Doc's annual hankering for PC upgrades

TheDoc

Hi everyone,

You guessed it, it's that time of year again where I come into a few quid from selling off things I don't need and getting a few bob over Christmas and the first place I look is at my PC

I recently only ventured into the market last summer to pickup a new GPU, and feel maybe I undershot a little in terms of quality, focusing too much on the price bracket.

In terms of what I'm after, is general advice thoughts and feedback. I'm currently not playing demanding games for the PC. World of Warcraft, CSGO, Football Manager and Battlefield 4 are the main games I play. But that's not to say something wont come out to tickle my fancy, and I'd like to get smooth FPS and quality in my existing games.

Down to the juicy part, here is my current specs

• CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail
• Cooler : Coolermaster hyper Exo 212 (currently not in use as I'm missing a bracket. Will probably buy a new one, temps running hot at the moment)
• Motherboard : ASUS M5A97 R2.0, AM3+, ATX
• RAM: Crucial 8GB
• GPU : MSI Radeon R9 270x
• SSD: Crucial MX100 128GB. I "thought" I had an OCZ 64GB, but only copped over weekend I RMA'd and bought a different one. I think another Crucial 128GB, so need to figure out for sure.
• HDD: Meh normal sort of 500gb- 1TB storage.

I had plans to overclock the CPU, as I'd read good things about doing it. So there is an option there for me to go get that Evo cooler back on my CPU, or buy a new one, and seemingly get good overclocking speeds.

In terms of budget I've got a comfortable €400, that I could stretch out. Personally don't feel I need to invest big bucks into this machine. It's playing everything I need comfortably, I just want to really push it and get ideally 60FPS smooth in highly ****freaked situations ( battles in BF4, raids in wow)

My gut feeling is to buy a new GPU, and overclock the CPU to see what I can get. My brain is telling me to put the money aside for now that it might be a waste.

In terms of where I'd be comfortable buying, amazon, Overclockers and Scan in that preference. That German Haardvarsand place I'm not dealing with due to a nightmarish and unproffesional RMA motherboard fiasco.

Amazon is the preference as I also landed myself some vouchers over christmas for there.

Thoughts, general chit chat and feedback welcome.

marco_polo

I would think if you do ipgrade now it is probably worth selling the existing GPU, board + CPU add that to the fund and replace the lot in one go. If you replace one or the other in you current machine in isolation I don't think you would see the full benefits of an upgrade.

TheDoc

marco_polo wrote: »

I would think if you do ipgrade now it is probably worth selling the existing GPU, board + CPU add that to the fund and replace the lot in one go. If you replace one or the other in you current machine in isolation I don't think you would see the full benefits of an upgrade.

Was just coming back to this thread to post that.

Reading so much good stuff about the GTX970, but it appears that it might be bottlenecked by my card.

So I might indeed look into selling all three in a bundle, or even seperately to add to my budget and do the full rework.

totally out of touch with CPU's, I assume we are talking Intel i5's here?

marco_polo

Yeah might have to throw in an extra few quid to top up but I'd reckon an i5, GTX 970 and motherboard should be close to doable with 400 and whatever you get for the old parts. No real benefit in getting an i7 and probably out of budget anyway.

TheDoc

marco_polo wrote: »

Yeah might have to throw in an extra few quid to top up but I'd reckon an i5, GTX 970 and motherboard should be close to doable with 400 and whatever you get for the old parts. No real benefit in getting an i7 and probably out of budget anyway.

Ran some quick math and price checking, €695 for motherboard, CPU and GPU. **** that is steep.

CPU
Intel I5 4670k

Motherboard
MSI Motherboard

GPU
MSI GTX 970

Changing out the CPU and motherboard, from what I've read today, should be the priority. If I got €200 for my current bits ( decent value looking at what they sell for now) I'd only be forking out around €100 for what looks to be a nice CPU boost.

Few people mentioned sales coming up shortly as well, that might really turn the screw and make me go in with both feet and buy it all

TheDoc

If possible want to bring down the price...motherboard might be way to do that.

Looking at An AsusZ97 P. A lot of people saying their boards are really good and indicating the A model or Hero as top dogs.

P model more budget and removes some fancy stuff. Could save myself about 50 quid there.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-636-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2811


What are M2 slots BTW? Seeing them mentioned alongside Sata ports.

I run two SSDdrives and at present they go into 6GBs SATA ports if memory serves.

