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Need New i7 Setup, But I've Been Out Of The Game For Years

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Hi guys,

I have an Intel E8400 OC'd to 4GHz at the moment. It's been doing great for the last few years but the point has come where it's too old to handle anything decent. I have a GTX 460 1GB which is really enough for me, but it's starting to be bottlenecked by the CPU.

I want to try and find a motherboard + CPU combo (preferably an i7, must be quad core, but if anybody can think of any other processors that would be better/cheaper then I'm game for it). I live in the UK so it needs to be a UK site such as eBuyer or Amazon / eBay UK etc...

I'm also going to need a big ass cooler as well, as I want to OC it a fair bit with air cooling. My current memory is 800MHz DDR2 2x2 GB for a total of 4GB. I'd like to keep that if possible unless again, anybody can recommend a good cheap ram upgrade. Don't need anything fancy.

Thanks for your help guys, I would try and do it myself but as you can tell by my hardware it's been a few years :)

So basically in a nutshell I need:

CPU (Quad Core)
Motherboard
RAM (if necessary)
Cooler

My budget is up to £200 ish, I'm not looking to spend a lot.

I'm not a fanboy of any particular brands, so it doesn't have to be Intel, it's just that I've never owned anything else so I'm comfortable with OC'ing Intels etc :) but if you find a good AMD you can be happy to recommend it!

For starters, I quite like the look of this cooler:

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B002VKVZ1A/?tag=tec053-21

And this is cheap for 8GB RAM:

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B0079TBY1O/?tag=tec053-21

Very cheap socket 1150 motherboard :)

http://www.ebuyer.com/629505-gigaby...hdmi-hd-audio-micro-atx-motherboard-ga-h81m-h
 
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rtwjunkie

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At that budget, it's going to be very difficult. You still need a CPU. Additionally, we really need to know, what do you do with your computer? You say your GTX 460 is enough, so I'm assuming you are not gaming at high resolution or graphics quality. Do you use it for browsing, photo or video editing, work, etc? The purpose will help alot.

Also, the good news is some of your parts can be reused. Do you have any HDD's also, or just the SSD?
 
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Well I use it for gaming, but I have a crappy monitor (1280x1024) so it's not going to be running games on HD or anything like that, but I do like to put settings on high as much as possible.

Currently I just bought Battlefield 4 but my CPU seems to be struggling with it a bit.

I run my Windows from the SSD but it's nowhere near big enough, so I could do with a bigger SSD for my games etc but then that will increase the cost even more.

I'm not against getting used parts as long as they're in guaranteed working order, particularly the CPU as there's a lot of used ones out there for sale.
 
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Hi guys,

I have an Intel E8400 OC'd to 4GHz at the moment. It's been doing great for the last few years but the point has come where it's too old to handle anything decent. I have a GTX 460 1GB which is really enough for me, but it's starting to be bottlenecked by the CPU.

I want to try and find a motherboard + CPU combo (preferably an i7, must be quad core, but if anybody can think of any other processors that would be better/cheaper then I'm game for it). I live in the UK so it needs to be a UK site such as eBuyer or Amazon / eBay UK etc...

I'm also going to need a big ass cooler as well, as I want to OC it a fair bit with air cooling. My current memory is 800MHz DDR2 2x2 GB for a total of 4GB. I'd like to keep that if possible unless again, anybody can recommend a good cheap ram upgrade. Don't need anything fancy.

Thanks for your help guys, I would try and do it myself but as you can tell by my hardware it's been a few years :)

So basically in a nutshell I need:

CPU (Quad Core)
Motherboard
RAM (if necessary)
Cooler

My budget is up to £200 ish, I'm not looking to spend a lot.

I'm not a fanboy of any particular brands, so it doesn't have to be Intel, it's just that I've never owned anything else so I'm comfortable with OC'ing Intels etc :) but if you find a good AMD you can be happy to recommend it!

For starters, I quite like the look of this cooler:

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B002VKVZ1A/?tag=tec053-21

And this is cheap for 8GB RAM:

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B0079TBY1O/?tag=tec053-21

Very cheap socket 1150 motherboard :)

http://www.ebuyer.com/629505-gigaby...hdmi-hd-audio-micro-atx-motherboard-ga-h81m-h


Ok, let's start out with a reality check here.

Intel quad cores will take up the best part of your budget, not even qualifying an i7 which pretty much obliterates your budget with just a CPU. You're probably looking for either an AMD APU or a dual core Intel CPU with hyperthreading. Honestly, core count is probably less important to you than you think, given the huge performance gap between what is being sold today and what you are coming off of.

DDR2 is a dead standard, for PCs. We are on the verge of getting DDR4 (Haswell enthusiast platform), so you're going to need new RAM. Your best option here might be two 4 GB sticks, for 8 GB total. RAM pricing is rather substantial at this point, so you're not going to be able to get a lot.

Your cooler choice is, to be frank, stupid. Nothing in your budget range justifies a cooler that will take 32% of your budget. You'd be better of with a Coolermaster 212 evo.


Honestly, you need to reevaluate your budget and goals. For the quoted 200 pounds, you're not going to get much.



Edit:

Also, your link on the cooler doesn't work. You've got an underscore in the address between "co.uk". It's an easy fix, so no harm no foul.
 
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rtwjunkie

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He could probably go even lower on the CPU. An i3-4130 (dual-core plus HT that really works well) would be a HUGE improvement...I know, I went from an e-8400 O/C to 3.8Ghz to the 4130 running standard 3.4Ghz on my HTPC (which I also do light gaming on), and it's like I time travelled over a hundred years into the future. Its performance is night and day to the e-8400. It really is a great CPU, and seems perfectly matched to my GTX 650 Ti Boost, which is only slightly better than a 460..
 
