My roommate's looking to rebuild his defunct computer, hopefully with some great Cyber Monday deals(or maybe there are deals lasting all week?) and I was wondering if anyone had any advice. Any help you can provide with what to go with would be great. Here's what we're pretty sure still works in the old system:
Case(don't know what kind of case it is, but it's massive)
800w power supply
G Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 RAM(2x 8G)
Sapphire HD 7950 graphics card
Some hard drives(don't know what they are, but they had a ton of space left)
PCI(e?) sound card
DVD Drive
Any suggestions on what to get to fill this out? Anything on there cry out for replacement?
Edited, Dec 1st 2014 8:39am by Poldaran
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I apologize for how last minute it is. He came to me last minute and I have very little idea what the hell I'm doing, so I figured I'd ask.
What's his processor? And budget?
I have the same graphics card and it works fine for me. Not "Top level ultra fine" but absolutely "I can't justify $300 to go from 2x AA to 4x AA" fine.
Frankly, unless he's running some painfully underpowered processor I don't see much that NEEDS improving except for hobbyist reasons. Add a SSD maybe?
I have the same graphics card and it works fine for me. Not "Top level ultra fine" but absolutely "I can't justify $300 to go from 2x AA to 4x AA" fine.
Frankly, unless he's running some painfully underpowered processor I don't see much that NEEDS improving except for hobbyist reasons. Add a SSD maybe?
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
Processor and Mobo will likely need to be replaced. We think they're the part that's broken and not booting. Budget probably around 500 as a max, which isn't much, I know. But his comp has been down for about six months and he's finally decided to get around to fixing it.
Edited, Dec 1st 2014 10:01am by Poldaran
Edited, Dec 1st 2014 10:01am by Poldaran
I'd drop it first on a good processor/MB then since that's the biggest PITA to upgrade. But if you have a solid combo, you can replace other stuff down the line.
Common wisdom has been that an i5 is sufficient for most gamers since few games took advantage of the extra threading the i7 provided. I think this is starting to change although an i5 should still be the standard. I don't know enough about AMD processors to have any opinion on what direction to go there.
Common wisdom has been that an i5 is sufficient for most gamers since few games took advantage of the extra threading the i7 provided. I think this is starting to change although an i5 should still be the standard. I don't know enough about AMD processors to have any opinion on what direction to go there.
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
Any idea how to tell what'll be compatible with the RAM he has, or is that not really an issue? Actually, I'll see what's on special and then check with you guys to see if they'll be compatible at that point, since I guess I ought to do a little work here. Thanks for the info so far and thanks in advance for everything beyond.
Be easiest to tell when a MB is picked out but his RAM looks pretty standard for a modern setup.
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
Today only, thirty dollars off of a one hundred fifty dollar order at Newegg if you pay with PayPal. Which annoys the hell out of me. I put in an order on Friday for almost two hundred. If I'd known I would have waited.
That's not a bad deal, though I'm not sure if he has Paypal. I'll ask. Meanwhile, I'm not seeing much in the way of deals for Cyber Monday on bundles(I really wanna avoid the issue we had with mine where the processor/mobo weren't compatible. That said, how's this?
The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
That's not a bad deal, though I'm not sure if he has Paypal. I'll ask. Meanwhile, I'm not seeing much in the way of deals for Cyber Monday on bundles(I really wanna avoid the issue we had with mine where the processor/mobo weren't compatible. That said, how's this?
I personally wouldn't go for a MicroATX board. Everything is all jammed together, it can make for awkward placement of things. Unless his case can't take a larger board, in which case, he should get a new one of those too. Asus makes good boards though, so if you go that route, it should at least be reliable.
Also, Paypal has a deal with Tigerdirect too. Twenty-five dollars off of one hundred or more. You just have to checkout using Paypal to get the discount. It wouldn't be a terrible idea to take advantage of both deals if you can manage to split the cost of parts correctly.
Just a quick look at what Newegg has on sale, this motherboard and this CPU are pretty promising.
Edited, Dec 1st 2014 7:31pm by Turin
Turin wrote:
Unless his case can't take a larger board,
I did one build on a micro ATX board and swore my next computer would have a motherboard the size of a refrigerator box.
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
Turin wrote:
Unless his case can't take a larger board,
He might as well use the space then. A couple months back I picked up a new case built for better cooling this one to be exact, and it made for the easiest build I've ever done. I'm still surprised at how stupidly large the thing is though. It sits on the floor, and the power button is on the top of the case, and I don't even have to bend over to push it.
Edited, Dec 2nd 2014 9:41pm by Turin
Okay, so apparently despite being huge, his case is somehow not compatible with the new mobo. Now he tells me that the case was specially made to fit that specific mobo. It was apparently one of the system's "features". Any suggestions on a good but relatively cheap case, or specific brands to look at maybe? I've looked at a few but I figure maybe someone may know of a great deal that I missed. Less than $100 would be best.
And in case I haven't said it enough lately, thanks.
Edited, Dec 10th 2014 9:20am by Poldaran
And in case I haven't said it enough lately, thanks.
Edited, Dec 10th 2014 9:20am by Poldaran
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