Budget PC upgrade

[Waylander]

Hi folks, this is my first post on Hexus. I would welcome your thoughts and feedback.

I'm looking to upgrade from an Athlon 3200XP, ABIT NFS7, Nvidia 6800 128mb, 1g RAM 80g HDD running on a CWT 350watt PSU that I put together 4+ years ago. I will be using the new setup mostly for gaming. I will be using a resolution of 1280 by 1024 and hope to be able to turn on some of the bells and whistles.

I'm also aiming for it to be quieter than the current hairdryer sitting next to me!

Heres what I'm planning and why:

Intel E5200 - cheap to buy and good OC headroom
AKASA 965 Cooler - read that this is cool and quiet (and its only a tenner)
Gigabyte GA-EP43-S3L - OC friendly, PCIe 2 and more modern chipset whilst still being wallet friendly
2gb Corsair TwinX XMS2 4-4-4-12 - good brand name, reasonable latencies, OC potential
PowerColor HD 4850 PCS+ - Have read this is a quiet card thanks to the Zerotherm cooler
Hitachi Deskstar P7K 500gb - Umm, err its cheap.
560W Silverstone Zeus ST56ZF - 38A on the 12V rail may be a bit overkill but its under £50 on Scans today only.

This lot will be fired (carefully of course) into my old Coolermaster centurion case. This has two 80mm case fans. I would welcome any suggestions on any fans this size that are quiet.

My other concern was the Silverstone PSU only having one 80mm fan and may be quite loud.

Once built I'll be back to get some help re overclocking as I've never attempted it before

Thanks for reading.

[staffsMike]

I think investing £20 into a new case makes more sense than buying 80mm fans for the old one.

Akasa Zen's are usually £20 ish, I would start there. An antec 300 would be really good though.

Also I would probably go AMD rather than Intel at this end of the budget. A 7750+ X2 will be the same if not less than an E5200 and out perform it at stock settings. Pair that to either an 740G or 780G based mobo (asus if you want my opinion) and you get a really solid performing PC.

A good reason for choosing AMD is that at this point you are offered a better upgrade path than the intel system can give since it's on a now pretty much dead socket.

[tickedon]

I just built a system around an Antec 300 case for my parents - initially I had thought about going for a crappy cheap case or using one of the empty ones I have lying around. Great case to work with and I'd thoroughly recommend it - it looks the part

While it's a good build, I'd agree that right now it seems AMD are more competitive at the value end, especially considering the upgrade options. Core i7/i5 are going to take over and so the skt 775 platform is dead, regardless of how modern the chipset is.

They also got a 250gb Hitachi HD, which was cheap (funny that...) and it seems to offer decent performance Double check the exact model you are going for, Hitachi have some older models which use smaller platters which = more platters in the HD; while others that that are newer, larger platters, less platters in the HD and so cooler etc.... When pricing it up, the newer hd's were actually cheaper.

Good choice of card as well, I got an Asus 4850 when it came out and with my old Athlon X2 2.5Ghz I was able to turn on some of the bells and whistles in some games.

Only suggestion rather than the case and AMD vs Intel is perhaps stretching to 4GB of RAM?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The E5200 will be a better choice than the X2 7750+ if you are overclocking. However at stock speeds the X2 7750+ is faster though. I would also look at getting an HD4870 512mb as these are now around £140 to £150 delivered at a few companies like Pixmania and Novatech. This will last you for longer at your resolution as it is around 20% faster than an HD4850 IIRC. If you upgrade to a higher resolution screen the HD4870 would also do better in games then the HD4850.

[s3ds]

last year i changed 5 cases so i could use 120mm fans and make them quiet
i would also recomend a new case

[mac124]

I would suggest 4gb too if possible as turning up the eye candy even at 1280x1024 will start to use up memory specially if you are running vista, shop around (ocuk) and you can get something like 4gb of ocz for £40ish which overclocks nicely, both my ocz gold and titanium will do 900mhz+

[Ulti]

If you'll use your pc a few years before getting a new system, then you should stick to E5200 I guess as it is quite a bit better than the 7750+ once it's OCed. However, if you want a fully upgradable system then as others have said, 7750+ is the way to go.

