PC Upgrade

Gorath

Gorath

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Our house was struck by lightning. A lot of stuff is damaged, including my PC. Let's say I want to build a new rig, but I already have 16 GB DDR 3, all drives including an SSD and an underpowered ATI 6850. Also all the minor stuff.

The budget is 500€. I do other stuff which uses 100% CPU power. Mild overclocking, Prime stable, is an option.

What would you buy and when?
 
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As far as I know you can't go for the latest Intel CPU's as they require DDR4 memory (and they are expensive) The I7's are also fairly expensivem but an I5 should be within reach.

The Asus ROG Maximum VII motherboards are very easy to overclock, I can specially recommend the Maximum Hero. I'm sure other vendors, especially MSI have similar MBs.

MB and CPU as suggested cost around 500€ in Norway, but we're expensive. They should cost less in Germany, so you can buy a PSU as well.

Do you need a new cabinet (if that's what the boxes are called in English)?

pibbur who assumes there are watchers who know more about this.
 
No, I have a case, and with a bit of luck the PSU survived.
 
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Gorath said:
Our house was struck by lightning. A lot of stuff is damaged, including my PC. Let's say I want to build a new rig, but I already have 16 GB DDR 3, all drives including an SSD and an underpowered ATI 6850. Also all the minor stuff.

The budget is 500€. I do other stuff which uses 100% CPU power. Mild overclocking, Prime stable, is an option.

What would you buy and when?
Click to expand...
If you didnt have surge protectors before Id advice you to invest to them now. They protect your precious hardware from all kinds of spikes coming through the wires including lighting strikes. Ive used them for eight years and havent had single case of broken hardware.
 
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And be sure to protect the phone line as well, if you are on adsl or similar.

Pibbur who realized he should have done so a few years ago.
 
Gorath said:
Our house was struck by lightning. A lot of stuff is damaged, including my PC. Let's say I want to build a new rig, but I already have 16 GB DDR 3, all drives including an SSD and an underpowered ATI 6850. Also all the minor stuff.

The budget is 500€. I do other stuff which uses 100% CPU power. Mild overclocking, Prime stable, is an option.

What would you buy and when?
Click to expand...
You need a bit more than 500€.

- We know already that DDR4 won't bring up significant performance increase and I've also linked to news about Intel's Optane technology yesterday so I'd put it in some future plans. Stick with that good old DDR3 you have.

- HDD/SDD already there, working, good.

- PSU, ah well, if it farted you'll have to buy a new one definetly.

-----------------
That leaves MoBo, CPU, GPU.

New CPUs are out. And dunno who already planned to buy the new brand new i7 in another thread capable of 7Ghz in laboratory… Just don't. There is no game nor will soon be that would put that CPU as necessity. Go with already proved gamer's dream i5 4690K (cca 250€):
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,review-32901-4.html
https://www.ditech.at/shop/details.php?art=172807

Sure, i7 4790K is better, but is it worth 100€ more (the price is cca 350€) just for the clock increase that's not necessary? IMO it's better to use those 100€ to buy one more SSD instead of irrelevant performance boost.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4690K

I have i5 4670K in my rig which is lesser than both of these, but honestly, I don't see any reason to upgrade it as it runs everything. Even without OC. But it's paired with Z87 chipset which is kinda "old". ;)
You want some overclocking and Z97 chipset. Will you go for superexpensive greatlooking board with options on it you'll never really use? You can. I suggest not. Go for something good and not superexpensive. This board, cca 150€, will fit any of your needs perfectly and will last you for years:
https://www.ditech.at/shop/details.php?art=172158

That leaves you with cca 100€ for GPU which… Isn't enough if you want to see hairworks on Geralt. Hairworks on just him means at least GTX 960, or converted into money about 200€:
https://www.ditech.at/shop/details.php?art=200866
GTX 750Ti is another good option if you can live with upcoming games on medium graphics but it's cca 150€.

Pascal cards will appear next year thus I see no reason to invest into superexpensive 980 or Titan today. You'll buy one when their price drops significantly next year. In the meantime, stick with something not as expensive.

Anyway, maybe someone can combine something in 500€ total. I tried but just can't, whatever I try, it's 600 in the end.
 
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pibbur who said:
And be sure to protect the phone line as well, if you are on adsl or similar.

Pibbur who realized he should have done so a few years ago.
Click to expand...

Actually that's the point. Lightning damage comes through the phone or DSL line in at least 9 our of 10 cases.
 
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I meant the option for some light overclocking. I'm not interested in hardcore O/C. My chess software uses 100% of the available CPU power. More speed saves me a lot time because I'm basically waiting for the analysis engine to reach a certain depth.
 
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That's the reason I linked only to boxed with fan chip not watercoolers and other perversions. ;)
 
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What about that, for a year or so? It's used.

Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 / Intel I5 2500k / 16GB DDR3
200€
 
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joxer said:
That's the reason I linked only to boxed with fan chip not watercoolers and other perversions. ;)
Click to expand...

So I'm perverted. Thank you.

pibbur who until now has considered himself a very decent person, thanks to the joxer, he realizes he's not 100% decent. Yay.
 
Gorath said:
Actually that's the point. Lightning damage comes through the phone or DSL line in at least 9 our of 10 cases
Click to expand...
Now that I have a fiber connection, I assume the WAN will no longer be a problem.

pibbur who hopes he's right about that.
 
pibbur who said:
Now that I have a fiber connection, I assume the WAN will no longer be a problem.

pibbur who hopes he's right about that.
Click to expand...

Depends on whether it's Fibre-to-Property or Fibre-to-Cabinet. The majority of fibre connections are to cabinet, which means that the last part of the connection is still bridged from the nearest fibre cabinet to your home via the old copper wire.
 
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I think it's fibre to property.

pibbur who may be wrong and will try to find out.

Edit: According to the pusher it's fiber to property.
 
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Makes sense.

What's wrong with it is of course the colour. Should be red things on it.

pibbur who suspects this is another sign of his evolving perversion.
 
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:(

For that kind of cash... It was fantastic.
 
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Oh yes, it was quite a bargain.
 
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With your relatively low budget I'd suggest looking for similar offers, Gorath.
The i5-2500K is a great CPU obviously. I also still have one in my second PC and it does 4.2GHz on air without breaking a sweat. I'm just using the auto-OC feature of the ASUS Z68 board and that's it. It stays pretty cool, too.
The "problem" is that all of this is common knowledge and therefore the i5-2500K is still in high demand so it won't be easy to find one for cheap ;) .

The alternative would be to get a modern socket 1151 board with DDR3-RAM slots (yes they do exist) and then an i5-6600K. That way you'd have the latest tech (except DDR4 but who cares) and a full two years of Gewährleistung on the core components and you could probably get away with just upgrading the GPU every now and then for the next four/five years or so (until the next console gen at least :) ).

I agree with Joxer re the video card. Don't get anything fancy now. Not worth it. Instead save up some money for 14nm/16nm GPUs next year and then buy the Pascal equivalent of a GTX 970 which will probably outperform just about anything that is available on the market right now.
 
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