Computer Problem-> Thoughts of a rebuild

Even the cheapest Core i3 is over 50% faster and more energy efficient now.
A budget graphics card will be quicker...

Just have a good look at some comparison bits and build something new.

In fact if you built an and a10 system, the integrated graphics I think is the same as your card. (Farcry2 benchmarks within 1fps)
 
Depends on your budget. Could go with a motherboard bundle from somewhere like novatech. The current CPU has a passmark of 1582.

Motherboard bundle on novatech. AMD a10-5800k (quad core, 3.8ghz), 4gb DDR 3 1600 ram.
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/moth ... 0584a.html
£190 though. (4696 on pass mark)

Then a suitable graphics card. £200ish (1gb+, bf4 coming Christmas!)

Recommended spec, bf4
http://officialbf4.m.webs.com/site/mobi ... rk=fw#2100

Upgrade ram, another hard drive, bigger PSU. At later date
 
Performance-wise a 3GHz dual-core is more than enough. BF3 does spread the load over all 4 cores of a quad core, but that won't do much for the FPS.
Fluffy does have a point though, this is a very power hungry CPU. However if you can live with a high electricity bill, that would be no reason to change the CPU right away.

The RAM is a huge bottleneck in this system, so that would be the first thing I'd look at. That being said, the Athlon x2 6000+ only supports up to 800MHz DDR2, so there's not that much room for upgrades there. Buying any kind of DDR2 RAM for this PC would essentially be throwing a lot of money for little improvement. All PCs use DDR3 now, so you won't be able to transfer the RAM if you eventually upgrade the CPU and/or motherboard.

The graphics card also needs to be looked at indeed. That thing must be drinking electricity by the bucketload. Then again I shouldn't make such remarks because I'm using a 5 year old 4870X2 in my own PC. That card has a drinking problem too.

All in all, I support Simon's suggestion of a motherboard bundle. Add a £200 graphics card, and perhaps a new 550W PSU just to be on the safe side. Oh, and set aside £50-80 for a decent case with proper airflow as well, and maybe another £50 for a good CPU cooler because those stock ones don't do much.
 
A decent PSU is needed like enermax, coolermaster. 700w, should be more than enough and future proof ish. You prob looking at £600 for build if using existing o/s. Bf4 recommends 3gb ram. 6 or 8gb be more than enough for windows 7. Don't bother with 8 (every other o/s Microsoft lanches is crap - xp, good. Vista - crap. Win 7, good. Win 8, crap - might get better!)
 
Tested the system and everything is more or less as it should be. Overheating was the problem and its sortedish now :)
Thanks for the replies and help so far :D
 
After a brief thumb through the pages of the interweb ive come up with a list of bits i hope will work for me.
Just have to track down the best price for each. Spread over one component per month shouldnt break the bank :D

Motherboard:
Gigabyte G1 Sniper M5 intel Z87 socket 1150
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =MB-439-GI
Processor:
4th Gen i5 4670K 3.40ghz LGA socket 1150
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =CP-472-IN
CPU Cooling:
Corsair Hydro H100i Liquid CPU cooler
http://www.corsair.com/cpu-cooling-kits ... ooler.html
Memory:
Corsair Vengeance 16Gb (2x8gb) 1866mhz
http://www.corsair.com/vengeance-8gb-du ... 866c9.html
Graphics Card:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Overclocked 2GB GDDr5
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/ ... tx-660-oc/
SoundCard:
Not sure i need one with this M/Board but sound blaster Recon 3D if thats the case.

Hard drives:
32GB Solid state 500GB sata.

Case/PSU 750w
Unsure as yet


Thoughts anyone ? Advice, recommendations :D
 
If I were building a gaming rig, I'd go for a cheaper CPU and a better GPU. Most games are GPU limited rather than CPU limited and to be honest, the Core i5 Sandybridge and Ivybridge CPUs are plenty fast enough for most things. They only really lose out noticeably to later CPUs and the i7s in video editing, which might be important to you, and multitasking, something which isn't really an issue on a single user desktop.

Also, I've seen some disappointing reviews of the new Haswell CPU, it's not really any faster for most things, certainly not games, and it runs hot, so it doesn't overclock as well as the earlier Sandybridge and Ivybridge CPUs.

This is what I'd buy:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/29-4inte ... cache-34x-

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-p8z ... i-hdmi-atx

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-msi- ... cores-1536

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb-(2x ... 11-10-30-x

You don't need a sound card, but I would buy a new case with better ventilation than your existing one, and one with filters on the intake fans. I'm not sure I'd bother with water-cooling either, just get a decent air CPU cooler. You may need a new PSU, 750w is plenty, but you'll need the additional connectors for modern graphics cards if your existing PSU doesn't have them.

I had a completely water-cooled set-up for years, with separate loops to the CPU, GPU and chipset and had my 3.0 GHz processor running at 4.0 GHz, but when I upgraded a couple of years ago, I couldn't be bothered with the faff of water-cooling anymore. I now have an Intel Core i5 2500K and this will overclock to 5.0 GHz with an air cooler. This is the cooler I have: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/no ... iew,1.html and I've modified my case so that the cooler draws air in via a duct from the side of the case. Also, you'll have to watch those tall memory modules with heatsinks and big air coolers though, their isn't room under mine, so I have low profile memory modules.

