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Thread ID: 134916 2013-09-02 11:31:00 upgrade time tweak'e (69) Press F1
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1352520 2013-09-02 11:31:00 hi all, its been a while.
i'm horribly out of date, can someone give me a quick run down of current pc specs? whats best?

my vid card overheated and died, and being AGP (yes its that old!) it time for an upgrade.
btw i've dragged out my old GF3 orginal which i had in my early days here. got it fired up and running at the mo. a classic :)

looking for mobo, cpu, ssd drive, psu, ram, vid. have plenty of hard drives tho new dvd may be in order as its pata.
only playing older games and more interested in video. old vid card had issues with HD video.
tweak'e (69)
1352521 2013-09-02 20:52:00 Whats the budget? Dont think you can get socket 775 now. So, it's either AMD, socket 1150, or socket 1155 Speedy Gonzales (78)
1352522 2013-09-02 21:00:00 A good mid specced PC for general purpose & gaming would be;

i5 - any desktop version
8 Gb of RAM (16 if you think it worthwhile)
650 ti Boost (or whatever the AMD equivalent currently is)
120 Gb or bigger SSD - I like the samsung/cucial/ intel ones

Stick with the better brands for reliability - asus/ gigabyte/ asrock/ evga
and use a quality PSU - corsair, antec, silverstone, seasonic, etc - about 500W would be fine for that hardware, go to 650 if you want some headroom.

If you have money left to spend go for a better graphics card first for gaming or a higher model CPU for everything else. A GTX 760 is all the graphics card any single monitor gamer would currently need so somewhere between the 650 ti boost and that is the area to aim for. I wouldn't go any lower for that the 650 Ti personally.
dugimodo (138)
1352523 2013-09-03 06:16:00 Whats the budget? Dont think you can get socket 775 now. So, it's either AMD, socket 1150, or socket 1155
probably looking around $1000 or so.
whats the current onboard graphics like these days?

i've always had AMD, maybe a time for a change ;)
tweak'e (69)
1352524 2013-09-03 06:23:00 Go intel - The onboard graphics these days are far superior to what they used to be - in fact unless you do higher powered graphic work or serious gaming the onboard will be fine.

You can always add in a graphic card at a later date if its required for more serious work.

The latest intel 1150 will be far better than AMD's.
wainuitech (129)
1352525 2013-09-03 09:17:00 Entry-level, Intel and AMD CPUs are much of a muchness, but once you're looking at an i5 or above, AMD can't keep pace. However, AMDs integrated graphics are lightyears ahead of Intels, so it depends what suits your needs. Something like an AMD A10-6800K will smash the pants of something like an i3-4130/4330 in any GPU intensive situation (assuming using integrated GPU in both cases). But if it's CPU performance you need (or you expect to go to a discrete GPU soonish), Intel, no question. inphinity (7274)
1352526 2013-09-03 09:35:00 i forgot about good old windows?
whats best go straight for win8 ? pro?

very roughly what i'm looking at ....

Asus Z87-Plus Motherboard, Socket 1150, Intel Z87, 4xDDR3, 3xPCIe-16, 2xPCIe-1, VGA, DVI, HDMI, RAID, ATX
Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4 GHz, Socket 1150, Haswell
Intel 520 Series Solid State Drive, 120GB, SATA 6 Gb/s, 2.5", MLC, 25nm
Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX, 2x4GB, DDR3-1600, PC3-12800, CL9, DIMM
Enermax Tomahawk II ENP500AST, 500W ATX PSU, Black
Microsoft Windows 8, for 64-bit systems, OEM

anything not compatible ?
tweak'e (69)
1352527 2013-09-03 10:37:00 Re windows 8 Version -- you dont really need Pro for a home user. You can compare editions here (en.wikipedia.org) or a more simplified version/list here (windows.microsoft.com) ( it lists upgrades but the full versions are the same)

The parts you listed would make make windows 8 run very nicely :).

If you want an example, I got several PC's I'm building at the moment, all the same.

They have gigabyte boards ( GA-B85M-D3H), with i5 4430 (3.0Ghz) cpu, 8 GB RAM, standard HDD 1TB's ( SSD will be faster) Same Power Supply you listed.

They have a rating of 5.9 ( see Picture below) the HDD is the Bottle neck other wise its over all rating would be higher.

5167

These computers start - from the time of pressing the "on" button to a workable Windows 8 start page 13 seconds (just timed two of them both the same) Thats running Nod32 as the AV.
wainuitech (129)
1352528 2013-09-03 10:50:00 Looks good, you're probably aware the "K" CPU's are for overclocking so only get it if that's something you want otherwise it's a waste. dugimodo (138)
1352529 2013-09-03 10:56:00 whats the S version cpu? low wattage and slower clock speed, is that a mobile version? tweak'e (69)
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