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Midrange Media & Gaming upgrade advice

Mi66iNS

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Jun 12, 2011
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Hello all,

I am looking to upgrade my existing PC for media sharing and midrange gaming.

Current rig:
OCX 400 Watts PSU
ASUSTEK A8N-SLI DELUXE
AMD Athlon 64 FX Dual Core 2.60 gigahertz
2 x 1GB OCX DDR PC3200
2x Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 250-GB
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

I guess I can reuse the HD but think the rest is for ebay or somewhere else! The graphics card outputs to an Audio Authority HD AV Distribution sytem (AVAtrix HD Cat 5 Matrix 6x6) over component, so will need to keep that in mind for any recommendation on graphics cards.

What else can I tell you?
 

Mi66iNS

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Maybe a budget would be a good idea!! Looking around £500, if possible.

Thanks all.

M
 
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Processor AMD Ryzen 5 7600
Motherboard Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX
Cooling Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE
Memory Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-5600 16GBx2
Video Card(s) Gigabyte Gaming OC AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT 16GB
Storage TEAMGROUP T-Force Z440 2TB, SPower A60 2TB, SPower A55 2TB, Seagate 4TBx2, Samsung 870 2TB
Display(s) AOC 24G2 + Xitrix WFP-2415
Case Montech Air X
Audio Device(s) Realtek onboard
Power Supply Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 FM 750W 80+ Gold
Mouse Logitech G304
Keyboard Redragon K557 KAIA RGB Mechanical Keyboard
Software Windows 10
PSU: 600W Corsair CX600V2 - £51
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3 (B3) - £79
CPU: Core i5 2500k - £161
RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-10666 (1333) CAS 8-8-8-24, 1.65V - £35
GPU: 1GB Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti OC - £174
TOTAL: £500
 

Benetanegia

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Reaching your left retina.
Pretty solid build. I'd just recommend a non Ti 560 over the Ti since they are not a lot slower and you can save up quite a bit. Well I don't know about prices in the UK but here it is a lot cheaper much more bang for buck.

Gigabyte 560 OC 157.90 €

Gigabyte 560 Ti OC 222.90 €

After taking look at OCUK and I see price difference is similar. Like I said I strongly recommend saving up the difference for a future upgrade, in around 18 months. It's much better to have a card that is 10% slower now (saving 30-50) now and being able to upgrade sooner and to a better card in the future*. Just make sure you don't spend the upgrade money, keep it! :laugh:

* Now we are mostly getting console ports, hopefully in a year or 2 we will get much better PC games, for which you'll want a new and better graphics card.
 

Mi66iNS

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Jun 12, 2011
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PSU: 600W Corsair CX600V2 - £51
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3 (B3) - £79
CPU: Core i5 2500k - £161
RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-10666 (1333) CAS 8-8-8-24, 1.65V - £35
GPU: 1GB Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti OC - £174
TOTAL: £500

Thanks, the spec looks damn good for the price, and allows for some upgrade in the future by the look of it. I am based in Germany and can’t find the Mobo readily so though I would do some comparisons with other Gigabyte offers.

I came across this one; GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD which although raising the cost significantly offers some interesting ideas in terms of onboard SSD to speed up the R/W. Any thoughts if this would be beneficial?

I also have an OCZ 90GB SSD which I might consider using for the system drive, its used elsewhere at the moment but might make a more interesting addition to this.

Rgds M
 

Fourstaff

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System Name Orange! // ItchyHands
Processor 3570K // 10400F
Motherboard ASRock z77 Extreme4 // TUF Gaming B460M-Plus
Cooling Stock // Stock
Memory 2x4Gb 1600Mhz CL9 Corsair XMS3 // 2x8Gb 3200 Mhz XPG D41
Video Card(s) Sapphire Nitro+ RX 570 // Asus TUF RTX 2070
Storage Samsung 840 250Gb // SX8200 480GB
Display(s) LG 22EA53VQ // Philips 275M QHD
Case NZXT Phantom 410 Black/Orange // Tecware Forge M
Power Supply Corsair CXM500w // CM MWE 600w
The onboard SSD will speed things up, but on the other hand if you are planning to install an SSD in the future its pointless. I would not get it purely because I can live with slower speed and money can be put to other components. I am not too sure how fast your HDDs are, but you might want to consider getting some newer (and faster) drives.
 

Mi66iNS

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The onboard SSD will speed things up, but on the other hand if you are planning to install an SSD in the future its pointless. I would not get it purely because I can live with slower speed and money can be put to other components. I am not too sure how fast your HDDs are, but you might want to consider getting some newer (and faster) drives.

Thanks for your thought's, the other alternative Mobo easily available to me would seem to be the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 in that case.

If I use it, the OCZ SDD would be the main drive and probably use the 2 250GB Baracuda 7200's as local data which should be plenty, as all the stored media I share is Gigabit connected on a NAS.

The cost difference between the two I have available is about £70 - so the question for me would be is that worth 20GB of onboard SDD?
 

Fourstaff

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Messages
10,020 (1.91/day)
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Home
System Name Orange! // ItchyHands
Processor 3570K // 10400F
Motherboard ASRock z77 Extreme4 // TUF Gaming B460M-Plus
Cooling Stock // Stock
Memory 2x4Gb 1600Mhz CL9 Corsair XMS3 // 2x8Gb 3200 Mhz XPG D41
Video Card(s) Sapphire Nitro+ RX 570 // Asus TUF RTX 2070
Storage Samsung 840 250Gb // SX8200 480GB
Display(s) LG 22EA53VQ // Philips 275M QHD
Case NZXT Phantom 410 Black/Orange // Tecware Forge M
Power Supply Corsair CXM500w // CM MWE 600w
£70 for 20GB of SSD? SSD's costs about £2 per GB (as a rough guide), so definitely not.
 
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