gaming pc build, novice please help gurus!

KAYPEE

Ok lads, well following on from my other thread looking for a case, ive decided to invest in an upgrade. This is where i need your help I have an "ok" understanding of pc's, but really my knowledge is fairly elementary when it comes to builds and choosing components that work well together etc.

My system at the moment is

dell 22" LCD monitor
Dell GX620 Tower.
2.8Ghz Pentium4 HT CPU.
4gb of Crucial DDR2 BallistiX TRACER PC6400 RAM. 30GB SATA drive.(500GB external)
Brand new ATI 4850HD 1GB
new 580watt PSU twin-fan
5.1 dolby sound card


I play LFS, a bit of WOW, but mmainly cod4 and now modern warfare 2 which is really why im doing this, its performing crappy. I installed the new 4850 on saturday and installed MW2, thinking it was going to be ok but the FPS sucks and the graphics are not great.
SO.... its time to upgrade.

I want a pretty good gaming setup that will play 99%games well, but im not a die hard fanatic so i dont need anything that will launch the next NASA rocket lol, just a good solid gamer.

now My questions are peeps, and i badly need your help:

1. Im assuming what i need new is: a mobo, case and cpu, is this correct?? If so, opinions please!!

2.when i do upgrade these components, whats the story with the OS?? is that stored on the harddrive or do i need to but a new OS or what?? sames goes for my programs etc, are they all on the harddrive? (i know this is basic, sorry)

3.Is there any other sound advice I need before going at this?? thanks guys !


Sorry for the long post

leninbenjamin

well, the main thing is what's your budget?

KAYPEE

hey dude, I dunno i guess for those 3 main items 300-350?? is that enough or not? i dont want to skimp so if its a bit more ok but about 350 i guess, cheers

leninbenjamin

should be enough to work with.

maybe an AM2+ setup like this?

that'll allow you to reuse the RAM anyway, as the new i5 and AM3 require DDR3. I wouldn't recommend buying off komplett though for this, HWS have that CPU over €30 less (komplett's shopping lists are just handier to share).

Solitaire

Is that Dell monitor the usual 1650*1080 or one of those fancy-pants 1080p "Full HD" affairs? If its the latter even the HD4850 will have trouble; you need a properly weapons-grade graphics card to game at 1080p

Odds are, the big bottleneck is that archaic P4. And games don't like HT either. Given you have a full set of decent DDR2 I'd go with an AM3 CPU on an AM2 mobo to keep the RAM.

Two more big problems:

First, you need a new case. No choice here - the GX620 is a propreitary BTX jobbie, so normal components won't fit :mad:

Second, if there is a term to inspire terror in an IT techie, its "580W twin fan PSU". Give me name and model number please. And the ratings table on its side. I have a bad feeling what I'm going to say about the result isn't going to be pleasant...

So... New AM3 CPU, new AM2 mobo, new case to stick it in and probably a new PSU to avoid exploding "dual fan" pieces of tat

Effluo

That psu you have is a no name brand, correct?

Anywho Budget is the name of the game

If you like the way it looks you could get the Antec 200, for the money it's got amazing features and great build quality. Not everyones cup of tea though.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168615 Prob best budget case going

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfCJBOSh06c

I'm supposing you will not be overclocking so on the case side of things a coolermaster 33x (circa €30) series would be pretty good option for you.

I went with a slightly lower end AMD proc as for gaming you won't need anything more, you could go lower again(prob not recommended)!

I also stuck in a new power supply for you, it's really great value for money and it would save you money on the electricity bill on the long term! Not to mention that there's a chance of the no-name psu bailing out on your due to the increase power requirements.

Just remember if you decide to get what i've selected, then get the case first as they will then give you an option to get the psu with an extra 3.50 off the case!

Amazing deal from ebuyer.

One thing to be careful of however is the fact that your dvd drive and hard-drive from the old pc is prob ide, so make sure whichever motherboard you get it has 2 slots, or that you get an adapter with it!

ED E

KAYPEE wrote: »

1. Im assuming what i need new is: a mobo, case and cpu, is this correct?? If so, opinions please!!

2.when i do upgrade these components, whats the story with the OS?? is that stored on the harddrive or do i need to but a new OS or what?? sames goes for my programs etc, are they all on the harddrive? (i know this is basic, sorry)

3.Is there any other sound advice I need before going at this?? thanks guys !


Sorry for the long post

All your software is on the HDD, so you could pop it over and just update the drivers for any new hardware, but I'd suggest a new drive.

1. 30GB is tiny nowadays, 250GB SATAs are really cheap so you might as well grab one while your at it
2. New OS installs tend to kill of loads of bloat and dont take long really. If you got a new drive you could put the 30GB back in as a secondary drive and rip back any files you want.