I personally chose the E5200 over the 7750+ As I thought to myself that current functionality would be more important than future upgradability.

[Hawker1986]

Hi,

I would have to agree with what people have said about getting a 4GB kit of memory, that would give you noticable improvements everywhere. I have just built a similar system...same HDD, CPU and cooler. The HDD is fine and yes v cheap, and the CPU I overclocked to 3.75Ghz in 2min, so you should get some good results with it, on that cooler the temp didnt get above 60oC loaded so its a good choice.

Your build looks good, enjoy it!

Hawker

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

When overclocking it is VERY important to run stability tests.


This what I usually do:
1.)Run OCCT CPU for 2 hours to check for initial stability -- initial stability test
2.)Then you may also want to run OCCT Blend for 1 hour to check for stability of the CPU and RAM -- initial stability test
3.)Run IntelBurnTest for 25 iterations -- peak stability test
4.)Run Orthos for 12 hours -- longterm stability test
5.)Run a few loops of 3DMark06 or even 3DMark Vantage. A few loops of the Crysis benchmarking tool would also be a substitute -- gaming stability test

If your system passes these tests then it will be stable for normal use.

[Waylander]

Thanks for all the replies folks. Very helpful.

Why is it that setting a budget for a build/upgrade is virtually impossible?! I started out with a budget of £250, then it went to £300 very quickly to £350 and now just over £400

I'm gonna go for 4gb RAM - for the small cost increase it would be daft not to i suppose. I'm running XP so i take it 4gb is the max?

I do like the look of the Akasa Zen case at only £32. If this is gonna be cooler and quieter than what I've got then I'm adding this to the list (there goes the budget). There is also the point that I was gonna get a cheap SATA DVD-R as both mine are on IDE and a new MOBO only has 1 IDE. I've noticed they're all black these days (my case is silver).

I'm in two minds now. Ulti raises a good point - in reality I don't upgrade very often (wife doesn't let me!) so I could run the E5200 OC'd for a while to come. However the 7750 gets good write ups and the upgradeability at least keeps a door open for cheaper future upgrades. Gonna have to think about this a bit more.

A few more questions if you don't mind:

What would be a good cooler for the 7750?
To trim the budget a bit I'm looking at the ASUS 4850 instead - £112 on eBuyer - I believe this has a non standard cooler as well? Any thoughts on this card?
After even more research I'm looking at a Corasir VX450 PSU. It has a good write-up on Hardware secrets. Anyone using one of these? How quiet is it?

Cheers folks.

[moogle]

I'm running XP so i take it 4gb is the max?

3.25 or 3.5.

You'd have to use an x64 OS to use the full 4GB.

[Sputnik]

Thanks for all the replies folks. Very helpful.

Why is it that setting a budget for a build/upgrade is virtually impossible?! I started out with a budget of £250, then it went to £300 very quickly to £350 and now just over £400

I know that feeling. My problem is I always think, for £50 more I could have that and for another £50 I could have the next best thing etc.

I was gonna get a cheap SATA DVD-R as both mine are on IDE and a new MOBO only has 1 IDE. I've noticed they're all black these days (my case is silver).

You can connect 2 IDE devices to a single IDE port.

What would be a good cooler for the 7750?

depends really, If your not going to overclock it then the boxed retail unit should be fine.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks for all the replies folks. Very helpful.

Why is it that setting a budget for a build/upgrade is virtually impossible?! I started out with a budget of £250, then it went to £300 very quickly to £350 and now just over £400

I'm gonna go for 4gb RAM - for the small cost increase it would be daft not to i suppose. I'm running XP so i take it 4gb is the max?

