EPTComputer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread - Page 200
| Forum Index > Tech Support |
When using this resource, please read the opening post. The Tech Support forum regulars have helped create countless of desktop systems without any compensation. The least you can do is provide all of the information required for them to help you properly. | ||
|
Ropid
Germany3557 Posts
| ||
|
Cyro
United Kingdom20345 Posts
On January 26 2014 08:33 Ropid wrote: Kaveri is not soldered, someone delidded it with a razor blade and took pictures. Damn. I knew some of the older APU's were not, but that's annoying. Looks harder to delid too Yay page 200! | ||
|
Froadac
United States6733 Posts
Phenom II 955 BE (to be replaced) Terrible strange AMD motherboard I replaced when old one died. Probably part of hte issue 8gb Corsair DDR3 RAM 500W Corsair builder PSU Asus DVD Burner 1TB Samsung Spinpoint HDD 7200rpm Antec 300 Case ATI 4870 I plan to keep everything but GPU/mobo/CPU What is your monitor's native resolution? 1080p + 1440*900 Why do you want to upgrade? What do you want to achieve with the upgrade? One of my CPU/Mobo/GPU is dead. Everything is over a couple years old, and I really don't have the time to get replacement parts for all of the CPU/mobo/gpu to test what is dead. I"ve been having intermittent BSOD issues. An upgrade to keep things relevant is good. Also I'm looking at getting a SSD, now that I've used them I'm impressed.. What is your budget? I think $300. I have more than that, but I wasn't anticipating to be replacing the components. The status quo was fun, but while I'm replacing them I Might as well upgrade a bit. Faster is nicer, but so long as I can get equivalent performance to the prior build for $300 I'm happy. Also I'm considering a ssd. Although I'd like to keep costs as low as possible, taht would be over the $300 number. What country will you be buying your parts in? AMERICA (West coast) If you have any brand or retailer preferences, please specify. Fastish shipping/Fry's would be nice. It's a pain to have my computer out of commission. One idea a friend had was these three components: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131872 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113286 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130838 Also I may want to get a nicer sound card, but I'm not certain. Again, outside of $300 req. Probably looking at either that CPU or an i3 but other suggestions are welcome. | ||
|
Cyro
United Kingdom20345 Posts
There's concern buying ~lower to midrange parts for wasting money or not making good upgrades. For sc2 for example, if you were playing on lower settings, you'd probably gain very little going to fx (stock) and nothing from a GPU upgrade (if you had an at all decent gpu) | ||
|
Froadac
United States6733 Posts
On January 26 2014 17:14 Cyro wrote: What GPU do you have right now? What games are you looking to play, and on what kind of settings or FPS target? There's concern buying ~lower to midrange parts for wasting money or not making good upgrades. For sc2 for example, if you were playing on lower settings, you'd probably gain very little going to fx (stock) and nothing from a GPU upgrade (if you had an at all decent gpu) Damn, somehow left that off, I'll edit. I had a 250gts, was fine. It died, I replaced it with a 4870. I was fine but sometimes caused BSOD> Games: Tf2, dota, world of tanks when friends want to, starcraft 2 sometimes. Left for dead, random steam games. Honestly, I don't have a fps target. I'd like high quality on all of those games, at >30fps but I'm not sure where they ran on the old cards. I know sc2 capped at 60 sometimes but would lag on occasion. (But I know it's more cpu oriented) | ||
|
Incognoto
France10239 Posts
GTX 660 or R9 270 is the next step and should definitely run those games without problem. Though for SC2 what you really need is a good CPU. | ||
|
IMKR
United States378 Posts
1) what temp for gpu should you be worried about? also, i finished my bros PC for him during winter break when i went home. he bought a new fresh copy of windows 7 for the installation. a) i know i cant use his product key, but can i use the disc for the windows 7 installation only? and use my own product key that i get from my school? b) can i use his back up disc i made for him since my pc and his pc has the same components, i figured if i used his back up disc, i wouldnt have to install drivers and all that stuff again. EDIT: another question, i know this is a stupid question, but i just wanna make sure so i dont have to deal with the hassle in case im wrong. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204 in this optical drive, it says Software Operating Systems Supported Windows 2000 Windows NT XP compatible Vista compatible but i can still use this with windows 7 or 8 right? it just means in the very minimum i need those other os? | ||
