Official "Upgrade Help" Thread

[Bubbles]

Do I need an Upgrade?

CPU: Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz
RAM: 4GB
GPU: HD 4870
PSU: 500 watt
MotherBoard: ASUS P5QD Turbo

Should I upgrade the whole system (new CPU, RAM, MotherBoard and GPU) or just the GPU?
And for the GPU should I go for the GTX 660 /660 ti or wait for the new HD 8000 sieries from ATI?

[Wesley]

Whether you need one depends on how your games are running at the moment. Its still a potent rig, but a lot of things are ageing and if the power supply is at least three years old, might be due for a replacement depending on what model and brand it is.

As for the upgrade procedure, its best if you start with the motherboard, CPU and RAM first. The platforms currently available won't see their successors for another year at least. The HD4870 can then be overclocked and at 720p it should still run most games on medium quality settings.

And if you're replacing your whole system, maybe you can see about repurposing it elsewhere, perhaps as a media server?

[KyleVR101]

Is overclocking necessary So I Need to get a new m/b So I'm stuck between the H77 and the Z77 just wondering if the cpu already has turbo boost how important is it on a I5 3570k

[gordanfreeman50]

www.nzxt.com/evolve/
This is what I want! The new n
NZXT Phantom! It's going to be revealed in two days. Best of all my friend got the existing one yesterday! He is going to be ****ed! But he did give me his old Thermaltake 120mm Green LED and 80mm green led fans. So that was nice.

OT: I want to buy the new phantom as soon as its revealed but it can wait until december. hopefully i can finally upgrade then. If I get this Christmas and next years Christmas and loan some money from my brother I should have 10K in December.
That is 10k for case cpu ram psu gpu mobo watercooling wouod be nice the thermaltake extreme 2.0 is arguably the best on the market but I dont overclock so stock cooling should be fine.
Alsi where can I get black or white cable sleeving and heatshrink? If I have a white phantom with blue leds i want all my cables sleeved in white to give a fluorescent effect. Black is for a stealthed effect in a black case.

[Wesley]

Giblets: Intel's Ivy Bridge reaches the Celeron family in 2013

Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture has so far permeated almost every single processor lineup the company currently has to offer. The company plans to release three Celeron chips in the new year that offer Ivy Bridge to budget users and for those looking for more efficient office and HTPC rigs. The three dual-cores are the G1620, G1610 and the energy-efficient G1610T, with a tiny TDP of just 35W. Clock speeds range from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz with 2MB of L3 cache, support for DDR3-1333 memory and a HD2500 GPU clocked at 650MHz. All three chips are expected to fall under the $100 price point.

Source: TechpowerUp!

[Wesley]

Some companies will offer Windows 7 after October 26th

Dell will be one of the handful of companies that will continue to offer desktops, laptops and All-In-Ones with Windows 7 pre-installed, but will only have this option on its Precision, Optiplex, Latitude and Alienware lineups, citing that its a hard enough job for businesses to migrate to Windows 7, let alone Windows 8. Alienware customers have always had OS options and will continue to receive offers for Windows 8 upgrades after their purchase. Consumer-level products will ship with Windows 8 by default, with Professional licenses including the downgrade rights to Windows 7.

Source

[Wesley]

Thermaltake's Evo Blue 2.0 family gets revealed

If you pay attention to the power supply market, one of the cheapest and versatile manufacturers is, of course, Thermaltake. With products sitting in just about every price range from R250 all the way to the high-end segment with the Toughpower family, one could argue that it has more market penetration than most other brands. This week the company announced plans to refresh its Evo lineup of PSUs, which sadly aren't generally available in our country...yet!

Linky

[Wesley]

AMD's new FX launch prices are interesting

We won't be seeing AMD's new FX family, codenamed "Vishera" for a little while, as the company instaed moves to clear out stock of the Llano FM1 processors to make way for Trinity, which promises to make big waves in the market. However, its rather important that AMD gets pricing right of its new CPU family, and it looks like they have; the quad-core FX-4300 will launch at $125, the six-core FX-6300 will start at $135, the octocore FX-8320 raises that to $175 (in line with the cheapest Core i5 chips) and the FX-8350 ends it off with a launch price of $199, right in the fighting ring with the Core i5-3550. Will AMD's CPUs bring better performance and efficiency and make a good case for themselves? We don't have to wait much longer to find out.

Source: TechpowerUp!