ED E

M.2 is a PCIE based but much smaller slot mainly used for SSDs. M.2 SSDs are handy in laptops where space is a premium but in a desktop they dont make sense as they cost a fair bit more. M.2 is faster than Sata3 6GB but SSDs arent fast enough yet to saturate the SATA interface so theres no performance benefit.

TheDoc

Going to focus on the motherboard and CPU for now.

Might actually get a decent bump immediately from that. I'll hold off on the GPU until I have some time bedding in the new CPU first to see performance, might not warrant it.

But also I just don't want to drop €600 after christmas, thats €200 over budget.

My Christmas bonus comes late in April, and I also have a birthday in March, so if I really still feel I need the 970 I'll get it then.

So come on folks start lashing out the links and suggestions. I feel the CPU is between a 4670k and 4690k. Only difference appears to be about .10GHZ, but about €50 in price difference. Initial reaction is to go with the 4670k and get myself another CM Hyper 212 EVO ( my current one is missing backing plate).

In terms of motherboards, few picked out, but I might have been looking too expensive. There is a couple of boards between MSI, Gigabyte and Asus that go for about €70-€80 that look to do the business.

Few friends were saying some sales should kick off later this week to clear old stock, so hoping to bag myself something in the next week. Was browsing last night and saw scan.co.uk had an offer for motherboard+i5 4670k for less then €300, kinda annoyed I didn't jump on it (waiting on this thing from work to arrive so I can spend it )

EDIT* Ow my, its still there. Its actually the 4690k, price 275.99 pound

Intel Core i5 4690K S1150, Haswell, 4 Core, 3.5GHz, 3.9GHz Turbo, 5 GT/s DMI, 1.2GHz GPU, 34x Ratio, 84W, Retail + MSI Z97 GAMING 5 Intel Z97, S1150, DDR3, PCIe 3.0 (x16), 2 Way SLi / 3 Way CrossFireX, D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI, ATX

halkar

Just sell the processor and get AMD FX8350 Black Edition 8 Core Processor (4.0/4.2GHz, 8MB Level 3 Cache, 8MB Level 2 Cache, Socket AM3+, 125W, Retail Boxed) £126 in amazon. And a new Exo cooler. Rest of your hardware is still good. Later you can up your GPU.

TerrorFirmer

Games these days are severely GPU limited, I would say that there isn't any real need to go for a K cpu. Even an i3-4160 for about €115 would wallop that old Phenom in games.

I5-4460 or similar, decent mobo, GTX970 - about 500.

You could also get a crossfire motherboard and pick up a cheap 2nd 270X, 270X in crossfire is a top performer.

A decent Xfire mobo, i5-4460 (or similar), 2nd hand 270X - about €350 and you will have GTX970 performance.

You should get €100-ish cash-back for that board + 955.

TerrorFirmer

halkar wrote: »

Just sell the processor and get AMD FX8350 Black Edition 8 Core Processor (4.0/4.2GHz, 8MB Level 3 Cache, 8MB Level 2 Cache, Socket AM3+, 125W, Retail Boxed) £126 in amazon. And a new Exo cooler. Rest of your hardware is still good. Later you can up your GPU.

For gaming, AMD's entire FX line is obsolete and has been for ages.

Non-game multi-thread performance is good but gaming performance is sub-par.

TheDoc

halkar wrote: »

Just sell the processor and get AMD FX8350 Black Edition 8 Core Processor (4.0/4.2GHz, 8MB Level 3 Cache, 8MB Level 2 Cache, Socket AM3+, 125W, Retail Boxed) £126 in amazon. And a new Exo cooler. Rest of your hardware is still good. Later you can up your GPU.

From all I'm reading the last 48 hours I'm decided on an intel chipset. All the data suggests while AMD run more cores, the cores run slower.

The games I play really only run two cores optimally, with even fewer running quad core properly. So I'd like to focus in on ensuring the cores I get are running as fast as they can. All the data suggests the intel chipsets are best for this.

@Terror, is there any actual major differences in the K series? There appears to be about €20-25 in the difference between a K model or just standard 4690.

Xfire is something I've never really considered. I've always gone for just a new single GPU rather then running two. I see the card I have (MSI version) is going for €150 which is a good price I guess.

In reality if I focus on CPU and Motherboard now, I know I'll have funds in March and April to buy a 970 if required. I could buy it now, I just don't want to go balls deep immediately. After hearing two friends who ditched AMD for i5's ( they got 4670's) they noticed massive improvements, like massive. They also run the R9 270x's.

