The Adventures of Do I Need This

19543261

What I have:
Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.67GHz
4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 659MHz
Radeon HD 4870 512MB
Some expensive ass 750w PSU

I tend not game much on the PC (not a Steam monkey), but I've been dragged into playing ArcheAge by a friend. I need an SSD.

Samsung 120GB 840 EVO Series SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive

Wait, I suppose I'll need a new graphics card, too.

HIS 7850 IceQ Turbo 2GB GDDR5, seems good enough.

Oh. Right. My PSU is faulty. Forgot about that.

XFX 550W Core Edition 80+ Bronze PSU

And then I realised I have no backup for my HDD contents. What if I wake up one morning and lose my precious 0's and 1's, right?...

D-Link ShareCenter Pulse DNS-320 2-bay Network Storage Enclosure
WD 2TB Green SATA 6GB/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive x 2

And so out of nowhere I'm spending almost €400 euro. The above two items could be exchanged for a cheap 2tb external, and just hope it doesnt go belly up without letting me know first. But then, no handy NAS. The PSU may be a total waste of money, as I'm not even certain the power supply is responsible for the 229 random restarts since october last year. And the GPU, well, I know if I didnt get some of the above I could get one significantly better.

So I need some reasonable person to decide for me what to buy. I'll admit at this point I've forgotten about ArcheAge completely. I just want to buy things.

Is there anything here which stands out as particularly stupid to you?

TerrorFirmer

If you want to play games, that 1st gen i7 isn't ideal, but, if you're a casual gamer, it's passable. Could do with some overclocking. I wouldn't be in a rush to replace that as much as I would the 4870, which is extremely dated and a dragging down your system.

Upping the ram to 8GB is another good idea.

Solid SSD choice (excuse the pun).

Forget the 7850, it's a good card and at the right price 2nd hand, it's a good buy. But in terms of buying new, it's best equivalent is the GTX750ti, just as fast, but uses far less power.

A decent 400w PSU will be fine for you, check out the CX430, or the EVGA 500b, both around the 40 euro mark. They will serve you fine.

As for NAS - I'm not your guy, sorry! :P

Bottom line, for newer games - GTX750Ti @ circa 130 is a must buy.

8GB ram optional but would be beneficial.

Stick with that i7 for now but overclock that sucker for all its worth.

19543261

Thanks for the reply Terror, much appreciated.

Have another look there, my fortune is less than you say. An i5 :P As I havent really a clue what I'm doing I didnt dare overclocking it on this dodgy psu. Or if it turned out to be the cpu itself. Mysterious. Also, the heatsink is whatever crappy one came with it-- would that suffice?

I've found that card second hand, if I haggle right I could get it for 100 or less I reckon. On the suggestion of someone on Reddit I'm considering leaving aside my NAS dream (using cloud storage temp) and splashing more out for a better card, GTX 760/Radeon 285.

designbydan

great, now you have me wanting to buy that NAS.

My gf will thank you with a pillow case full of soap bars when she's see's the UPS guy at the door with another pc related buy.

Serephucus

Have a look at Crucial's MX100. Slightly larger capacity, and cheaper.

19543261

A little bigger than what I need, I think, but thanks for the suggestion. : )

designbydan wrote: »

great, now you have me wanting to buy that NAS.

My gf will thank you with a pillow case full of soap bars when she's see's the UPS guy at the door with another pc related buy.

I've already dug a moat and barricaded myself in. Dont worry, she'll come around when she can access all those legally acquired digital movies you'll be storing on them.

Serephucus

It's 128GB for less than 120GB?

19543261

Ah, I was looking at the wrong model. The Crucial is 550 MBps (read) / 150 MBps (write) while the Evo is 540/410.

Serephucus

Sequential read/write speeds don't mean much to be honest. My SSD (840 Evo) was suffering from the write bug for ages (between 50-100MB/s read speeds) and I never noticed.

BloodBath

99% of your SSD work will be reads anyway. Who care's if the writes are slower?

The writes on that drive aren't that slow anyway. It's about 180mb/s on the 128gb and 300+ on the 256.

19543261

I think the difference in spec is worth 5 euro, but thanks for the suggestions.