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upgrade time on a budget
- Thread starter patnmel97
- Start date
If your on a budget and not in that much of a hurry watch several places for sales (like newegg, tigerdirect, amazon...), look for rebates and use a cashback site...it really adds up.
What are you going to be doing with the computer? Gaming, video editing, photoshop?
If its primarily gaming i'd stick with the i5, if you do a lot of video/photo processing I'd say save up for an i7. But I would suggest considering looking at the i5-3570k, gives you more options and will have a better resell value down the road and seems to go on sale for ~$200 fairly often. Are you on of the lucky ones to have a Microcenter nearby? They have the best prices on CPU/MB combos.
OS, windows will take a chunk out of your budget if you can't get an student discount and too bad the WIN8 sales are over, they had it for ~$30-40
Might consider watching for a deal on the, BIOSTAR TZ77XE3, it was just on sale for $75 AR, goes on sale fairly often and would be a good budget board with lots of options.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5727271&CatId=6976
Hmm, I'd be interested in how to get WIN7/8 for $15 as a student, best I could see was $30-40
What are you going to be doing with the computer? Gaming, video editing, photoshop?
If its primarily gaming i'd stick with the i5, if you do a lot of video/photo processing I'd say save up for an i7. But I would suggest considering looking at the i5-3570k, gives you more options and will have a better resell value down the road and seems to go on sale for ~$200 fairly often. Are you on of the lucky ones to have a Microcenter nearby? They have the best prices on CPU/MB combos.
OS, windows will take a chunk out of your budget if you can't get an student discount and too bad the WIN8 sales are over, they had it for ~$30-40
Might consider watching for a deal on the, BIOSTAR TZ77XE3, it was just on sale for $75 AR, goes on sale fairly often and would be a good budget board with lots of options.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5727271&CatId=6976
Hmm, I'd be interested in how to get WIN7/8 for $15 as a student, best I could see was $30-40
casual gaming mostly and microcenter isnt an option. seen this on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-i5-24...403&pid=100016&prg=1006&rk=2&sd=121057286077& any thoughts? will the H61MHV LGA 1155 do the trick? i have vista 32 ult.can i upgrade to win7 64? the egg has a few biostar mbs bundled with 8gb ram from 100-120$ including the TZ77XE3. thanks for the replies.
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Sadly same here no microcenter and everybody always tells me to get my CPU/MB there
Newegg and tigerdirect ok for you?
I would skip that ebay bundle, the MB only has usb 2.0, sata 2 and is H61
I'd look at the Z77 motherboards.
Even at the current prices from newegg you could get the biostar TZ77XE3; 8GB corsair and i5-3570k for $365 a better value than the ebay one and 8GB of RAM is plenty for gaming.
Another motherboard to watch for a sale on and is very popular with builders is the:
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293
That's what I'm running in my main computer with an i5-3570k and have been very happy with it.
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On the topic of windows I'm not sure where the current best deals are right now (or if there are any besides educational deals?), I had jumped on the WIN8 deal prior to the price jump and before had gotten WIN7 with a student discount, maybe someone else here has some ideas.
Thanks for the replies. newegg, tigerd would be fine, unless someone here has the right deal id rather buy new. I have a couple flat screen lcds, 3.2g athlonx2 build, xp im gonna try and move local to get my $ up. I need to get a gpu also though; What would be the nvidia bottleneck point for i5 build?
conghelach
Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2007
- Messages
- 582
go for an i7 and an asus or gigabyte motherboard
an i7 is going to be 3/4 of the budget, this is not a very feasible suggestion.
Hey its on sale though for only $299.99
I'd like one myself for my right but can't quite justify it. My vote is still for the i5-3570k, watch for a good sale, use cash back, and order from a site that doesn't charge tax in you state...The i5 wouldn't bottle neck, it would be your graphics card evga 9800gtx, just save up for a GPU upgrade...was that what you were asking? not quite sure I followed that.