So I'm thinking of maybe just going CPI+Motherboard for now, see performance for three months, and see if 970 is warranted?

Don't know why but Xfire/SLI always turns me off. Might be I'm stuck in age old rule of one good GPU beats two average ones"

TheDoc

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Games these days are severely GPU limited, I would say that there isn't any real need to go for a K cpu. Even an i3-4160 for about €115 would wallop that old Phenom in games.

I5-4460 or similar, decent mobo, GTX970 - about 500.

You could also get a crossfire motherboard and pick up a cheap 2nd 270X, 270X in crossfire is a top performer.

A decent Xfire mobo, i5-4460 (or similar), 2nd hand 270X - about €350 and you will have GTX970 performance.

You should get €100-ish cash-back for that board + 955.

Including the money I'd get for my parts, that would keep me perfectly on budget, and ALSO get me a 970 GPU. Interesting proposition there. But I havn't seen prices anywhere to reflect that. The 970's alone are on the €300 mark, with the 4460 you mention retailing at €160. A motherboard most likely going to cost me€60-70.

Motherboards confuse me, there are ones for 150 euro and ones for 50 euro. It's always something I tend to skimp on price with. Once it has all the connections I need and SATA 6GB/s connections I tend to be happy out.

TerrorFirmer

The K denotes overclockable. By no means pointless at all, for example, the 3+ year old i5-2500K can still sit on top with the latest generation when overclocked.

Just depends on what you want really. I never buy K models simply because I change hardware so frequently that I never need to overclock. If you want to have a solid core for 5+ years that you'd rather not change, a K CPU is a good bet.

Also, if it was a question of budget, I'd always sacrifice the CPU in favour of the GPU because it makes the biggest difference in games. As an example, I'm running a PC at the moment with an E8400 Core 2 Duo processor - almost 7 years old - and a GTX750. Alien Isolation is running at 1080p high settings. The entire rest of the PC is worth less than the GTX750 cost (€100). I'm not saying to skimp entirely, but it's a good example of the longevity of processors.

With regards motherboards, it just depends on what features you want. Personally, I also skimp on motherboards - for most people a €50 mAtx board is as good as a €300 board, because they don't know, care or need the difference. More expensive boards have better features, better connectivity, much more options, overclocking ability, better cooling/heatsinks, so on and so forth. You've summed it up perfectly in your sentence though - and I'm also of that mindset.

Price wise I was just ballparking off the top of my head, but as always it pays to shop around!

TheDoc

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

The K denotes overclockable. By no means pointless at all, for example, the 3+ year old i5-2500K can still sit on top with the latest generation when overclocked.

Just depends on what you want really. I never buy K models simply because I change hardware so frequently that I never need to overclock. If you want to have a solid core for 5+ years that you'd rather not change, a K CPU is a good bet.

Also, if it was a question of budget, I'd always sacrifice the CPU in favour of the GPU because it makes the biggest difference in games. As an example, I'm running a PC at the moment with an E8400 Core 2 Duo processor - almost 7 years old - and a GTX750. Alien Isolation is running at 1080p high settings. The entire rest of the PC is worth less than the GTX750 cost (€100). I'm not saying to skimp entirely, but it's a good example of the longevity of processors.

With regards motherboards, it just depends on what features you want. Personally, I also skimp on motherboards - for most people a €50 mAtx board is as good as a €300 board, because they don't know, care or need the difference. More expensive boards have better features, better connectivity, much more options, overclocking ability, better cooling/heatsinks, so on and so forth. You've summed it up perfectly in your sentence though - and I'm also of that mindset.

Price wise I was just ballparking off the top of my head, but as always it pays to shop around!

I've really never bothered overclocking, so see no point in doing it to be fair.

In terms of CPU, I see the 4460 is a really nice price, only €150. Seems a slight step down from the 4670/4690 I was looking at, but then maybe it might make it more feasible to lash a gtx 970 in there all at once.

Time to go looking again, the 4460, a good CPU yeah? All I can tell from the ones I was looking at is like .10ghz in differences, which isn't monstrous really. I think either way I'll be getting a massive increased over my FX

TerrorFirmer

You will see a massive difference over your Phenom. Even a €110 euro i3-4160 would be a big upgrade and would excel in all games - but if you're in for the long haul, might as well get an i5 now. I only chose the 4460 as the 4430 is only literally a couple of euro cheaper, so no point getting that.

