Build new or upgrade?

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CeZemal

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 19, 2011
Messages
92
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Light gaming, Media and school work
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
Under 1000 usd preferably
3) Where do you live?
Tennessee
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
For certain: power supply, hard drive, optical.
Possibly: mobo CPU ram video card case
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Possibly reusing case motherboard CPU and ram
6) Will you be overclocking?
Probably (but not a whole lot)
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
May also need one of these
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Whenever I get it figured out
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? etc.
Whatever is on the board
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Getting a copy of windows 7


Well here's the deal. I myself just got done building my new rig and it's fantastic. My old one I still have, but it's been mostly cannibalized since I used some of it to build my brother a new machine for video editing. What's left of it is as follows:

Antec 900 case
Asus p5q-e
Intel E8400 stock + arctic cooling heatsink
4 GB DDR2
Asus Radeon HD 4870 512mb

The main purpose for this pc would be so the wife can have a system of her own to use for her school work and facebook and everything else a normal user would do with a computer. But I also would like for us to be able to play games together (we're looking to get into DC universe online). Would what I have now be sufficient? Or should I look to upgrading the whole thing with more powerful efficient hardware?
 
What's your definition of "light" gaming? As in gaming on relatively low to medium settings or gaming every once in a while?
 
By light I mean occasional, though medium or high ish settings would be decent. I was thinking to upgrade to an HD 6870 regardless. It'll be on one monitor, 1080p probably since like every monitor now adays is 1080p. My real issue is whether or not to upgrade the core components, if it would be worth it or not for what it'll be used for.
 
I honestly can't answer that question for DC Universe Online: I have not been able to find out whether or not that game scales well with multiple cores or is strictly a clock speed beast. Nor have I been able to find even half-assed benchmarks for the game.

So at least for DC Universe Online, I cannot say if upgrading the CPU + mobo + RAM will be worthwhile. Are there any other games you two are planning on playing?

For now, here's some prelim recommendations for the rest of the parts:
$188 - XFX HD-687A-ZNFC Radeon HD 6870 1GB PCI-E Video Card
$65 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$21 - LG iHAS124-04 DVD Burner
$90 - Corsair 650TX V2 650W PSU
---
Total: $364 plus tax and shipping
 
As far a games we'll play, basically anything that strikes our fancy. She's not too into first person shooters so that's out. Guild wars 2 down the line will be another good one. But nothing "Crysis"-ish if you catch what I'm saying. She also enjoys the sims.

As far as I know, the E8400 is still a decent processor, but it's aging. Should I go for more or less "future-proof" or do you think its still got life left in it?

Bonus question: should I wait for bulldozer? (if it ever actually gets here)
 
Going.with what danny posted and ur current parts ur futureproof for bulldozer since tge parts danny mentioned will all work on bulldozer... The only thing if u end up getting her a bd.board and proc is the gpu isnt the most recent... However all will work
 
CeZemal said:
As far as I know, the E8400 is still a decent processor, but it's aging. Should I go for more or less "future-proof" or do you think its still got life left in it?
Click to expand...
Depends on the game and whether or not that game scale well with multiple cores. From what I can tell, the Sims 3 is one of those games that scales well with multiple cores and high clock speed. See if you can get a solid 3.6Ghz to 4Ghz OC out of that E8400 and that should extend the life of the system for a little while longer

CeZemal said:
Bonus question: should I wait for bulldozer? (if it ever actually gets here)
Click to expand...

If you can wait the 90 or so days, wait. If you can't, go ahead with an upgrade to the Core i5 2500K.
 
Alright so I'm deciding to build from scratch now. I'll be getting the i5-2500K, some 8BG of RAM, the HD 6870, and some other odds and ends, but how about a decently good budget motherboard that'll let me overclock the i5 a little? Not too much, a few hundred MHz just for the lulz more or less.

EDIT: Also would a 40GB Solid State be adequate for a boot drive?
 
40GB isn't enough. You should be looking at 64GB minimum.

I recommend this CPU + mobo combo:
$345 - Intel Core i5 2500K CPU + MSI P67A-G45 Intel P67 ATX Motherboard Combo
 
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