£200 budget for upgrades.

[jarthur36]

Hey,
First a little background. I am 15, in the UK and my parents have been divorced since i can remember. I am also a PC gaming enthusiast - Seeming as though I can't carry a gaming PC between their houses every day (even though it is only 100 meters) - It can get rather expensive rather quickly.
My first rig(At my dads) is actually pretty good - http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=58240
My second rig(At mums) is in dire need of some Maintenance and with Christmas and my birthday(6th of jan) coming up, this seems like a great opportunity.

The current rig ( And Problems ):
Case: Zalman Z11 - Tacky and falling apart (Front panel wont stay on)
CPU: Intel Core i3 2120 @ 3.3Ghz - Needs more cores for next-gen games
Cooler: Akasa - as-good-as-stock heatsink - Loud and bad
MOBO: Asus P8Z77-V LX - Broken Ethernet port - Using bad wifi card instead
GPU: Sapphire HD 7770 GHZ Edition - Starting to lag behind with next gen games
RAM: 4GB of OEM RAM 1333 mhz - Next gen games use more than this
PSU: Powercool 750W - Apparently bad and inconsistant - hasn't blown up yet. - No support for crossfire
Storage: 1TB Seagate Barracuda(7200rpm) - Starting to get clogged up. VERY SLOW BOOT

Other Plans
I am currently liking the sound of litecoin mining. If (When) this rig gets upgraded piece by piece I will probably take the old pieces and use them as a litecoin-miner/steambox/Home Server (DualBooting xubunto and SteamOS)
If I can't sell them and buy something cheaper - that is.
I am currently using my good PC to mine at a poor 170kh/s when I am there (My dad is quite conscious of power use) and I can get simular hashrates with my 7770 (Which I can run 24/7 if It doesn't keep crashing) but as you may know, lots and lots of AMD GPUs is the best way to do it.

What do you think would be best to try to get? I will probably have a large amount of money/amazon vouchers to spend afterwards so afterthoughts are welcome too. Also I currently have £90 That i can spend on top of this £200 budget.
Thank you

 

[Cru]

well a CPU and GPU upgrade is kinda hard to fit in that budged, you might want to save some more to upgrade those to something decent
other suggestions:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£23.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£59.49 @ Amazon UK)
Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CT 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter (£26.68 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£69.65 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£55.62 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £295.41
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-08 21:02 GMT+0000)

 

[jarthur36]

Wow, thanks. That's A nice extensive list. Other suggestion are still welcome.
Ebuyer have a nice deal on the white define R4... Would that be a good deal as it would allow me to run this overnight next to me without me thinking I'm in a wind tunnel or something?

 

[NeverBackDown]

to be fair the i3 cpu is not all that bad. Sure it is not the fastest but in all honestly it can still keep up. Would be the last thing i would upgrade in that list since you will get more for the money as well as more performance.

edit: Arc R2 is better than a R4 in looks and interal design. I have a R4 with a window and sound dampening only helps in the front/top of the case where the foam is actually thick enough to dampen the noise.

 

[jarthur36]

Yep, I don't think the Processor is too much of a problem. So far I have formulated this list: Define R4 White (£75 - Ebuyer) , Corsair 8GB Ram 1600Mhz (£60 - Ebuyer) , Cheap Ethernet Card(£6 - Ebuyer) , Sandisk 128GB SSD (£55 amazon) TOTAL = £196 . Any opinions?

 

[NeverBackDown]

On the case between the R4/Arc R2 i would get the cheaper of the two.

Ram i would find a decent brand with a good warrenty and then cheapest price since all are nearly the exact same. Sansisk are ok. Though for the price you can get it at it is a steal.

 

[jarthur36]

Thanks. The Arc Midi and the Define are both the exact same price So I'l go with the Define as I prefer it's clean design. The SSD I thought was a pretty good price although I wouldn't chose it for my better system(Think i might go with a corsair Force for that one). This RAM Looks really FAST for just a little more than the corsair one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/G-Skill-Rip...&qid=1386540049&sr=1-1&keywords=8GB+DDR3+2133 . Is it any good?


