thing to do.
    Again later on if you need to upgrade the cpu you can and there should be plenty of good 2nd ones about.

    (the same would be true of the e5200, intel maybe changeing socket but that still leaves a heck of a lot of cpu's out there, as the e5200 is low end that means there is plenty of upgrade potential in the future)

    A 4830 or 9800gt (both under £100) will fine for 1280x1024, anything more is over kill currently. Nothing came close to stressing out my 9800gtx at 1280x1024 (well crysis would of if I stuck it to max but that's it)

    If you have an IDE DVDrw keep it (although £15 for a sata one is not a great deal of cash) the difference between using an IDE and sata DVD is near enough unnoticeable
    The same cannot be said for hard drives, a good sata2 hard drive is noticeably faster.

    I would replace your case, how much and what it look like is a personal thing, but you do want to look for 120mm fans. The antec 300 while not the cheapest of cases is a nice one for the cost, but there are others.
    Last edited by Pob255; 03-03-2009 at 12:00 AM.

  4. #20
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    Re: Budget PC upgrade

    Pob, Thanks for your comments. However on this occassion the barn doors are open and the horse is disappearing over the horizon. The stuff is all en route as I type!!

    However, I did make the cardinal mistake of glancing at Scan today and saw they had a passively cooled 1GB Gigabyte HD 4850 for £130 That's the card I should have went for.

    Oh well, live and learn.....

  5. #21
    Senior Member Pob255's Avatar
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    • Pob255's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Asus M5A99X EVO
      • CPU:
      • FX8350 & CM Hyper 212+
      • Memory:
      • 4 x 2gb Corsair Vengence 1600mhz cas9
      • Storage:
      • 512gb samsung SSD +1tb Samsung HDD
      • Graphics card(s):
      • EGVA GTX970
      • PSU:
      • Seasonic GX 650W
      • Case:
      • HAF 912+
      • Operating System:
      • W7 Pro
      • Monitor(s):
      • iiyama XB3270QS-B1 32" IPS 1440p

    Re: Budget PC upgrade

    No it's not, the 1gb would be really wasted on1280x1024, if you only have 32bit xp or vista it's even worse as that eats out your maximum addressable system memory.
    On top of that the 4850 is a hot gpu and that passive card needs a lot of case air flow, even then people have straped fans to them.

    The Asus 4850 for £113 is a good buy, over powered for your monitor, but at the same time that leaves you open to a later monitor upgrade

    You really should of paid the little bit more for a DVDrw instead of a DVDrom

    All told not a bad setup at all.

  6. #22
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    Re: Budget PC upgrade

    Update on the build. I decided to RMA the ASUS M3A-H/HDMI 780G Socket AM2+ motherboard. On tuesday I ordered this:

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Sapph...-3Gb-s-ATX-VGA

    I ordered it from Ebuyer and its due for delivery tomorrow.

    I decided I wanted to have the ability to get a decent overclock and the option to fire in another 4850 in say 6 months time (should be cheapish as well by then).

    I'll do the build at the weekend and give some feedback.

    Thanks again folks.

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