TheDoc

This is what I've put in at the moment. Coming to a total of €290. That leaves me with €110 of my budget, €210 if I sell my parts ( although I was confident of bagging €200 for the GPU,CPU and mobo I own) which would put me to €310 left to spend and would cover the cost of a GTX970.




Unsure if I should put the extra few quid to move from the 4460 to the 4670/4690. Either or I have a good gauge of what I want to do. Just need these rumoured sales to start so that I can start purchasing. Think I'm settled on that motherboard, good reviews and seemingly will do the trick lovely. Not going to break the bank either. (Granted if someone could find cheaper, by all means let me know)

marco_polo

Lopks grand if you decide not to go with a non-K version cpu, you could probably throw in a slightly cheaper H97/B85 motherboard or something like that. You really don't need anything fancy at all with a single gpu and no overclocking, all you need to check is that it has all the sata/usb ports you will ever need etc.

Monotype

What about getting a G3258? Overclockable pentium.

You could invest in a good graphics card, motherboard and cooling. When the time comes, you can throw in a broadwell CPU.

TheDoc

Monotype wrote: »

What about getting a G3258? Overclockable pentium.

You could invest in a good graphics card, motherboard and cooling. When the time comes, you can throw in a broadwell CPU.

I'm not going to be overclocking, always say I will but never get arsed.

Also got an offer potentially for a 4690, for €165, which sounds like a good deal considering thats about what I was going to pay for a 4460

levitronix

marco_polo wrote: »

Lopks grand if you decide not to go with a non-K version cpu, you could probably throw in a slightly cheaper H97/B85 motherboard or something like that. You really don't need anything fancy at all with a single gpu and no overclocking, all you need to check is that it has all the sata/usb ports you will ever need etc.

I think the h97 has an over clock feature, might not as detailed as z97 but on Intels website on the spec it doesn't say overclocking is not supported, might depend on the motherboard manufacturer if they have a function in the bios,

TheDoc

Yeah, I don't think I'll be going near overclocking.

So I've become somewhat firm on parts.

Grabbing myself an i5 4690

The following motherboard

A reliable CM Hyper 212 EVO ( to replace my existing one that I lost a part for)

And if the time comes, a Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX970

Will let everyone know how it goes, might as well share some pics too

Thanks for the help everyone

Gumbi

TheDoc wrote: »

Yeah, I don't think I'll be going near overclocking.

So I've become somewhat firm on parts.

Grabbing myself an i5 4690

The following motherboard

A reliable CM Hyper 212 EVO ( to replace my existing one that I lost a part for)

And if the time comes, a Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX970

Will let everyone know how it goes, might as well share some pics too

Thanks for the help everyone

You're gaming experience will now be top notch for the next few years. Great upgrade choice. And that 970 is one of the best too

TheDoc

Gumbi wrote: »

You're gaming experience will now be top notch for the next few years. Great upgrade choice. And that 970 is one of the best too

Yeah was doing a lot of reading about the GPU. It's taking all my strength to not buy that card now, turns out the funds are there for it.

But I just want to witness the CPU upgrade on its own for a while, but I'd imagine that GPU is going to get lobbed in around March

TheDoc

Bit bored in work and through a thread up on overclockers.co.uk, just to get some input and mostly because I'm very bored in work.

All the posts telling me to ignore getting an i5 and go get an AMD upgrade.

Fully wish I didn't post there haha

Monotype

If you were on a tight budget, then yeah. Processing power isn't the top priority for games. But if you can afford a nice Intel quad core that'll last you a long time, then why not.

TheDoc

Well all parts ordered, now just waiting.

Intel i5 4690s CPU (guy on here doing a good price, couldn't say no)
MSI B85-G41-PCMate motherboard
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO ( had one previously, love them)


€175 under budget. Hopefully €100 coming from selling my own CPU and Motherboard. So funds available for a GTX970...somehow don't think I'm making it to March

Gumbi

TheDoc wrote: »

Well all parts ordered, now just waiting.

Intel i5 4690s CPU (guy on here doing a good price, couldn't say no)
MSI B85-G41-PCMate motherboard
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO ( had one previously, love them)


€175 under budget. Hopefully €100 coming from selling my own CPU and Motherboard. So funds available for a GTX970...somehow don't think I'm making it to March

Sweet. You might be able to do some bin overclocking on that B85 board too, which will get you to ~4ghz across all 4 cores which is a sweet boost. Look into it! Some B85 boards have that feature.

TheDoc

Gumbi wrote: »

Sweet. You might be able to do some bin overclocking on that B85 board too, which will get you to ~4ghz across all 4 cores which is a sweet boost. Look into it! Some B85 boards have that feature.

