As above really, me and my brother are potentially thinking of upgrading our pcs, he wants to downsize to atleast a matx setup from his current i5 670 based atx system.
I'm thinking of upgrading my current llano 3870 build (potentially giving it to him as an upgrade)
What would people recommend for <£200 for a case, motherboard and cpu? (and possibly cooler)
Looking at matx/mitx
Budget if stretchable if needed :)
Thanks
Going to be very tough for that budget, the A8-3870k is a solid performer, in game with a graphics card added it keeps a bit ahead of the i3 2100, which means you'll need to go to an i5 over 3.1ghz to get any real all round increase in performance even then it'll be small. and we're talking £160-175 just on the cpu.
Looking at your current specs, for gaming the only real weakish link is the graphics card, the old gtx260 is still a solid card, but a current £200 graphics card should give you a solid bump in performance.
If you want the same sort of performance but smaller, you could go miniITX but that's not cheap, costs are around the same but selection is far smaller so can cost more ie a £60 board might not have the features you want but the next board up is £120, where as there are more options in between with atx or matx.
On the i5 670 system . . . hard to say without knowing more, it's a Clarkdale so it isn't a real quad core, it's a dual core with Hyper Threading (ie the same as the current sandybridge i3's) but at the stick 3.47ghz it's got solid performance.
Pretty much the same to improve, go smaller and within £200, if you want to go smaller you could just try to get a decent socket 1156 matx motherboard.
However they do go for decent prices on ebay, so it might be better to sell it with the motherboard and do more of a side grade to an i3 2120 (£90) a good matx B75 or H77 (£70) which would leave £40 for a case put the budget by £20-25 and you could stretch to a Arc mini or Silverstone PS07 (two of the better mATX cases)
You could go cheaper on the motherboard and go for an H61 but you'll be losing sata3, not a big loss mainly full performance from a good sata3 SSD
This should be off set buy selling the current stuff but I'd never count on that until it's sold an i5-670 (could fetch around £60-70 on ebay) but might not.
Sorry those stats are slightly out of date, got a GTX570 in there now.
I must admit, I may be able to stretch my budget a little.
However, it may be best just to get a new case and board for the clarkdale.
Then just get a new cooler for my build, since the watercooling makes it a right pain carrying about everywhere etc (to and from uni multiple times a year, then to and from lans aswell)
The other option would be ofcourse to give my brother my current setup, then have the clarkdale system for me, solving the watercooling issue, then I could even get a nicer cpu if I fancied it.
To solve the water cooling (if it's cpu only), you could swap over to something like the H100, one of the good things about the all-in-one systems is that because they are self contained they don't suffer from being moved around.
generally the cooling isn't as good as a custom loop but unless you're doing some silly overclocking it would still be plenty for an A8-3870k
Yeah, I've been considering going to one, used a couple in the past and they've been fine, and this was originally my media server (which became my main after I sold my main rig to buy things)
So heat was never the reason for watercooling, was just because I had some stuff lying about etc :P
One thing that really annoys me about the setup, is the lack of accurate temperature measurements, all programs seem to report utter rubbish, which put me off overclocking it much (since I know AMD are sensitive to temp).
In the end, my brother wants to downsize to a matx setup, and I'd like to get rid of the watercooling due to the amount I move my pc around.
Just trying to work out what's the best way to achieve both goals.
Should I give my brother my llano stuff, then get a new case, board and cpu? Stay with what I've got, just get a new cooler and look for a new case, cpu and board for my brother? Something else entirely?
I think I'm going to give my brother my llano stuff, so that means I need to get some new stuff.
What would people recommend cpu/board wise for £200? (matx/mitx)
Should I aim for SB or IB?
Or maybe something else entirely?
It's tough to say...200quid isn't going to give you the best of anything. You are at a guess looking at a i3 but then the motherboard choice will be tight as well.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...ocessor-retail
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...hdmi-micro-atx
Maybe those, I'm really not sure how the i3's perform though. The Asus board is a little cheaper than the Gigebyte board which I have the full version of.
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...i52400oem.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by GeorgeStorm
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...t-sink-fan-oem
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-p8...m_content=Q200
Would you recommend that over the i7 870 build for £110?Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
The guy selling the I7 870 etc seems to have disappeared, and since I want to get this build going, I think I'm just going to go ahead and pretty much get what you suggested CAT.
However, since I ended up going for the v351, I could get a matx board, anything you would recommend above the board you linked?
If I go for a non k edition cpu, is there any advantage to a Z77 board over a H77?
Edit:
What about:
Xeon E3-1240
and
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-h...vi-d-micro-atx
?
Ok I just picked up an e3-1240 for £140
a) good deal?
b) good board to go with it?
Ebay??:pQuote:
Originally Posted by GeorgeStorm
You're saying it wasn't a good deal so I shouldn't keep it?
How comes?
Equivalent to an i7 2600, surely a better buy than the i5 2400 new you suggested for instance? (unless I'm missing something big)
Its a good deal especially if new. I was just wondering where you saw it for £140!Quote:
Originally Posted by GeorgeStorm