EDIT: Actually. Scrap that. It is actualyl cheaper and the Define doesn't have a side panel. So i really couldn't care less about colour co-ordination.

 

[d3rrial]

I don't know any upgrades to recommend, but I would recommend staying away from Litecoin mining unless you have 7950s or R9 290s. Even those are becoming rather unprofitable, because difficulty is exploding like crazy right now and the price is going down like stupid.

There was some quite good hardware advice tho.

Regards

 

[jarthur36]

I don't know any upgrades to recommend, but I would recommend staying away from Litecoin mining unless you have 7950s or R9 290s. Even those are becoming rather unprofitable, because difficulty is exploding like crazy right now and the price is going down like stupid.

There was some quite good hardware advice tho.

Regards

Thanks, I'm not really investing too much into it. I have 0.2LTC right now And seeming as though I am going to be upgrading my GPU soon anyway to whatever i can afford - I thought I might as well keep the old one in there and use that to permanently mine when I'm using the PC(Which is the majority of the day). I will probably get either another GTX760(Which I know is bad for LTC mining) or a 280/280x which would be extremely good for mining. I personally think it is going to be atleast another 3 months or so before the price starts to recover and when they do I want to have atleast some potential to mine them.

 

[NeverBackDown]

280x is faster than a 760 so for all around purposes i would go with that.

 

[remember300]

When it comes to mining the more people that do it, unless you jump on a team will take ages to get anything out of it. And the power used well that would way exceed what you will of generated from money, i tried a dummy run over a week and got hardly anything, i dont pay the bills as its all included and my rig is nice and quiet even at full load.

why dont you go for a lan style case, like the c70 and take it back and forward, reinforce your gpus so they dont shift and then pool all your funds into one large cash pot.

But you are right in saying AMD are good with the hash rates

 

[jarthur36]

When it comes to mining the more people that do it, unless you jump on a team will take ages to get anything out of it. And the power used well that would way exceed what you will of generated from money, i tried a dummy run over a week and got hardly anything, i dont pay the bills as its all included and my rig is nice and quiet even at full load.

why dont you go for a lan style case, like the c70 and take it back and forward, reinforce your gpus so they dont shift and then pool all your funds into one large cash pot.

But you are right in saying AMD are good with the hash rates

Sorry for sort of resurrecting this thread but I think there is some good advice there.

I love the C70 and that scenario would be ideal but there are a couple of points to consider:

1. As Im sure you can guess my dad and my mum don't get on very well. It may be extremely difficult/impossible to persuade him to spend money on something that will be at mums 50% of the time. He payed the full £750 for my PC there and wouldn't be happy if I start ripping out components for a different PC.
2. There is a good possibility that I may already be getting a Define R4 for christmas which is unfortunate as I think I will stay away from litecoin mining properly and may just do it lightly while I am using it to get a tiny bit of cash on the side. With that then it will seem a bit of a waste if I then go buy another case.
3. I am probably going to buy another 760, If I dont get the Define R4 then that is because I previously asked for a HD7850 1GB which won't actually be very good for gaming. If this ends up being the case (No pun intended) then I will put that in my Good PC and use both of the 760s in SLI in a C70 or something similar. That way I will have abilities to play games on low and browse the internet at both houses if I for some reason forget my PC but will still allow me to pool all my funds into a central pot for the good stuff. I would then probably do some kind of modding to allow me to easily carry it like attaching a satchel strap or something and ofcourse make it look cool. I will have to buy a new MOBO and Processor but I will have RAM, Effectivly a 760 MARS, SSD, HDD, a portable case and somehow a keyboard and mouse.
4. I have 2 and a half years left in this situation before I (Hopefully) go off to uni. If I am still into computers(Which I certainly Hope I am) then I will need something to take with me. A LAN build like this would be ideal so maybe I can slowly build it up over the next couple of years so I can do this. It would also be extremely handy if I want to go to a freind's.
   
   I'm sorry if this is unreadably badly written but I hope you get the gist.