I do like the look of the Akasa Zen case at only £32. If this is gonna be cooler and quieter than what I've got then I'm adding this to the list (there goes the budget). There is also the point that I was gonna get a cheap SATA DVD-R as both mine are on IDE and a new MOBO only has 1 IDE. I've noticed they're all black these days (my case is silver).

I'm in two minds now. Ulti raises a good point - in reality I don't upgrade very often (wife doesn't let me!) so I could run the E5200 OC'd for a while to come. However the 7750 gets good write ups and the upgradeability at least keeps a door open for cheaper future upgrades. Gonna have to think about this a bit more.

A few more questions if you don't mind:

What would be a good cooler for the 7750?
To trim the budget a bit I'm looking at the ASUS 4850 instead - £112 on eBuyer - I believe this has a non standard cooler as well? Any thoughts on this card?
After even more research I'm looking at a Corasir VX450 PSU. It has a good write-up on Hardware secrets. Anyone using one of these? How quiet is it?

Cheers folks.

I would rethink your build a bit!!

Here is what I would go for:

Phenom II X3 720 - £119.20

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159071

This is a triple core processor and should be easily overclockable to 3.2ghz to 3.4ghz!! Some games like FarCry 2 already make use of multiple cores well so this make your system have slightly "longer legs" in the future.

ASUS M3A78-EM - £63.81

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150278

4gb RAM - £33.34

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx


DVD writer - £13.79

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

FSP 700W - £32.19

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

HD4850 - £114.99

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s....html?ASU-4850

Akasa Zen - £28.65

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/115546

Hitachi 500gb - £38.53

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

I have used the Akasa Zen in a build and it is a nice looking case. The only thing is that you need to run both 120mm fans at least at medium speed to get an adequate airflow.

Novatech has free postage and so does Ebuyer for orders over £49.99! Scan has free postage for Hexus members with over 20 useful posts as long as the minimum order value is at least £20(excluding VAT). However since you do not have 20+ posts the postage will be £10.

The total comes to £455.98!


Apart from a graphics card upgrade in perhaps two years time the base spec will do you fine for a while. If you can afford it, it is better to go for a better build now so you do not have to muck around with it in the future.

You could trim down the spec by re-using your optical drives and a Phenom II X3 710. This should drop the price by around £35 to £40 . I would also sell any old bits you have too.

Also do you have a copy of an OS to hand??

[Hawker1986]

Ok well, im not sure where your budget has disappeared too sub £400:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/120mm...Retail-Package - 120mm case fan (youll need it)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Akasa...Intel-push-pin - Same CPU cooler you wanted originally
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigab...-SATA-RAID-ATX - P31 mobo (cheap but will OC like hell and the only real limit is RAM and by the time you need more than 4GB youll need all new stuff anyhow)
This stuff is all in today only:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=26138 - E5200 (4Ghz is no problem)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=21486 - 4GB Corsair DDR2 800
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=13213 - 500GB Hitatchi HDD you first chose
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=19619 - Coolermaster case (cheap but good comes with 1 120mm fan)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=22926 - 700W FSP PSU less than 1/2 price today only which is excellent
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=25162 - Samsung SATA DVDRW

Plus the 4850 from ebuyer I make it £381 so even if you wanted the P43 mobo your still talking £400 tops.

Hope thats of some help.

Hawker

[Hyperviper34]

Here is a gaming system that is tried and tested and is worked to fit a budget of around £300 (ideal for people using 17/19" monitors), it’s been upgraded to follow the best components although the MB is a little dated now, still a very good budget board though. If you wanted to swop it then the Gigabyte GA-EP43-S3L is about another £10.

[cptwhite_uk]

I think investing £20 into a new case makes more sense than buying 80mm fans for the old one.

Akasa Zen's are usually £20 ish, I would start there. An antec 300 would be really good though.

Zen's are poo staffsmike...stop recommending them! Get the Coolermaster RC-330 from Scan, currently on offer for £21.** at Scan.

https://secure.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Sho...oductId=975884