As much as I say I'll overclock, to be frank I never bother my hole

Gumbi

TheDoc wrote: »

As much as I say I'll overclock, to be frank I never bother my hole

Eh, don't matter too much, although in some games the gains are noticeable!

TheDoc

Well all put together and go to fire up and monitor gets "no signal found". Tried using both GPU and onboard graphics.

Exact problem I had last year that resulted in a motherboard RMA.

I simply cannot put in words the frustration and anger right now. That after all that work I need to take put the PC back the way it was...and then ****ing wait a week or two for a RMA.

Could actually **** the computer out the window.

Monotype

Did you try taking the card out and then using the onboard connector? I wouldn't give up just yet. Try resetting the CMOS.

TheDoc

Monotype wrote: »

Did you try taking the card out and then using the onboard connector? I wouldn't give up just yet. Try resetting the CMOS.

Yup. Tried onboard.
Tried different cables.
Tried clearing CMOS
With RAM without RAm.

The works.

Just gonna rebuild back to old tomorrow and RMA board. Literally couldn't be arsed after the last 3 1/2 hrs. Could not be arsed...

Conriocht

MSI board? What was it last year as a matter of interest?

TheDoc

Conriocht wrote: »

MSI board? What was it last year as a matter of interest?

Yeah this is an MSI board.

Think last time was As rock

Conriocht

That sucks.

TheDoc

Conriocht wrote: »

That sucks.

Yup. Amazon back already and have dispatched replacment. So I guess they again next week.

Its really frustrating. For as long as I can remember when I upgrade parts in my PC something horrid goes wrong. Be it dead motherboards, etc

Gumbi

TheDoc wrote: »

Yup. Amazon back already and have dispatched replacment. So I guess they again next week.

Its really frustrating. For as long as I can remember when I upgrade parts in my PC something horrid goes wrong. Be it dead motherboards, etc

Hopefully the RMA works out. I killed my AsRock board as it happens. Wouldn't post when I rebuilt PC and then it completely died. hwvs ****ed up thr initial RMA and returned it, I was too lazy to try again.

This is where Amazon comes in handy, no issues at all and in all likelihood you'll be rolling again by next week.

Redfox25

Gumbi wrote: »

Hopefully the RMA works out. I killed my AsRock board as it happens. Wouldn't post when I rebuilt PC and then it completely died. hwvs ****ed up thr initial RMA and returned it, I was too lazy to try again.

This is where Amazon comes in handy, no issues at all and in all likelihood you'll be rolling again by next week.

They did the exact same thing to me with a motherboard too. Lazy shower. Amazon have a much better returns policy.

TheDoc

Just for a final update.

So my RMA board from Amazon arrived yesterday. Not bad considering I filed the RMA at midnight Friday. Quickly was able to put everything in and it worked flawlessly on boot. So it was indeed a faulty motherboard.

Did take sometime for all the drivers etc to get settled. MSI have a live update tool that was actually pretty handy and did everything automatically.

So once done fired up WoW. Now normally in my Garrison( an idle segment of WoW) I'd at best get 60fps. First of noticed the game loaded substantially faster, I then say FPS at 60, then quickly skyrocket to in excess of 170.

Thought it was an error, but nope, consistently above 170. Incredible. You can cap FPS in the settings, so I set a cap to 100FPS and it didn't budge,. Absolutely delighted. Tonights raid will be the big test but running some dungeons etc., the FPS just didn't move.

That alone is a massive improvement and makes this worthwhile alone. I gave Battlefield and some other games a spin out, and there was massive, noticable upgrades. Really impressed. Really happy.

I've decided to can the GTX970 upgrade, as for €400 I don't feel it's a sensible investment. I am however toying with the idea of grabbing a second R9 270x and running crossfire. Although considering every time I open my PC something breaks I'm trying to convince myself to not buy anything else, ever again

game4it70

TheDoc wrote: »

Just for a final update.

So my RMA board from Amazon arrived yesterday. Not bad considering I filed the RMA at midnight Friday. Quickly was able to put everything in and it worked flawlessly on boot. So it was indeed a faulty motherboard.

Did take sometime for all the drivers etc to get settled. MSI have a live update tool that was actually pretty handy and did everything automatically.

Amazon's rma really is brilliant.

Be careful using "msi live update" that you don't update the mobo bios with it without noticing.Its dangerous using that tool as it fails a lot when flashing and you risk borking the board.