BTW, you weren't perhaps running MW2 off the external were you?

Solitaire wrote: »

Is that Dell monitor the usual 1650*1080 or one of those fancy-pants 1080p "Full HD" affairs? If its the latter even the HD4850 will have trouble; you need a properly weapons-grade graphics card to game at 1080p

I've just bought a "FullHD" ST2210. Its running off a junk laptop with an ATI 1150(I think) chip. I read it didnt even do 1920, but it does fine for basic operations. Tried some games, CSS looks pretty in full def, but only when I dont touch the mouse.

The screen is for an xmas build anyways, so the above doesnt matter. I'm just wondering how far up the ladder I'll need to go to in orderto get respectable performance. I'm not mad fussy when it comes to gfx detail, budget and framerate are my main concern.

TIA:)

leninbenjamin

Effluo wrote: »

That psu you have is a no name brand, correct?

Anywho Budget is the name of the game

If you like the way it looks you could get the Antec 200, for the money it's got amazing features and great build quality. Not everyones cup of tea though.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168615 Prob best budget case going

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfCJBOSh06c

I'm supposing you will not be overclocking so on the case side of things a coolermaster 33x (circa €30) series would be pretty good option for you.

I went with a slightly lower end AMD proc as for gaming you won't need anything more, you could go lower again(prob not recommended)!

I also stuck in a new power supply for you, it's really great value for money and it would save you money on the electricity bill on the long term! Not to mention that there's a chance of the no-name psu bailing out on your due to the increase power requirements.

Just remember if you decide to get what i've selected, then get the case first as they will then give you an option to get the psu with an extra 3.50 off the case!

Amazing deal from ebuyer.

One thing to be careful of however is the fact that your dvd drive and hard-drive from the old pc is prob ide, so make sure whichever motherboard you get it has 2 slots, or that you get an adapter with it!

fyp

Solitaire

No, I fhp :P

leninbenjamin

Solitaire wrote: »

No, I fhp :P

well, the cheek!

KAYPEE

wow fast replies thanks lads,

@solitaire .. its a normal 1650*1080 not HD its over a year old id say.
Regarding the PSU lol, sorry for the confusion, i understand what you mean, engines are more my thing, and i hate when people try to explain technical things so i know how you feel sorry lol i got the PSU off a mate, the make is TRUST afaik, il post the specs when i get home, I also have a 500w antec PSU there too!?

Secondly, thanks to leninbenjamin also for the recommendation, with the AM3 cpu and the AM2 mobo, because i wont be using DDR3 with this setup does that necessarily mean il be "old hat" very quick? ?
Ive no idea really about those CPU's etc as ive only ever used intel, is there anything different really???
Also i ve read just form doing researh that the asus boards are after getting fairly crappy lately and gigabite and the best on the block atm??

@Lethal_Bullet.... yeah i know the 30gig HD is tiny, it came with it, and after i got the external i just never bothered changing it even tho i know i should!

Also more importantly, yes im running MW2 off the external HDD, is that an issue??

Lastly, I have the orange xp disc, is this enough to install a new OS on a new system or do i need to actually buy a new OS??

Cheers lads fro the help much appreciated

leninbenjamin

KAYPEE wrote: »

Also more importantly, yes im running MW2 off the external HDD, is that an issue??

yes, yes it is. that's why you so no improvement when you upped the card. USB has a much lower memory bandwidth compared with SATA and more importantly adds significant latency to seek times. It basically means your CPU can't get the data it needs to operate on fast enough.

KAYPEE

ah damn, another elementary mistake :oso can i just drag the MW2 contents over or do i need to reinstall? (please say no:( it took like 6 hours)

ED E

KAYPEE wrote: »

ah damn, another elementary mistake :oso can i just drag the MW2 contents over or do i need to reinstall? (please say no:( it took like 6 hours)

Probably because of a slow transfer rate to the drive.

You should do a clean install, even big games should take max like 30 mins..

KAYPEE

cool ok, thanks for that lads, il check it out back to my numerous questions above lol

Solitaire

What's the Antec like? Model name pretty please

Not sure about the Trust. Only old, cheapie dual-fan PSU I haven't heard many complaints about. Unfortunately I haven't heard much about it, period. Can't find any info for it online much less build quality and OEM. Previously it'd have been a tentative thumbs-up, but those Trust DF units are ancient at this stage so I don't know how much 12V capacity it has or even if it has any SATA or PCIe connections... best see what state the Antec is in :P

Assuming no PSU is required here's a €210 "example"



CPU should keep you happy for a good long while. Mobo was kinda random, not sure if the usual 780V mobo I put in budget builds is compatible with the new Athlons You can get a similar 760G in full ATX format for another tenner. Threw in a modern HDD as 30GB isn't a lot of drive once you start installing games on it! Throw it in and stick your apps/games on it, keep the 30GB drive for the OS. Oh, and no Antec 200 on HWVS. What a "pity". Seriously, its a great case but WTF with the sheer ugliness factor?! :eek:

Effluo

It's be a really good idea to add a hard-drive into the build too.

