need help/suggestions for computer upgrade

[pi27]

Hi, my comp is kind of outdated now and i was looking to upgrade it with these following parts. My budget is £500 which includes a copy of windows 7 home premium.

my power supply unit is 400w btw

i was thinking of these parts below all purchasable from scan.co.uk

an ati 5670 graphix card

3gb of corsair ddr3 memory purchased as 3x 1gb sticks

an intel i5 760 quad core processor

an asus p7h57d-v evo intel h57 express 1156 motherboard

the motherboard has been the biggest problem for me as i have alot of requirements from it. the motherboard must have some usb 3.0 slots, an hdmi port, and 2 pcie 2.0 x16 slots which will be able to run crossfire (sli if graphix card is changed to nvidia).

i also have another question as while i was researching the motherboard i discovered that if it were to run 2 graphix cards at crossfire both the pcie 2.0 x16 slots would be running only at x8 capacity, how much would this effect the performance of 2 cards running at crossfire and would it be worth paying more for a motherboard which can run both cards at x16 capacity?

i know this is quite a long post but would very much appreciate any feeback from you guys.

 

[AMDFTW]

you will need a new PSU tho so look at some around 650w but mainly corsair

not all mobos run them at 16/8 some do run full 16/16.

your at £180 with the PSU and windows,to be honest i dont think you will get USB3 and the likes for your budget

Asus P7P55D PRO

Intel i5 760

650W Corsair

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

it is difficult with your budget,this leaves you with £60

 

[pi27]

ahh, i was hoping that my psu would be able to cater for what i want, in that case take the price of a new psu out of the equation

without the cost of the psu i can buy what i posted before with windows 7 for like £495.

since my budget is quite low i would just say do you think it is worth it for me to purchase a motherboard with the features i listed above but pay abit more for the 16/16 privelage

 

[AMDFTW]

if you need the features that you listed then go for it,if not then dont.

if you can afford to pay a lil extra i would look at the 5770 first over your chosen GPU,16/16 is all good if you look for performance,8/16 mate you wont see the diff

 

[tinytomlogan]

if you need the features that you listed then go for it,if not then dont.

if you can afford to pay a lil extra i would look at the 5770 first over your chosen GPU,16/16 is all good if you look for performance,8/16 mate you wont see the diff

1x16

2x8

(extra gpu lanes dont appear for 16 and 8)

 

[pi27]

i need the features that i already stated about the motherboard but was simply unsure about the whole 16/16 vs 8/8 thing, you have cleared that up for me and a few bing searches have confirmed this so thanks

i have looked into the 5770 but decided that at this moment in time that card is out of my price range plus if i need to down the line i can just buy another 5670 when they're even cheaper and run crossfire.

from your comments it seems as though these parts are the best i can get without extending my budget, my whole idea was to get a decent motherboard to use as a platform for a few more years so when i need to upgrade the next time i wont have to buy a new motherboard then like what i am doing right now, do you see what i mean?

the current card i have in my computer is an old radeon x1300, should i even bother running crossfire with this and a 5670?

edit: just searched for power supply units on scan.co.uk and am left slightly baffled, the corsair 650watt psu is £72 while the 650watt ezcool psu is only £28. could you please explain the difference in these.

 

[AMDFTW]

loooool please dont get a EZCOOL PSU they are awful very awful they have crap amps,they not reliable and the build is crap they are not good at all,i would not give my worst enemy one.

the PSU is all about reliability and amps and efficiancy,corsair,enermax to name a few make awsome PSU's

i dont no aboou xfire but i dont think they will be good together.

if it helps whenever i upgrade i spend the most on CPU,MOBO and if i need one a PSU

 

[Diablo]

The EZ cool will not (I repeat NOT) support 650w. Attempting to run it at that for more than 1s (literally), will cause it to fail and probably take out anything else connected to it. Budget PSUs are not a good economy.

 

[pi27]

wow, strong warnings against the ezcool which pretty much makes up my mind about the more expensive corsair.

AMDFTW i see what you mean about spending the most on a cpu and motherboard as those are the parts that in theory should last the longest before needing an upgrade. This is why i chose a quad core i5 over an i3 even though it was near double the price and my budget was relatively small.

i was thinking maybe about searching for a mobo that hasn't got an hdmi port but can run crossfire at 16/16, i dunno about this but i'll see what happens.

thank you btw your comments are much appreciated

also do you think for the money i plan on spending i am getting the best possible parts?

 

[Diablo]

If you have a dedicated GPU, you won't need an HDMI port on the motherboard. As the GPU has DVI out, you can easily buy an adapter for about £5. The 16 16 is really unecessary given your budget. A decent 8/8 will see you fine, and maybe give you enough for a 5770 or 460GTX, both of which are far superior to the 5670.

I would also go for 4GB of 2GB x 2 sticks of RAM, as that will give you dual channel and much better upgradeability. You are only looking at about £80 for the RAM and 3 sticks will limit overclocking.

