Been away for a while and want to catch up

youcancallmeal

Well I have been away from Ireland for the last year and will be returning next week. I want to catch up on all the games I missed and my current setup has never been right since the day I built it (Mostly artifacting during games and random crashes). I've got a budget of about €500 but I have most of the basics already.

My current setup is

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Box 4096Kb, LGA775, 64bit 2133Mhz (I usually have this clocked around 3ghz)
M/B - Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R ,Intel P35, ATX, PCI-Express
RAM - 2048MB-KIT DDR2 Patriot PC800 CL4
GFX - XFX GeForce 7900 GT 256MB GDDR3
PSU - 520w OCZ Modstream Power Supply
H/D - 2 x 250GB and 2 x 500GB hard drives

This is all crammed into an Antec P182

I'm also running dual screen setup of 2 Dell 21" widescreen panels (Not HD enabled)

To keep it under €500 I'd prefer to hold onto my PSU and I'll replace my CPU, M/B, RAM and GFX. Problem is I'm worried that whatever upgrading I do plus the amount of hard drives I have and also my Dual Screen setup will be too much for my 520w PSU? I think maybe if I just stay away from the power hungry graphics cards I may be okay. I'll also happily go down the AM3 road if it means I get more bang for buck. Haven't really been keeping track of AMD's processors in a long time so don't really know much about them except that they are supposedly good budget options? As regards operating system I'll be using Vista 32bit until I can scrape the money together for Windows 7. I would also like to get an ssd for my os and games but I think I'll have to hold off on that for a while as well. So my build at the moment looks like this but if people think I can do better or maybe even spec me a cheaper AM3 setup that includes an ssd let me know. Cheers (It's good to be back )

i5 build

RoyalMarine

first thought about the artifacting would possibly be over heating. with ur cpu clocked to 3ghz what type of cooling were you running in that case?

JackieChan

Club3d version of 4890?
€142.99...saves a few quid!

youcancallmeal

I used to keep a very close eye on all my temps with speedfan and it was always within reason. The airflow seems to be okay in the P182, there is one 120mm fan at the front including an option to put in another one but then I don't have room for all my hard drives. There is also two 120mm fans at the back.

Solitaire

The case is grand but the PSU needs changing; those old ModStreams were never the best (although probably slightly better than the current Sirtec-based ModXStreams) and the combination of gaming graphics, better CPU and four HDDs will push the old ModStream rather hard...

youcancallmeal

Yeah I reckon I might just upgrade the PSU. I was going to build a second PC for my parents with the leftovers from my old build anyway. Are the any PSU in particular that are recommended?

PogMoThoin

Mobo should take a quad, add 2GB more of ram, 4870/4890 and a psu

youcancallmeal

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Mobo should take a quad, add 2GB more of ram, 4870/4890 and a psu

Hmmm I think you may be looking at my current setup thinking thats what I plan on building?

PogMoThoin

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Hmmm I think you may be looking at my current setup thinking thats what I plan on building?

Nope, mobo takes a quad so what I'd do is sell the cpu, gpu and psu on adverts.ie and add the above to your existing rig. Might be easier sell the existing 2 sticks of ram and buy a 4GB kit

L31mr0d

Get a 1Kw PSU and a 4870x2 (get the PSU before you need it, not after). You should be able to get a 1Kw for less than €200 and you should be able to find a 4870x2 for around €300. If you have another 50 squid get another 4GB kit (sell the 2GB kit you currently have)

Should be good to go with that to play any games currently out there. If you care about Physx (it's becoming more important, what with Mirrors Edge and Arkham Asylum using it a lot, amongst other titles) then get yourself an equivalent nVidia card.

youcancallmeal

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Nope, mobo takes a quad so what I'd do is sell the cpu, gpu and psu on adverts.ie and add the above to your existing rig. Might be easier sell the existing 2 sticks of ram and buy a 4GB kit

Ah right sorry see what you mean. I'm thinking though that I probably need to replace my mobo because its fairly old and the chipset will hold me back quite a bit?

PogMoThoin

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Ah right sorry see what you mean. I'm thinking though that I probably need to replace my mobo because its fairly old and the chipset will hold me back quite a bit?

Nope, same chipset I got It handles the q6600/6700 quite well and should overclock it to ~3.2-3.4Ghz, You'd pickup either quad for not much more than €100. There's no advantage going for i5/i7 for a gaming rig as games aren't taking advantage of more than 4 cores yet. Also i7 needs ddr3, ddr2 is dirt cheap at the moment, You'll get 4GB for €60-80.

