Suggested New/Upgrade Build, Comments Please.

[B16 EM]

I have a Home Office, Self Build Business Machine, that has serious Start-Up Speed and Memory Bleed Issues. I tried Downloading MemTest from the link on these pages, but it tried to install many linked sub-programs in addition.

Kaspersky Pure 2 got very agitated about the burrs these extra Add-Ons seemed to be carrying, and I wasn’t a chortling rodent, so I terminated the install.

Imagine my reaction when I discovered that despite my choices to refuse, several Add-Ons had been installed.

“Revo, KILL!”

I want to upgrade anyway and decided to go ahead with an upgrade, and then if necessary tackle any issues that re-appeared.

My current Rig is housed in a Coolermaster HAF 912 Case, with a decent 600 Watt Corsair Power Supply, and consists of:-

• ASUS P5K Premium Motherboard.
• Core 2 Duo 2.33 Ghz CPU.
• ASUS ATI Radeon HD 3850 GPU
• Crucial Memory 8 Gigs.
• 240 Gigs SSD Start-Up and Applications Hard Drive.
• Two removable Hard Drives in Icy-Box Drawers ca. 150 Gigs each.
• DVD Recorder.
• Blu-Ray Recorder.
• My Software runs on Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 Bit; and includes Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard; Serif PagePlus 6, DrawPlus 6 and WebPlus 6; Fluid Mask; MS Works from way back; and the necessary Commercial Software to record and play Blu-Ray among other applications.

I am considering the following Upgrade to a faster and hopefully more reliable rig with a Budget of £700:-

• ASUS P8Z77-V PRO/Thunderbolt Motherboard. £179.72.
• Intel Core i5 3570, 1155, Ivy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.4 GHz CPU. £166.98.
• ASUS Radeon 2 Gbyte HD 7870 GPU £191.74.
• Crucial 8 Gig Memory Kit, 4Gig times 2, DDR3 1866, PC3-14400. £76.79.
• Plus the remainder from above.

Please, what do Hexus members think of these plans?
AND CRUCIALLY,
Am I making any errors due to lack of knowledge?

Thanks in anticipation,
B16 EM

[Willzzz]

Might as well wait for Haswell imo.
And that 7870 isn't good value, nor is the memory, shop around.

[Marc_92]

Seems alot for a mobo where you wont be overclocking the cpu, cheaper ram msi 7870 (deal finishes tomorrow)

[Ulti]

What exactly are you hoping to do with the upgrade? Startup speed and memory related issues most likely lie in your OS, SSD or RAM. You said that although you refused to install the add-ons, it still went ahead. AFAIK, unless it's a virus, add-ons don't simply install themselves - make sure you're selecting and deselecting the right boxes.

What SSD have you got? You could be having issues due to the SSD itself as some SSDs are known to have problems.

It does seem you could do with an upgrade though but the parts you have chosen are really expensive and so value for money is rather low. Do you use thunderbolt? You're really paying a massive premium for that motherboard. I'm pretty sure you don't need 1866Mhz RAM either, standard 8GB 1600Mhz RAM will be just as good.

[stilkun]

I have a Home Office, Self Build Business Machine, that has serious Start-Up Speed and Memory Bleed Issues. I tried Downloading MemTest from the link on these pages, but it tried to install many linked sub-programs in addition.

Kaspersky Pure 2 got very agitated about the burrs these extra Add-Ons seemed to be carrying, and I wasn’t a chortling rodent, so I terminated the install.

Imagine my reaction when I discovered that despite my choices to refuse, several Add-Ons had been installed.

“Revo, KILL!”

You may have gone on the wrong site, it should be http://www.memtest86.com/ or http://www.memtest.org/, should be careful as there are site that are pretending or claim to be memtest diagnostic "tool". Memtest is a DOS program that is downloaded as an burnable ISO image and boot it from the CD or download a USB version (it will wipe your USB) and boot from USB instead of CD...

[B16 EM]

Thank you, Hexus users for your Comments, Information and Advice.
You have been most helpful.

Sadly none of your posts had the Thank Link showing, so I could not make it Official.