 

[pi27]

your right diablo, i'm starting to realised that i will have to spend alot more than i had planned. my whole idea was to buy parts for future upgradability but whilst searching for mobo's again i saw the x58s which can only take the high end i7 cpus, and since the mobo i found has the 1156 socket wont that mean that i wont be able to upgrade my cpu without a newer mobo in the future?

right now my planned build racks up at around £570 including the psu and windows 7, ram was the hardest thing to find as it is quite expensive, i think if i wanted 2x 2gb sticks it would cost me another 50 or so quid.

if i did buy all these parts i would expect them to last over 5 years without the need for an upgrade apart from the gpu

if i decided to spend alot more and get 4 gb ram, i7 cpu and a 5770 i think that would make my build close to £700 or so but do you think that would be worth it? and how long do you think those parts would last me before needing an upgrade as i may be able to spend quite a bit more if the performance boost was quite drastic and the parts last me alot more, like 7 or 8 years

 

[AMDFTW]

i think the new intel socket is out in 1-2 years but most gamers keep there parts for around 1-2 years anyway.

i think there will be a bottleneck with a i7 930 and a 5770 but i dont no,and you would need 6gb of RAM if you was going the i7 route

 

[Diablo]

The problemwith an X58 is that you will need triple channel RAM, and coupled with the more expensive CPU (£200+), board (£150+) and RAM (£140+), its not going to be worth it. The X58 is the performance king, whereas P55/57 is mainstream. The two sockets are probably going to be phased out in a year or two, but they are both current technology so 1156 will be fine.

Nothing will last 7-8 years though, and even 5 is a stretch.

Titan Fenrir £30

i5 760 £155

5770 £105

Corsair Dom 1600c9 £80

P7P55D (16/8) £110

650W Corsair £90

Home Premium £75

£650

The problem is that 3GB will limit your upgrade path and performance. Again a 5670 will not run games particularly well.

 

[AMDFTW]

you could get the i5 750 that will knock a tenner off

other than that,diablo's parts seem about the best you can get for your budget fella

 

[Diablo]

If you were really wanting to save money, an i3 overclocked to 4GHz wouldn't be too bad.

 

[AMDFTW]

some of the overclcoked bundles from SCAN have them at 4.4ghz on air lol

 

[pi27]

can i clarify something with you guys, when i was searching the 5770 i saw that it had an hdmi port, does that mean i can get that gpu and then save money on a mobo that hasn't got an hdmi port on its own? if so i will definately be getting a 5770

and you lot are right about the ram, it will only cost me £20 more more 2x 2gb corsair rather than 3x 1 gb sticks plus i get the benefit of having it as dual channel.

i think i have now found a good build now, cheers diablo

cpu: i5 760

gpu: 5770

ram: 2x 2gb dominater corsair memory

psu: corsair tx 650 watt

mobo: i looked at the p7p55d pro but it had no usb 3 ports i was thinking about this msi p55a-g55 but it has no dvi or d-sub ports, are they important?

all those with windows 7 will cost £616 assuming the mobo is £100, what do you think about that build?

 

[AMDFTW]

when you install a GPU it makes the onboard graphics redundant unless its hybrid,so you wouldent use the dvi port or vga on the mobo you would use the ports on the gpu

the 5770 is a good card and it can be overclocked high

 

[pi27]

ooooh, thats what hybrid crossfire and sli is thanks. so the connection between a pc moniter and the tower is made by the ports on the gpu, thats good to know. on scan the 5670 i saw was £67 and the 5770 was £112, which reminds me as on scan.co.uk there are two 5770s one is pcie 2.0 and the other is 2.1, the 2.1 one is cheaper by 6 quid but all the mobos i have been looking at only have 2.0 slots, could you please ellaborate on this for me.

when it comes to overclocking i am a complete novice, all i know is that more power is being run through the parts which is why coolers and such are needed. so is there anything i can which won't mean i have to buy coolers and such?

do you think i now have a good build?

 

[Diablo]

There is no difference between 2.1 and 2.0 (no real difference, its a very subtle change, don't worry about it.). You will be best off with the cheapest one, although if you can stretch £15, get a 460 GTX, as they are far more powerful. You don't want a motherboard with a GPU embedded in it, as you are paying for something which is going to be done loads better by the discrete GPU.

In terms of overclocking, I have recommended the titan fernir (there are better coolers out there, but they are more expensive, see OC3D noctua reviews). This should keep the CPU much cooler than the stock heatsink, and will be quieter. The basics of overclocking is that you get a chip to perform more operations per second by altering the base clock speed, this causes more heat as more is occuring per second. However as the clock speed goes up, the time for an on to off (or 0--> 1) operation decreases, thus we often use more voltage. Instead of trying to hit 1.2V and back in one four billionth of a second, we might use 1.35V, which is likely to go higher and be registered, thus creating stability.

Obviously the more voltage you push through a system, the hotter it becomes, thus the reason for upgraded heatsinks and fans.

With GPUs, the overclocking is much easier, ususally done with MSI afterburner (or rivatuner if you are old school), this lets you drag the core clock and memory clock up. There is no guarantee of overclocking and extra votlage can kill components, but the guys on the forum can help with all that. CPU overclocking is generally done in the bios, and on intel boards is done by increasing the BCLK up from 133 onwards.

With regards to USB 3 ports, if you can find a motherboard that offers 16/8 or 8/8 with USB 3 for a similar price go for it, alternatively, you can buy an add in x4 PCIe card for about £25 giving USB3 sockets.

This may be helpful:

P7P55D-E Pro, for £138, USB 3, and 16/16