With regards to SSD drives, I have one, but only 128GB, however this is big enough for the OS and all my programs, so the PC boots really quickly and programs also launch quickly. All my data, video and music files etc. I have on an ordinary HD as these things don't benefit as much from the extra speed of an SSD.
 
The haswell CPU heating problem is a known one. On Sandybridge CPUs the heatsink is soldered on the chip, giving it excellent heat transfer and allowing the cooler to do its work. On Ivybridge and Haswell they used cheap thermal compound instead, which does give much less heat transfer, meaning that the chip will run hot because the cooler simply can't cool it efficiently.
Gamers and geeks apparently tend to cut the Ivy and Haswell heatsinks off with a razor blade and apply their own thermal compound before putting all the parts in their motherboards' CPU socket. (see this youtube vid for example).

I finished a rebuild of my own PC last night, and for that problem alone I decided not to get an 1150 motherboard and CPU but stuck with my old Sandybridge i5-2500 and get a new 1155 motherboard.
As long as they don't sort out the heating problem, I'm not jumping on the 1150 wagon yet. Considering that this problem is a generation old (Ivy also has it), I don't think Intel is in any hurry to do something about it.

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32GB SSD isn't going to get you far. That's enough to install Windows 7, Libreoffice and maybe a few more programs.
If you really want to use the PC for gaming, I'd recommend a bigger SSD. a 128GB Agility 3 or similar is really fast and shouldn't break the bank.
I highly recommend something that size because I started out with a 60GB Vertex 2 a few years ago and always wanted more because the disk was filled to 75% of its capacity before I knew it. (and back then I already used to store all my personal files on another HDD)
I'm currently running a pair of 128GB Vertex 4s in raid 0, but that's just stupid. In fact the Sata3 controller can't keep up, making them read and write at 750MB/s while it should be 1.1GB/s.

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Cases ... it's hard to recommend stuff. I personally love the HAF X because of its versatility, the nice cable management, the airflow and the room inside (which makes installation a lot easier). However you'll need a big house to store that kind of case.

Whatever you choose, make sure it :
- weighs a ton. Light cases tend to be flimsy. Flimsy means the case will warp if you ever need to move it. Warping can crack the motherboard.
- allows for cable management. So check for rubber grommets, mounting points for tie-wraps, enough room behind the motherboard tray, etc etc. Not only does it look better with nice cable management, it'll also help reduce turbulence inside the case, helping cooling.
- has enough airflow. The best CPU cooler in the world isn't going to save you if the lack of airflow means you can't get new air into the case and/or hot air to exit it. Look for what kind of fans it'll hold and how many of them. Personally I prefer 140mm or bigger, as 120mm fans or smaller tend to make a lot of noise if you have many of them.
- supports your motherboard. Plenty of form factors around. That Sniper is a micro-ATX, and I'm not sure if all cases will have mounting points for that form factor.
- has plenty of room. Not only does it make working on the PC easier, it helps the airflow. a big graphics card can really disrupt airflow or even stop the top half of the case from getting any cold air at all.

As for that last point, I've made that mistake myself.
This is what happens when you start out with a regular PC in a small case and then try to stuff a gaming PC in there. That monstrous CPU cooler simply couldn't draw cold air because the GFX card effectively split the case into 2 sections. the top half simply wasn't getting any air in except for whatever it could draw from those small vents near the front.

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As for PSU choice, you don't really need as much as you think. 550-600W will do.
I have measured my PC under full load (benchmarking, transferring movies and doing a stability test at the same time), and I never saw it draw more than 420W from the plug. The calculated worst-case scenario figure was slightly more than 600W. At some point it may reach 500W during a game that actually supports the card's native Crossfire, but even then I'm nowhere near the calculated figures.
A friend of mine has a GTX550Ti on the same CPU as mine (i5 2500) and his PC doesn't go past 350W with 2 instances of World of Warcraft running simultaneously. (Ultra graphics settings, both in 1920x1080 windowed on 2 screens)
Seeing as most PSUs are said to run at their best at around 2/3 load, I see absolutely no need to get more than 600W.

Whenever I build a PC for my friends, I end up using a BeQuiet! Dark Power Pro PSU. I find them more quiet (no pun intended) than most others and the modular design makes neat cable management very easy.
 
I'm currently running a pair of 128GB Vertex 4s in raid 0

Raid 0 is also risky, your data is split and written to two, or more, drives consecutively, so if one drive fails, you lose the lot. Drive failures are rare, but with each additional drive in raid 0 the risk of one of them failing increases, but I'm sure you knew that. :D

I agree, 32GB SSD is too small, I would look at 100GB and up. For a HD I would look at 1TB and up, 500GB drives are no cheaper than 1TB now.

Here are some sites that have some fairly in-depth reviews that might help you choose which specific components you want:

http://www.anandtech.com/

http://www.xbitlabs.com/

http://www.storagereview.com/
 
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