Ice's Upgrade plans / Budget / Best Buy's

Hey Techhardware chaps,


I'm in the process of evaluating a budget and planning for the next year. I've been rather demotivated lately as I haven't reached many of my personal goals for 2010 and the year is drawing to a close, one of the goals was to look at upgrading/setting up a new rig.

I'd like your opinions and costing and ideas. As you all know I'm not exactly flush with moola so I have to look at the most cost effective bang for buck PC! Thus asking you guys for advice and opinions on what I should be looking at and estimating my budget.

I know that PC prices and hardware costing is about as stable as Paul's sanity so don't worry about that I am aware things will change. Also please do not quote me on retail prices as I can get everything from Frontoza/Sahara/Rectrum at cost +14% VAT

Hardware Setup:

- i7 Entry lvl chipset
- i7 Compatible Motherboard
- 8 GB RAM (looking at running win7 64bit)
- Suggested GFX Card (Have no idea what to get so chip in here guys/gals)
- 1x 1 Tera HDD (Sata 2)
- 1 x Entry lvl SSD disk (if cost falls within range)
- 1 x Tower case Coolermaster
- 1 x PSU 1000w
- Win7 Home 64bit? (Could use one work license but I feel ethically obligated not to)

And that's it... look forward to speaking with you all

Ice I wouldn't recommend getting an SSD at this stage. They rock but anyone on a tight budget should rather put the $ into better mobo/graphics. Easy to get an SSD later and prices will only come down.

Not sure what your budget will be like for graphics but the new Radeon 6870's look like a good bang/buck card. They are quite close to the GTX470 on performance and retailing a LOT cheaper.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...6870-review/14

As for mobo, I have no experience with socket 1366, no doubt Skoups can recommend a good ASUS model and Murgs can throw you with a Gigabyte one.

I'll get denis on the case...

Agree with Mega WRT SSD's. They are awesome, but the price is not affordable at this point. Rather get a smaller mechanical drive for OS/Games, and a large data drive - Last time I looked, 1.5 TB was the best tradeoff between cost/capacity.

The 6870 is indeed a great graphics card, so I'd check out the availability and pricing on that.

I assume that when you're looking at 'entry level i7', you mean socket 1156 and not 1366? On that chipset, you'd be looking at an i5-750 or a i7-860. The i7-860 though is over priced in my opinion, with the chip costing a very similar amount to the i7-920.

TBH, I need to have a better view of your budget in order to give you advice. There are so many components that one can consider, and will be abe to match your budget. Give us a ballpark figure to work with.

Oh, and WTF are you looking at a 1000W PSU for? That is seriously overkill for whatever you build, even if you were to go Xfire/SLI at a later stage. Rather just get a decent 750Wish PSU.

Ok so the 1000W is over kill? TBH I've been out of the Hardware game for so long! I haven't a clue on what to look for!

With respect to my budget! I honestly don't have one, it was a question of what is it going to cost me? And how could I accommodate it? This is more of a fact finder of what a entry level PC I could look at getting then setting a savings goal to reach that budget.

It's working backwards from the point of impact. Look forward to hearing back from you all.

The goal would be to meet the general Min gaming level requirements for newly released games. I've never had a uber kick ass PC and can live with running games on LOW if I can play them on the PC I'll be happy!

I have also been looking at the 6870 and its not priced bad at all and the perf looks good considering what the card cost...

Seems lightning has decided to say hi to me and I dont have a router or a network adapter on my pc atm. but the insurance will have to sort that out...

Out of interest here is a price comparason between the GTX470 and Radeon 6870:

Radeon 6870: R2757
http://www.prophecy.co.za/sapphire-r...t-p-85963.html

GTX470: R4387
http://www.prophecy.co.za/gigabyte-g...e-p-73290.html

and given that the BC2 performance is equal, not a hard choice...

Sorry guys, but I don’t quite share your views on the 68xx graphics cards. I suppose the reason why I don’t like them yet is because I think they are wrongly named and should be better named as the 67xx or in fact, even the 66xx series. Those cards are not worthy to carry the x8xx family and several people will upgrade to them just because of the name, it is unethical marketing. I know that ATI is planning to introduce cards at cheaper prices, but had those cards be correctly named the 66xx series, or the 67xx series I recon few of you guys will be looking that curiously at it. Granted, they are priced on exactly the right spot, but I would not be buying them just because they are ATI’s latest family of cards but instead because that is the maximum amount of money that I can spend on a graphics card. There are better cards out there for marginally more money.

