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watersilver
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Need Help Upgrading PC

Thu May 17, 2012 7:18 pm

So I'm not a huge PC gamer, but between Diablo III now and The Secret World later on, I think it is time to upgrade to play them. I should note that when asking my friends who know about this kind of stuff, I find that they are the type of people who are only happy with 'beastly' rigs, throwing tons of money into it. As for me, I just wanna be able to play some of the current games on medium to high settings. I'm not looking to max out Battlefield 3 here.

The only part of my current build I'll bother to post is my graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 4850. The reason for this is that it's pretty much the only thing I've been told is worth keeping in my system. It isn't best card out there, but I've been told it should be able to run D3 fairly well until I can spring for a new one down the line. As of now, I wanna keep my spending to around 300, give or take.

Money, it seems, will have to go to a processor and motherboard.

The first processor I was pointed to is the AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Quad Core Processor AM3 3.4GHZ 8MB Cache 125W 45NM. For around the price, it's supposed to be one of the best.
If I go for this CPU, what is a cheap motherboard that will go with it?
It also seems RAM is dirt cheap at the moment, so is going for 8Gb for 50 really worth is. Is there a huge difference going from 4 to 6 to 8?

Basically, what is the best combination or RAM, Mobo and CPU one can get for about 300?
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: Need Help Upgrading PC

Thu May 17, 2012 7:25 pm

In a recent thread, I wrote:
Do you live near a Micro Center?
http://www.microcenter.com/at_the_stores/index.html
Micro Center has much better deals on processors + motherboards than Newegg does.
In another thread, I wrote:
$190 Intel Core i5-3570K + $60 ASRock Z77 Pro4-M
$250+tax seems like a bargain for motherboard + CPU. I paid a net of $377½ for mine.


The cheapest way to get a decent complete gaming PC may be to buy a refurbished or scratched-and-dented Inspiron 620 with Core i3-2120 CPU from the Dell outlet for $339+tax and then add your Radeon HD4850 to it.
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watersilver
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Re: Need Help Upgrading PC

Thu May 17, 2012 8:02 pm

I would be more happy to buy new parts. I've had a bad experience with 2nd hand GPUs.
 
ludi
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Re: Need Help Upgrading PC

Fri May 18, 2012 11:07 am

watersilver wrote:
I would be more happy to buy new parts. I've had a bad experience with 2nd hand GPUs.

Used GPUs, especially former high-end GPUs, can flake out unexpectedly because they spend most of their life running really hot. One of those Dells that JAE linked will probably have come back from an office lease where it did nothing but Outlook and Excel all day long, and there's really no way to assemble that kind of hardware from parts at your budget level since you're getting the case, power supply, and disk subsystem included. The fact that they come with the Win7-64 license still attached and a standard Dell warranty, is a party bonus.
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superjawes
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Re: Need Help Upgrading PC

Fri May 18, 2012 11:28 am

I splurged a little on my PC about three years ago (jeeze...does not seem like that long ago), and I crank through D3 and pretty much anything I pick up off Steam with no problem. I've got a first gen i7 (quad core) with 6GB (triple channel) DDR3, and the only upgrade I put in was my GPU to a GTX 460, or whatever the series was at at the time. I probably won't need to rebuild for several years, either.

I point this out because I feel like spending a little more to have a nice CPU/mobo set me up pretty well. Granted, this was also my first PC (at least my own) so I wanted something nice. That's just my 2 cents on power overall.

Your CPU looks good to me, and more RAM means more headroom. I usually have stuff open on two monitors. I'll even play games with Firefox open, and that uses a good chunk of RAM. Having more isn't going to hurt anything, and you could feel more comfortable having lots of things running while you're playing.
On second thought, let's not go to TechReport. It's infested by crypto bull****.

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