It is still possible that with an internal hard-drive your pc would be fine with MW2, All the same though an upgrade certainly wouldn't go astray.

A 1terrabyte hard-drive is less than £60 on ebuyer so the components in my post would still come within budget.

Also important question will you be overclocking? It's important to know so we can see if you need a different cpu cooler or not.

On the issue of motherboard maker... Well it tends to just depend on who you talk to, Asus are great for some people and poor for others, same with gigabyte and msi and Asrock and everyone else pretty much.

Leman_Russ

ASUS make good X58 mobos but poor P55. Gigabyte may have made some poor mobos in the past, but their P55 line is 2nd to none. It all depends on the chipset for while mobo brands are good or bad.

Except ASRock who suck no matter what

KAYPEE

thanks for the replies lads, top stuff.

@ solitaire, the PSU was only bought a few weeks ago, It has 4 sata conntections PCIe connections etc, the PC is running on it now. The second fan barely even kicks in when im playing so its hardly running out of steam is it?? instead of trying to type it out an explain i hope this helps lol

So.. putting the PSU aside for the moment, your saying the best CPU and mobo combination in this range are the ones above?? I dont mind spending a bit more if it'll make me a bit more future proof.

thanks guys, also where is the best site to buy the cpu/mobo?
ebuyer/komplett/etc cheers men

@effluo..... I dont think il be overclocking, main reason being i dont really know enough about it i dont think to go messing about with it, is there major advantages with it??

trust:




Antec:

Leman_Russ

KAYPEE wrote: »

thanks guys, also where is the best site to buy the cpu/mobo?

eBuyer.

Also ewww Antec PSU. I have to go shower now my eyes have been sullied!

KAYPEE

Leman_Russ wrote: »

ASUS make good X58 mobos but poor P55. Gigabyte may have made some poor mobos in the past, but their P55 line is 2nd to none. It all depends on the chipset for while mobo brands are good or bad.

Except ASRock who suck no matter what

can i ask the differnce between x58 and p55?

Leman_Russ

KAYPEE wrote: »

can i ask the differnce between x58 and p55?

AH, sorry

x58 is the latest (iirc) chipset for the LGA 1336 CPUs, which featuers Tripple Channel DDR3 Memory and x16/x16 PCIe Lanes for SLi/CrossFire.

P55 is the latest (and only atm) chipset for the LGA 1156 CPUs, which feature Dual Channel DDR3 Memory and only x8/x8 for SLi/Crossfire (though there is no actual difference in performance).

Of course, these are for Intel CPUs. I don't touch AMDs with a 20 foot barge pole, so I have no idea what the chipsets/mobos are like for them.

Effluo

Kaypee, Antec earthwatts are some of the most efficient and best psu's on the market. the model you have is around €70+ new and delivered

You should really be using that Antec.
Why did you get the trust one? did the Antec stop working?


Anywho about overclocking... Yeah... You can get a lot more value from your cpu, but it doesn't really matter if you don't.
Like a 2.8ghz Phenom II quad core would probably hit around 3.5ghz if you were to overclock it. You could do with a new cooler then though, which costs money.

You wouldn't notice that much of a difference for games...

Solitaire

Both P55 and X58 platforms are a bit pricey for this topic! I think a slight upgrade is in order, not a supercomputer! :P And even an Athlon2 will do for a good while yet. Oh, and the HD4850 is grand for that monitor resolution

Hmm... What happened to the Antec? Its rated higher than the "580W" Trust, probably because the Trust is literally as old as the hills. Its a late Pentium 3/early Pentium 4-era PSU, where the new-fangled components used this strange thing called the 12V rail. Before then P3s and their ilk ran off the +3.3V/+5V rails... the Trust is designed to run either system. I've seen that Trust lurking on various sites for donkeys' years - pretty hilarious that the new revision, instead of licensing (the guts of) a newer PSU they simply stuck some SATA and PCIe connectors on the ancient one and said "ta-daaa! Here's the new model!" :rolleyes: Laziness fail

I'm guessing that's the rare first-generation EarthWatts, when FSP were still making PSUs for Antec. Okay Leman, here's what you've been waiting to hear... feel free to "EEWWWWWWWWW" away Even though its not the Delta version it still has more 12V power than the Trust! :P

And fan speed is not an indicator of current load. It might be that the fan is set too low and the PSUs slowly roasting to death :P More likely, its because the PSU is so old 120mm fans hadn't even been invented back when it was made :P But at the same time its just a bit too toasty in there to survive with the one fan God (and probably the original designer!) intended it to have :rolleyes: But in any case unless the build quality is bad enough to make them randomly blow up either PSU should work fine with those components

Effluo

There's more than one type of Earthwatts psu?