Out of interest, I’ve installed some NVidia cards into some computers of late, and they are extremely worthwhile so I would not discount them as yet. Also, the AMD chipset is not a bad chip for budget conscience buyers.

Ice I appreciate that you currently don’t have a budget, but in order for me to provide you with some form of guidance, can you please tell me the following:

1. How old is your current computer, i.e. when did you buy / build it.
2. How often do you “upgrade” your computer?
3. When you upgrade a computer, do you do a complete upgrade, i.e. everything, or do you do it piece by piece? (i.e. new graphics card this month, six months later new CPU)
4. Are there any components in your current computer that you want / can / should re-use?

For instance, I tend to do a CPU / Motherboard upgrade only every 3 or 4 years, but am happy to upgrade my graphics card every other year. That way, I am smoothing out the costs of my PC addiction. Likewise, on my HDD, I have no problem to carry my old HDD / GPU over from my “old” computer (CPU/MOBO).

Now, if you are telling me that you plan to stick with your graphics card that you buy now for at least 3 years, then I would rather advise you to buy the NVidia range. If you are saying that you are happy to upgrade your graphics card in a year or two, then I would say go with the ATI range. However, depending on what you currently have, you may just decide to upgrade just your motherboard and CPU (and ram most likely).

With regard to the cost of the graphics cards herewith a quick list: (Excl VAT and excl profit margins) the ATI cards are the Sapphire range while the NVidia ones are ASUS. Asus generally tend to be around R200 more expensive on the same card.


ATI 5770 = R1357
GTX460 = R1899
ATI 6850 = R1999
ATI 4850x2 = R2199
GTX465 = R2345
ATI 5850 = R2599
ATI 6870 = R2699
GTX470 = R2772
ATI 5870 = R3210
GTX480 = R4399
ATI 5970 = R5151

All that I can say is that the new 68xx series cards is correctly priced, but they should not be seen as the new uber cards and definitely not be bought by people that currently have the 58xx series cards or even the 57xx installed.

OK if you can pick up a 470 for under 3K then I would also support that card over the 6870.

Stu, I would advise you to give a total budget amount to Denis and get him to draw up some system options for you. The pc that he built for Mac in this manner is fkin EPIC. That way, the rest of the nerds can put their 2c into picking apart Denis' various builds.

Hey Denis,

thanks for the feedback, please find my current box specifications below.

Quote:

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Ice I appreciate that you currently don’t have a budget, but in order for me to provide you with some form of guidance, can you please tell me the following:

1. How old is your current computer, i.e. when did you buy / build it.
2. How often do you “upgrade” your computer?
3. When you upgrade a computer, do you do a complete upgrade, i.e. everything, or do you do it piece by piece? (i.e. new graphics card this month, six months later new CPU)
4. Are there any components in your current computer that you want / can / should re-use?

---

1. I bought the PC in 2007 November I think +/- 3 years old
2. Don't my GFX card and PSU poped and I have replaced a HDD in the past 3 years
3. Generally budget permitting I purchase the lowest specs then build up to my desired level. This is all cash flow dependent, I also am happy to by components month by month and then build the box once all is purchased and assembled.
4. No not really only looking at the HHD / DVD-WR moving over may look at using my current box as Media Centre all dependent.

Current specifications are as follows.

2.4 Duo Core Intel
Entry level Asus MB
2GB RAM
Nvidia GTS 8800 512MB
80GB Sata 2 HDD + 500GB Sata + 200GB IDE
Windows XP

It is really hard for me to say what I'd be willing to spend as really its about looking at what I can get if I where to save and then evaluate if it would be worth me doing this over the next couple of months, seeing as I work for myself I no longer get a 13th Cheque so I have to take this out of my current limited budget.

lets work with 5 - 6 months at 1000 ZAR p/m if this is the case rAge 2011 would be out of the question... so I really have to think long and hard about this choice....