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Best I could do with selecting a decent CPU..........
 

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I know you mentioned QUAD CORE. But in that budget there is one CPU (dual core no HT), its Intel Pentium Aniversary edition. You can overclock in like 40-50% to 4.4Ghz. It will be much faster than E8400.
Its CPU 50£ + MB~ 80£-100£ (Z97) +RAM 60£ for 8 GB. Choosing cheaper mobo gets you EVO 212 in your budget.
I have pretty much similar system to yours (except vga). And I have even smaller budged. So i read a lot about this CPU. This way you get newer platform, more speed, ddr3 ram. You can replace that CPU in few month or so with something like 4690k when you have money.
 
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Well I use it for gaming, but I have a crappy monitor (1280x1024) so it's not going to be running games on HD or anything like that, but I do like to put settings on high as much as possible.

Currently I just bought Battlefield 4 but my CPU seems to be struggling with it a bit.

I run my Windows from the SSD but it's nowhere near big enough, so I could do with a bigger SSD for my games etc but then that will increase the cost even more.

I'm not against getting used parts as long as they're in guaranteed working order, particularly the CPU as there's a lot of used ones out there for sale.

BF4 is heavily CPU bound, so the more cores/threads the better, if you're focusing on that. Like others have said, that's a tall order for your budget.

I just put together a Xeon X5470 ($80 eBay) rig and P5Q (or equivalent 775 motherboard @ $50-$100), it's happy at 4Ghz and doesn't suck according to Cinebench. Since you already have DDR2, it may be worth looking into.
 
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Hi guys,

I have an Intel E8400 OC'd to 4GHz at the moment. It's been doing great for the last few years but the point has come where it's too old to handle anything decent. I have a GTX 460 1GB which is really enough for me, but it's starting to be bottlenecked by the CPU.

I want to try and find a motherboard + CPU combo (preferably an i7, must be quad core, but if anybody can think of any other processors that would be better/cheaper then I'm game for it). I live in the UK so it needs to be a UK site such as eBuyer or Amazon / eBay UK etc...

I'm also going to need a big ass cooler as well, as I want to OC it a fair bit with air cooling. My current memory is 800MHz DDR2 2x2 GB for a total of 4GB. I'd like to keep that if possible unless again, anybody can recommend a good cheap ram upgrade. Don't need anything fancy.

Thanks for your help guys, I would try and do it myself but as you can tell by my hardware it's been a few years :)

So basically in a nutshell I need:

CPU (Quad Core)
Motherboard
RAM (if necessary)
Cooler

My budget is up to £200 ish, I'm not looking to spend a lot.

I'm not a fanboy of any particular brands, so it doesn't have to be Intel, it's just that I've never owned anything else so I'm comfortable with OC'ing Intels etc :) but if you find a good AMD you can be happy to recommend it!

For starters, I quite like the look of this cooler:

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B002VKVZ1A/?tag=tec053-21

And this is cheap for 8GB RAM:

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B0079TBY1O/?tag=tec053-21

Very cheap socket 1150 motherboard :)

http://www.ebuyer.com/629505-gigaby...hdmi-hd-audio-micro-atx-motherboard-ga-h81m-h
Honestly with that budget you are going to be limited in your options. Based on what you have said I can supply some good options depending on how you would want to go.

For starters an Intel quad build is going to be near impossible without pretty much dropping the ball on everything else surrounding it. Going too cheap on the other components can cause a bad experience overall and would not seem to be the best option. This first build is pretty fun to play with, overclock pretty darn well, and is at a good price with the options of expanding later on should you want to:
Pentium G3258 (Unlocked and ready for some heavy clocking, my first one for a client did 4.4 easily and I have heard many hit 4.8 on air with ease)
MSI Z97-G55 SLI Motherboard (Great board for overclocking and a great price, great if you want something with loads of future expand-ability and a loaded up feature set at a good price).
Crucial Ballistix 8gb (2x4b) 1600 Kit (Good affordable ram)
That comes to a little under your budget of £200, but you can add this Cooler Master Hyper212 for £24 and that would bring the budget up to £217~
With this you would get an excellent 1080p gaming setup, I have already built 2 of these with the same board and processor and they all perform very well especially when you factor in the price. One runs BF4 with an HD7870ghz card at Ultra 1080p (Mantle Enabled mind you) and never dips below 40FPS.

The next option I can say will be good for a budget, fun to overclock, and give you a quad core with good power to begin with. Mostly would be good for games that like 4 cores but may be a slight bit weaker core to core.

Athlon X4 760k (Or if you wait you can get the 860k this month which will be better)
MSI A88X-G43
Gskill 8gb 2x4gb 1600
Hyper212

With this you would get a good quad system that also has some expand-ability down the line. It will also be a great 1080p gaming system!

Overall it comes down to what you want to do, the Intel variant would be a better option for future proofing (Lots of different CPU support) and would be a pretty nice powerful system to start with while the AMD will also offer good performance gaming and a quad core that overclocks equally well.

It will depend on what you want to do in all honesty, I would pick the Intel for the future proofing if it were up to me of the choices but both will satisfy your needs just fine!
 

Varker

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Easy, but its going to be 2nd hand. Search for cpu + mb combos on ebay. I got myself a i7 920 + ram + mb + cooler for about £120. You'll have spare cash for a decent cooler (so you can clock it to 4ghz) or ssd too.
 
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