Why do tech companies make it so confusing! If they made a bad product and then a good one with the same name? Then the good product would still be known as a bad one by the vast majority...

The other way around here, i thought it was a good one and it's a bad one! :rolleyes:

Solitaire

Nope - just checked. The Basiqs (not Basiq Plus) and some old EarthWatts are FSP, but any EarthWatts with a purple sticker are made by someone who knows how to make a PSU. Old ones are old budget Seasonic models and that 12V rail is really just one rail, not two :P Its basically a 34A (and that's conservative!) unirail PSU.

KAYPEE

well dudes, the reason i changed the PSU was when i was trying to diagnose the dead GPU ( pc was powering on but no boot, screen completely blank,fan on full and no lights on ram) so that made me think it was the PSU but obviously it was the GPU.
so should i change back??

So lads the BIG question, Give me the best exact parts to buy for 300e, board,CPU,HD - thats good for gaming, and fairly future proof is the one youve posted above the best for me solitaire? would i be best off upping the athlon2 to a 3?

Solitaire

No such thing as an Athlon 3 yet

It really depends on what you want to spend, but as X58 is utter overkill and P55 too pricey and unreliable I'd say AMD is the way to go. The X3-435 has the advantages of being cheap and fast; while each core is fast enough to suit single- or dual-threaded programs (like most games!) it has three cores so you won't get caught out badly if you need to run a CPU-intensive application that can use more than two cores. The X4-630 is the obvious next step but its another €30 and a bit slower per core to boot. The X4-620 is a cheaper quad but still more expensive than the X3 while being a fair bit slower to boot. Its also an older stepping and may use a bit more power and heat than you'd expect from a 2.6GHz quad. The Phenom2s are slightly better at games and better still at coding/compression/crypto due to the big L3 cache but they're also more expensive; the X3-720BE is a great CPU but as pricey as an X4-630 and really oriented toward budget enthusiast systems than you'd need. If you're not OCing the X3-435 may be a better bet.

And as for the PSU; yep, change back. The (rebadged) Seasonic is infinitely better than that Trust piece of poo :P

Leman_Russ

Solitaire wrote: »

P55 too pricey and unreliable

OI! No, it is not. It is unreliable if you pump 1.7v into it and fry the CPU. If you use it normally, it is fine, just like how AMD chips explode when you massively overvolt them.

Price/Performance the P55 with an i5 750 is king of the hill atm, but AMD are cheaper and are cheaper for a reason.

Effluo

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Price/Performance the P55 with an i5 750 is king of the hill atm, but AMD are cheaper and are cheaper for a reason.

Tell me Lemon, how an i5 would be better for the op in his situation?
All he wants to do is play games, a phenom II has loads and will have loads for quite a while to come for playing every game.

Not to mention he already has 4gig's of ddr2 800mhz ram.

Solitaire

Leman_Russ wrote: »

If you use it normally, it is fine

No, they're not. Are you an Intel rep or something?!?! :eek: You've been touting that line for the past week and going "NAH NAH I'M NOT LISTENING!" every time someone tries to remind you that there are some reports of stock builds getting padburned and any number of non-extreme everyday OCd builds going up in proverbial flames due to padburn. And yet you continue to claim that none of it ever happened just because you have an OCd P55 rig that hasn't expired. Yet.

Price/Performance the P55 with an i5 750 is king of the hill atm

Not really. They're stuck in an unenviable position between a smooth sliding scale of AMD CPUs on one hand and i7 supercomputers on the other. i7 is certainly worth it if you actually need massive 8-thread processing grunt but when you don't the i5-750 doesn't give a gargantuan quantum leap in power over the Phenom2s. Yes, its better. No, its not terrible value. But few people need the extra power over a P2 quad to justify the big jump in platform price. P55 is a bit cheaper than X58 but DDR3 is still pricey enough and the P55 mobos are still too overpriced, and the i5 is also slightly overpriced in comparison to both equivalent P2s and the outgoing Q9x50s. Yes, Turbo Mode is nice. Yes, it OCs a bit further than even C3 Phenoms. But most of AMD's competing CPUs allow you to OC practically at the touch of a button, while OCing anything on LGA1156 is literally hardware Russian Roulette. Don't try to lay down the law just because you haven't taken your own head off. Yet.