Balandar Posted October 15, 2011 Share Posted October 15, 2011 My current rig isn't going to cut it. I want to upgrade for under $700. I am going to see who has what on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I'm looking for the following upgrades: Motherboard CPU + Heatsink Video Card SSD HDD (60GB or so for Windows 7 64bit) 16GB RAM, probably 8GB will be plenty but RAM is cheap now. 750W PS or better. I'll keep my sound card, 2x 10k raptors, alienware case, 2 dvd burners, monitors, and peripherals. I'll post later on what I have. So far, the total without a SSD is $860 on Newegg. AMD 8-core AM3+, AMD3+ Gigabyte board, 16 GB ram, EVGA OCed card (can't remember off hand which one). Or a core i-7, but they are expensive. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martok Posted October 15, 2011 Share Posted October 15, 2011 I2500k is awesome Nvidia 560ti I'll be building a new pc in the next month or so as well. I did buy a new case already as my old Alienware case doesn't have enough airflow for the new big graphics cards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balandar Posted October 15, 2011 Author Share Posted October 15, 2011 I didn't think about the air flow. Let me know what you start specing out for the system. I've been making 'wish lists' on newegg. Current setup: ALIENWARE FULL-TOWER GREEN CASE 1.5 AMD ATHLON 64 FX-53 1MB CACHE 939-PIN 2x WESTERN DIGITAL RAPTOR 74GB SATA 10K RPM 8MB HD LITE-ON 52/32/52 DVD/CD-RW COMBO DRIVE BLACK PLEXTOR PX-712A 12X DVD±R/W DRIVE - BLACK CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS 7.1 PLATINUM PRO BFG GEFORCE FX 6800 ULTRA 256MB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kailand Posted October 19, 2011 Share Posted October 19, 2011 ya, the I5's (2500k) and I7's (2600k) way out perform anything AMD has to offer (the I5 pretty much out performs AMD's newly released top of the line chip on everything except extremely parallel multithreaded apps, and the I7 beats it in that). I'd just use 8gigs of ram (2x 4gb sticks) for optimal performance in dual channel mode... 16 gigs (4x 4GB sticks) will slow ram speed down a bit as the timings will be a tad slower. I would place my money on the I5/I7 and hold off on the SSD (they are nice, I have a 128 GB one as for me 60GB would be too small, but your money at this point is better spent on CPU/MB/Video card). The geforce 560/570/580 is the way to go, although you can get big discounts on the geforce 460/470/480. the 4XX series is the same architecture as the 5xx series but a tad slower, and they run hotter. As for the rest, you should be able to reuse them, but motherboards do come with their own soundchips these days, and they aren't all that bad... 7.1 surround, etc.. As for a power supply, I'd recommend 750 watt with at least a bronze 80-plus rating (about 85% efficient), you pay a bit more up front, but it will pay for itself in a year or two. A gold 80-plus is over 90% efficient, but they are harder to find, and cost significantly more. If you can hold off until mid-late november, intels enthusiast line of I7's will be out, and there may be price drops for the mainstream line of parts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balandar Posted October 19, 2011 Author Share Posted October 19, 2011 Thanks for the info! I'm looking at Thanksgiving weekend/Cyber Monday, so hopefully the new I7's will be out by then to push prices down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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