Willzzz: There's no immediate hurry, so I'll wait to see the prices/speeds of the new Haswell chips. I chose that 7870 because it was ASUS, and I thought it would sit and communicate nicely in an ASUS Mobo. I looked at Crucial's Memory Advisor for the Thunderbolt and selected what I thought might be the 'best', {but decidedly not the cheapest, I agree.}

Marc_92: I had a Gigabyte Mobo go erratically belly up on me, a few years ago, my son in law tried some bench tests to check it over, and it melted some of its components. Since then I have used ASUS Mobos with no adventures. I chose the Thunderbolt specifically for other reasons. See reply to Ulti. I also followed your link -- thanks.

Ulti: I want a fast reliable Business Machine with Powerful Graphics and Website Creation Abilities, and Internet First Person Games. OS is fully updated Win 7, SSD is 256 GByte Crucial SSD, Ram is also Crucial, and those, plus Software Clashes are top of my list of Issues Suspects. If I still have Memory Bleed after an upgrade, I will be looking to uninstall some Software, in a Systematic Check, I have faint hopes it won't come to that.
I downloaded MemTest from the link in the Hexus Forums, but stilkun's comments about it being a DOS program have me thinking I may have strayed into the Evil Forest somehow. It doesn't match what I experienced.
I don't think I'll be using Thunderbolt but that Mobo has a FP Audio Header which I want for headphones. The otherwise excellent {for me anyway} ASUS P8 Z77-V PRO which I have in my Games Machine, does not have a FP Header, {it has a S/PDIF instead.} I use the Rear Panel hooked into a 5.1 System on that machine. I could go for the P8Z77-V Pro with a basic Audio card that has a FP header on board, {assuming I can find one,} and save a few pounds that way. I'll think about that, and the 1600 MHz RAM.

stilkun: I used the link in Hexus Forums, but your description does not match my {flaky} memory of the event. I also mistakenly said INSTALL, when I never got that far, I meant DOWNLOAD. I whistled for Time at the third 'Invitation' to download yet another {Recommended} All Singing All Dancing Add-On, ALL of which I refused. Kaspersky was going berserk telling me they contained all sorts of nasties, so having terminated the downloads I checked, it was then I found the burrs and summoned Revo to kill them off. I also instructed Kaspersky to run a full scan. I definitely did not get as far as running a DOS program, nor creating a Burnable ISO Image, nor did I boot from anything other than my C-Drive. I guess that somewhere I got lost and ended up among the ungodly. I will follow your links later.

From your Comments the only mistakes I seem to be making are on Financial Costs, that is reassuring, those I can sort out. Thank you everyone for your time and comments.

B16 EM

[Willzzz]

Don't worry about matching manufacturers, it really shouldn't make any difference.

Asus are often quite expensive for graphics cards and not really any better than Gigabyte/MSI.
We are starting to see 7950s approaching the £200 mark, the 7870 is getting badly squeezed between the much cheaper 660 and the much more powerful 7950 imo.

[B16 EM]

Thank you Willzzz,

I had a look at the 7950, and was impressed, and the current MSI offer on Scan is not that much different from the ASUS 7870, less than £10.

Food for thought especially, as I said earlier, as there's no rush.

I'll wait a bit, have a look at the new Haswell CPUs and then see what's on offer in the 7950s.

Thanks again,

B16 EM.

[Pob255]

Actually some times there is an advantage to matching motherboard manufacture to graphics card, but it is minor, just a utility that can work with both motherboard and graphics card for overclocking, power saving and monitoring.

It's not really worth much or paying extra for.

Can you be a bit more specific about "Internet First Person Games." give us an example.
A 7850 or 7770 might be a better option.

[asturtivant]

I run an ASUS Direct CU II and Find them to be very good, they offer much better cooling then other brands.

[B16 EM]

Pob 255,

Second Life.
I have a 7850 in another machine. It's good, but some rooms in Second Life occasionally rezz wrongly, large blue areas where walls should be for instance. It's not the critical factor, I'm more interested in a decent mid term upgrade, and the 7950 seems to fit the bill.

asturtivant,

A smile for you:-
I clicked on the Direct CU link, and got an Android offered to me by Amazon for £59.99.
I had to Google the whole phrase before I nailed the graphics card down.

Thanks again everyone for your help and suggestions,

B16 EM.