[Wesley]

AMD lowers prices of FM1 CPUs to clear out stock

As Trinity chips are made more available to the rest of the world following the October 1st launch, AMD has changed prices of available stock of socket FM1 processors based on the Llano architecture which was based on Bulldozer. The dual-core A4-3300 drops from $46 to $30, the A4-3400 drops from $48 to $35 and surprisingly the Trinity-based A4-5300 dual-core drops massively from $53 to $30 to compete effectively with Intel's low-end Celeron lineup, only due for an Ivy Bridge refresh early next year. While single-core performance may be better in the Intel camp, AMD's APUs have far better graphics which may prove more useful with OpenCL-accelerated apps in the future.

Source: TechpowerUp!

[wisp]

I wonder if u can help me .I just bought a new pc pentium g630 2.7 ghz on a H61 mobo ,4 gig ddr 3 ram and a geforce gt630 2 gb 128 bit graphic card , do you think I bought something worth while , is this graphix card ok
Any help would be appreciated

[Wesley]

I wonder if u can help me .I just bought a new pc pentium g630 2.7 ghz on a H61 mobo ,4 gig ddr 3 ram and a geforce gt630 2 gb 128 bit graphic card , do you think I bought something worth while , is this graphix card ok
Any help would be appreciated

It'll be fine for gaming at 720p with medium settings and might struggle in its third year of ownership. But so long as you have 64-bit Windows installed, its a good machine for basic home use.

Perhaps you can also save up for a SSD in future to keep the machine feeling superfast for a long, long time.

[Turok_sa]

Hi i can get a innovision gtx570 320 bit gpu for R2700 is that good or is there something beter

Edit: Whats the best gpu i can get for R2000

[Wesley]

Hi i can get a innovision gtx570 320 bit gpu for R2700 is that good or is there something beter

For that price, I'd rather choose between these two:

MSI GTX660 OC 2GB DDR5 @ R2736 or
GIGABYTE HD7850 OC 2GB DDR5 @ R2811

For the best card under two grand:

ASUS HD7770 1GB DDR5 @ R1627

Or a GTX560, assuming you can still find on in stock. In two months the GTX650Ti will fall to this level, but for now general pricing is above R2000.

[Turok_sa]

Hi between the 2 you gave me wich one is the best for gaming i cant make up my mind lol

[Wesley]

Hi between the 2 you gave me wich one is the best for gaming i cant make up my mind lol

Depends on the games you play, really. The GTX660 will fare better in games with "The Way Its Meant To Be Played" branding, while the Radeon will be better for a large majority of available titles thanks to a larger memory bus. The GTX660 Ti will kick both cards in the nads, although to be fair it is around R800 more expensive. Personally, I'd go for the Radeon card because I'm not a huge fan of Physx and don't have a lot of CUDA-capable apps.

[wisp]

Another stupid question guys , how do i use my Blackberry as a modem and what does "sych " mean when you connect your BB to your pc to charge , it comes up with as screen that says Sych,Usb or Charge?

[Cranky]

i suppose its Sync .

IT is to share details between your BB and pc ..

like Emails, messages and telephone lists.


You need to Tether your machine,

I don't have a BB but ive helped people set it up and it wasn't very difficult .Took a simple a Google search to find the solution.

Go Radeon @ TUrok

IF i were you id really try and get a 7870 as a minimum.. then you'll be good for the next 2 years. otherwise the 7850 would do :D

Go sapphire for radeon cards.. They are cheaper and have super quality.

[Wesley]

Cranky, you should really put more effort into making your posts readable. Often I can't understand a word you say.

Another stupid question guys , how do i use my Blackberry as a modem and what does "sych " mean when you connect your BB to your pc to charge , it comes up with as screen that says Sych,Usb or Charge?

If you have the drivers for the phone you can simply plug it in, set it into PC Sync mode and create a dial-up session in Windows to use the phone as a modem, dialling into the number *99# for both EDGE and HSDPA networks.

You can alternatively download the Desktop Manager software (which I highly recommend anyway) and use the shortcuts in the software to connect to the net. Note that you will be using your allocated airtime or loaded data bundle, not BIS because accessing BIS on a PC is not part of the service. You can get a better browsing experience over BIS using a Blackberry Playbook, but that's a little bit more of an expense.

[wisp]

Thanks guys, will do as you have suggested :D

[DizzyWorm]

www.hardwarezone.com.sg/product-roccat-kone-xtd

An upgrade to the roccat kone + gaming mouse.