My pc handles any game i throw at it without breaking a sweat. Do what I've said and take L31mr0d's advise and add a 4870X2 and You've got a serious gaming pc, like me Games are only now starting to take advantage of quads

youcancallmeal

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Nope, same chipset I got It handles the q6600/6700 quite well and should overclock it to ~3.2-3.4Ghz, You'd pickup either quad for not much more than €100. There's no advantage going for i5/i7 for a gaming rig as games aren't taking advantage of more than 4 cores yet. Also i7 needs ddr3, ddr2 is dirt cheap at the moment, You'll get 4GB for €60-80.

My pc handles any game i throw at it without breaking a sweat. Do what I've said and take L31mr0d's advise and add a 4870X2 and You've got a serious gaming pc, like me Games are only now starting to take advantage of quads

Cool sounds like a plan! Seeing as the 4870X2 is technically two cards does that not mean I cannot take advantage of the two cards with my dual screen setup. Although I vaguely remember reading some that ATI had fixed that issue with a driver update a while back?

PogMoThoin

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Cool sounds like a plan! Seeing as the 4870X2 is technically two cards does that not mean I cannot take advantage of the two cards with my dual screen setup. Although I vaguely remember reading some that ATI had fixed that issue with a driver update a while back?

Not sure what You mean, I've 2 screens. Second screen doesn't affect performance, the card performs as 2 4870's in Crossfire. Course not all games take advantage of Crossfire, playing those You run as a single gpu

You could also do Your upgrading in stages, buy a psu and ram, add a gpu and then upgrade to a quad whenever You find a bargain, the Core2duo will play all games just fine

Solitaire

OH NO YOU DIDN'T! :eek:

+1 on the quad for futureproofing (P35 is fine with quads, might need BIOS updates for 45nm chips is all) but I really don't think a HD4870X2 is money well spent at this point. If you have that amount of money to throw around, get a HD5870. If not, get a HD5850 or HD4890. The HD4870X2 has difficulty standing up to the HD5850 and the HD5870 wipes the floor with it. Plus both of those are DX11. Any of those options will use ~120W less juice than the HD4870X2. And a 1kW PSU?! What for?! Even with all those HDDs a 850W would do with the HD4870X2 with acres of room to spare! If you go for a single-GPU card then I'd recommend a good 650W at most. Preferably unirail PSUs like Corsairs if you're juggling a ton of HDDs

PogMoThoin

Word of warning, board will support 45nm chips with a bios update, but won't oc them as well as it will the older core2quads. But should easily take a q6600/6700 to 3.2-3.4Ghz, therefore I'd stick to these 2 quads

youcancallmeal

Okay I get what everyone is saying. I think the 4870X2 may be a bit over kill for me and seems a bit expensive too. Also the HD5870 is pretty expensive. I know it sounds stupid but in the past I've been unlucky with graphics cards (Usually just poor performance) so I refuse to spend over 200euro on them. I reckon I'll just get my CPU and RAM on adverts.ie as there seems to be some good deals with people trying to offload their for LGA775 CPU and DDR2 RAM. For a graphics and PSU I'm thinking about these two:

Club3D HD4890 (Should handle most of what I want to play because I usually deactivate one of the monitors and max res is 1650x1080)

Corsair TX850W 850 Watt (Hopefully will still be able to handle a new build 2 years from now)

With all this I may be able to afford to get Windows 7 as well from my 500euro

PogMoThoin

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Okay I get what everyone is saying. I think the 4870X2 may be a bit over kill for me and seems a bit expensive too. Also the HD5870 is pretty expensive. I know it sounds stupid but in the past I've been unlucky with graphics cards (Usually just poor performance) so I refuse to spend over 200euro on them. I reckon I'll just get my CPU and RAM on adverts.ie as there seems to be some good deals with people trying to offload their for LGA775 CPU and DDR2 RAM. For a graphics and PSU I'm thinking about these two:

Club3D HD4890 (Should handle most of what I want to play because I usually deactivate one of the monitors and max res is 1650x1080)

Corsair TX850W 850 Watt (Hopefully will still be able to handle a new build 2 years from now)

With all this I may be able to afford to get Windows 7 as well from my 500euro

Good plan, but that psu is even overkill. I've got this powering a 4870x2 and 5 sata's