|
wptlzkwjd
Canada1240 Posts
On January 26 2014 19:09 IMKR wrote: couple quick questions 1) what temp for gpu should you be worried about? also, i finished my bros PC for him during winter break when i went home. he bought a new fresh copy of windows 7 for the installation. a) i know i cant use his product key, but can i use the disc for the windows 7 installation only? and use my own product key that i get from my school? b) can i use his back up disc i made for him since my pc and his pc has the same components, i figured if i used his back up disc, i wouldnt have to install drivers and all that stuff again. EDIT: another question, i know this is a stupid question, but i just wanna make sure so i dont have to deal with the hassle in case im wrong. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204 in this optical drive, it says Software Operating Systems Supported Windows 2000 Windows NT XP compatible Vista compatible but i can still use this with windows 7 or 8 right? it just means in the very minimum i need those other os? 1) 95+ a) yes, you can install the OS first without the CD key. During installation, there might be a product key prompt. You may or may not be able to skip this (I can't remember) but you can use your friend's key if you absolutely have to. The key won't be activated because it's already been used so you can enter a new key later. b) Yes you can use the same backup discs but really, it's pretty much the same as doing a clean re-install of Windows, which is built into the OS. If you like the driver versions, then use the backup discs. edit question: yes that DVD drive will work. | ||
|
Mensol
14536 Posts
Toshiba L50-A-1D2 Intel i5-4200M 2,5 GHz 8 GB DDR3-RAM NVIDIA GeForce GT740M 2GB 15.6 screen thoughts? | ||
|
Froadac
United States6733 Posts
On January 26 2014 18:51 Incognoto wrote: I'd say GTX 650 Ti / 7770 should do that. GTX 660 or R9 270 is the next step and should definitely run those games without problem. Though for SC2 what you really need is a good CPU. True... At that price range do you have any suggestions? | ||
|
wptlzkwjd
Canada1240 Posts
On January 27 2014 01:50 Mensol wrote: So guys i bought a laptop! ^^ Toshiba L50-A-1D2 Intel i5-4200M 2,5 GHz 8 GB DDR3-RAM NVIDIA GeForce GT740M 2GB 15.6 screen thoughts? I purchased a Satellite back in 2008. It's a decent standard laptop with an entry level CPU and GPU. You can probably play titles like Dota 2, SC2, Heartstone, Diablo 3, BF4, CoD, etc on medium/low settings at native resolution smoothly. I really like the Harman/Kardon speakers on the satellites. On January 27 2014 03:01 Froadac wrote: True... At that price range do you have any suggestions? At that price range, you can probably build an i3 4130 or i3 4330. | ||
|
Froadac
United States6733 Posts
On January 27 2014 07:50 wptlzkwjd wrote: I purchased a Satellite back in 2008. It's a decent standard laptop with an entry level CPU and GPU. You can probably play titles like Dota 2, SC2, Heartstone, Diablo 3, BF4, CoD, etc on medium/low settings at native resolution smoothly. I really like the Harman/Kardon speakers on the satellites. At that price range, you can probably build an i3 4130 or i3 4330. Do you think it would be better than the AMD CPU I linked? | ||
|
Incognoto
France10239 Posts
i3s are nice little chips, they may be "only" dual core but they get the job done. I'd get the one that's clocked at 3.6 GHz if it fits in your budget. *Any poorly optimized game really. I've heard Source engine (the one used by steam for games like Portal, Half Life 2 and Dota 2) is also somewhat poorly written, could be wrong though. For a $300 upgrade, here's what I might recommend actually, the 4340 being a tad too expensive for this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2I7fA HD 7790 and GTX 650 Ti are (afaik) very close in terms of both price and performance so go with either one. Just make sure it's got a nice cooler. The i3 is a 4130 as that's the one that fits your budget. | ||
|
Froadac
United States6733 Posts
On January 27 2014 08:04 Incognoto wrote: For playing SC2 an i3 4330 is definitely better than a similarly priced AMD CPU. SC2* needs a CPU with a strong single-thread performance, which is exactly what Haswell excels at. SC2 doesn't scale past two cores either, so getting an i3 isn't that bad a choice. i3s are nice little chips, they may be "only" dual core but they get the job done. I'd get the one that's clocked at 3.6 GHz if it fits in your budget. *Any poorly optimized game really. Yeah. I'm thinking I may just go AMD because I'm looking for general performance. The dual core nature does seem to gimp it in terms of other benchmarks, but it is amazing how far ahead of AMD intel is at things like this. | ||
