New PC time

[heatsinkbod]

Hi all ok my PC on its last legs so have entered into the mass googling of finding a new PC OMG so far every thing I find is beyond my Budget so any help advice welcome

My old PC now about 7 years old it is a - AMD Athlon LE1640 running 2gb ram so yeh lasted long time
So what I am after

AMD CPU (Intel group please DONT try and talk me over we already battered this subject

MEMORY 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz - PATRIOT VIPER V3 RED Performance/Gaming RAM - Flexible on this but was aiming for 16gb

Motherboard - god knows from past have mainly stuck with gigabyte but am flexible on this.

Hard disk - Well I guess 1TB is ample for me but am looking to go either raid 0 or raid 1 so will need two (not sure in if I am pushing performance or backup both important) Was tempted just to get 2 x 1tb and do a raid 0 for performance and then cloud backup any personal data or get an external backup solution..............

Graphics - Well NVIDIA or AMD not to picky must still support MOHAA as seen some issues on laptops with new devices - I dont need high end as I dont play many new games but my kids do so kind of need to scope in mid range card

My Budget £550 INC VAT

An example is http://www.palicomp.co.uk/gaming-pcs...gaming-pc.html but not very flexible on hard drive spec and as soon as a tweak memory or hard disks budget out of the Window and I dont want the bloody free game.

I am also a bit behind on chipset versions so kind of not sure on the AMD 760 chipset or the later 900's got not no idea on benefits - Have always based the chipset on what it can support as in memory and CPU so god knows what some of these websites are doing

OS well do I go windows 7 or 8 - I guess 8 but wont be using touch screen but feed back from those on 8 welcome

Oh yeh the Case has t be sexy hence above link lol it must go faster with that case

have looked on Ebuyer and likes and can make a huge saving on buying bits and building myself so also an option

[JoTo]

AMD CPU (Intel group please DONT try and talk me over we already battered this subject

haha good we got that sorted

MEMORY 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz - PATRIOT VIPER V3 RED Performance/Gaming RAM - Flexible on this but was aiming for 16gb

8GB will do as fine but 16 seems to be standard now so depends on your budget here

Motherboard - god knows from past have mainly stuck with gigabyte but am flexible on this.

I can recommend AsRock, not expensive, full of features and high quality, but depending on budget gigabyte is fine too ofc.

Hard disk - Well I guess 1TB is ample for me but am looking to go either raid 0 or raid 1 so will need two (not sure in if I am pushing performance or backup both important) Was tempted just to get 2 x 1tb and do a raid 0 for performance and then cloud backup any personal data or get an external backup solution..............

wouldnt use it for performance, here a ssd drive is doing better. If budget is fine then start with 2, if not a 2nd one is easy and in no time build in.

Graphics - Well NVIDIA or AMD not to picky must still support MOHAA as seen some issues on laptops with new devices - I dont need high end as I dont play many new games but my kids do so kind of need to scope in mid range card

cannot rly say something to amd grafix as I only use nvidia, a graphix card for ~100 will be fine for everything, above is for enthusiasts (Imo)

OS well do I go windows 7 or 8 - I guess 8 but wont be using touch screen but feed back from those on 8 welcome

definatly windows7. That metro design is fine for phones but on desktop it just sucks (Imo)

and building myself so also an option

I build my compis allways on my own, then you know first hands whats in there and many pc offers are made the way to have a "killer price" but they usually lack in components no-one focuses about, like cheap power supply, cheap case, cheap motherboard.

Here example build from my hardware supplier, not including OS and DVD drive:

[JoTo]

prices are in euro and would be ~550 pounds

as said depending on budget you could vary some of the items as for cpu going bulldozer cpu (~ +50-60 GBP), antec's watercooling system (~ +50 GBP) etc.

[James]

I agree with Joto, 8Gb should be sufficient, I think it comes down to preference. When it comes to memory just look at the latency to get something good. I've always been a fan of Corsair. I currently have the DOminator XMS series. It comes with a heatsink and a fan and it's pretty bad ass.

Motherboards - There are many good ones out there. Gigabyte, MSI, AsRock, but I personally have always been a fan of Asus.

Hard drives - Ask yourself this question "What's more important for you speed\performance or the amount of space you have"?
If you want the better of both worlds get a 10k RPM Raptor, put those in Raid 0 and you should be happy, however watch out because if 1 fails, you will lose all data.
If you go for the performance route, then the obvious choice is SSD. They've matured fairly well over the years, but the price\gb ratio is still pretty high. Basically, if you're paying $1\gb that's pretty decent (especially for a good quality drive with good sequential speeds). If you look at this, it's a good deal for the performance & decent amount of space:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147193

Samsung is one of the top leaders in SSD imo. Intel is close behind too.

VGA - I use NVidia, but if you're using AMD, it would probably make sense to use ATI.
OS, If you even consider Windows 8 I will bitch slap you haha. Windows 7 x64 for sure!!!

[Appelpitje]

Sry Joto but i found a 'better' beast for 30€ more
And i know u dont want an intel cpu but an I5 3570K is totaly worth it! Performance is much better..



691€ = 581£
I have almost the same computer like this but my video card costs 200€ instead of 99€

And this is my max FPS ingame!
http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/123642924-4.jpg

[James]

WTF??? How do you get 5k+? Mine is at 2666.7 and I thought that's the highest MOHAA handles? Did you have any special settings to get a max peak like that?

[Appelpitje]

WTF??? How do you get 5k+? Mine is at 2666.7 and I thought that's the highest MOHAA handles? Did you have any special settings to get a max peak like that?

Not sure, when i configured the new pc and putted moh as first program on it then i had 3000-5000 fps but now i have like you say 2666 fps max. Dunno why

This might sound weird but im not sure that i had my drivers installed...

[DoubleKill]

maybe you max fps get limited again.... have a look on the cvar com_maxfps

[heatsinkbod]

Hey all thanks for all the info and tips - yeh going to drop down to 8gb memory just trying some config builds out on some other sites will post back soon with my updated spec

[Shadow]

@James, I got 3K fps np. But cap it at 300 anyways.

@Jon, AMD? Pffff almost stopped reading when I read that. And windows 8? Don't even freaking try! If you're looking for a tablet then yeah go with Win8.... PC = Win7. You don't want to start with all the mohaa, mohaac, xfire etc. issues on Win8 anyways.

8GB is MORE than enough yeah. And well the others already mentioned great stuff..