|
skyR
Canada13817 Posts
| ||
|
Incognoto
France10239 Posts
At the price of $130 (the price of the i3 I recommended), you seem to have the FX 6300, which I've heard good things about. I wouldn't go with an APU since you're getting a graphics card so no need to put money into integrated graphics if you're not going to use them. Well, I'll let someone more knowledgeable give you better advice, however I'm not really sure that AMD gives overall better performance at this price range. Rather, it gives better performance in multi-threaded tasks (though arguably multi-tasking is multi-threaded). Edit: SkyR beat me to it q_q Also on second thought, multi-tasking doesn't really take advantage of good multi-thread performance, does it? Because multi-thread tasks means doing several exact same tasks at the same time. If I'm playing a game while listening to music (let's just imagine playing music is a very demanding task, ok?), then having good multi-thread performance won't help a lot since the tasks of gaming and playing music are different. Encoding on the other hand, is doing a lot of the exact same thing. So multi-threading helps. HOWEVER, having multiple CORES (or modules as AMD calls them) will help with multi-tasking since you can put gaming on one core and playing music on the other. This is a haphazard way of explaining things but is that the gist of it? | ||
|
wptlzkwjd
Canada1240 Posts
On January 27 2014 08:09 Froadac wrote: Yeah. I'm thinking I may just go AMD because I'm looking for general performance. The dual core nature does seem to gimp it in terms of other benchmarks, but it is amazing how far ahead of AMD intel is at things like this. Totally fine choice. "General performance" is an opinion I suppose. I can't think of doing anything on 4 cores that would be considered a general task. | ||
|
Froadac
United States6733 Posts
On January 27 2014 08:23 skyR wrote: Unless you're streaming, encoding, or doing something requiring four or more cores, I really don't think FX6300 is a good choice. Fair enough. I do a fair bit of encoding but nothing ridiculous. I have a 955BE right now, and there is a bit of a stupid reaction when you go from 4 cores to 2. What would you consider to be the superior choice? Is the dual core i3 simply superior at that price point? I was reading benchmarks that seemed to indicate that in terms of overall power the AMD is superior but of course per core is oftentimes the more important metric. | ||
|
wptlzkwjd
Canada1240 Posts
On January 27 2014 09:47 Froadac wrote: Fair enough. I do a fair bit of encoding but nothing ridiculous. I have a 955BE right now, and there is a bit of a stupid reaction when you go from 4 cores to 2. What would you consider to be the superior choice? Is the dual core i3 simply superior at that price point? I was reading benchmarks that seemed to indicate that in terms of overall power the AMD is superior but of course per core is oftentimes the more important metric. If you spend more than 50% of the time on your computer encoding and taking advantage of a quad core CPU, then go for AMD. If you spend more than 50% of the time on your computer browsing the web, watching movies, playing games, then go with Intel. | ||
|
MisterFred
United States2033 Posts
On January 27 2014 09:47 Froadac wrote: Fair enough. I do a fair bit of encoding but nothing ridiculous. I have a 955BE right now, and there is a bit of a stupid reaction when you go from 4 cores to 2. What would you consider to be the superior choice? Is the dual core i3 simply superior at that price point? I was reading benchmarks that seemed to indicate that in terms of overall power the AMD is superior but of course per core is oftentimes the more important metric. Honestly, the i3 isn't going to seem like much of an upgrade compared to your Phenom II. Of course, the fx-6300 would only be a small upgrade compared to your Phenom II... Consider this: An i5, so you're getting a real upgrade: http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=81329&vpn=BX80646I54570&manufacture=Intel&promoid=1347 Cheap mATX 1150 mobo w/a well-spaced PCI connector for below: http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=91600&vpn=CSM-H81M-P32&manufacture=MSI Asus Xonar DG if you wanted the a sound card. http://www.macmall.com/p/ASUS-Video-Cards/product~DPNo~8379160~pdp.geaahaf?source=mwbgoogleshop&adtype=pla&kw={keyword}&gclid=CMH_t7qgnbwCFc2Tfgod8DEA-w Total for all through should be about $300, though of course you can cut the sound card. Edit: you can find these parts other retailers, of course, just not sure how much the price would go up. | ||
| ||
