Upgrading my PC , some suggestions

S

scubiwho20

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 23, 2009
Messages
153
Reaction score
0
Location
Durban
Hi Guys
Please could you recommend a nice quick system, Motherboard , CPU and Ram.

The case and power supply ( new power supply just purchased ) and hard drives ( 1 x Solid State drive & 5 x Sata Hard drives ) I will use for the new motherboard.

How would I know if the motherboard will fit my case ?

I use photoshop and watch Blue Ray movies, don't play Games. Budget about R3500.

What would you recommend best for the rands.

Thanks
Vaughan
 
What case do you have? I'd guess that you have an ATX case - so most motherboards (ATX & micro-ATX), except enthusiast (very high end) motherboards, should fit.

What graphics card do you have? Having a good workstation graphics card could also speed up Photoshop.

I'd recommend going for:
CPU: Intel Core i5 3470 @ R2,053
Motherboard: ASRock B75M motherboard @ R710
RAM: Team TXD316G1600HC9DC-V, Vulcan with Red heatsinks, 16GB (2x 8GB) @ R760
Shipping of about R50
Total: ~ R3600

These ASRock motherboards come with XFast RAM software, which would allow you to create a RAM drive that you can use as a scratch pad in Photoshop, which can dramatically increase your work efficiency in large projects.
 
Hi
Thanks this great info Pada. I think I have the Nvida Geforce GTx 250 graphics card, just can not remember at the moment the model. Will there be enough SATA connections for my drives on the motherboard ?
Great tip concerning Ram drive , that sounds awesome. I hope my solid state will show it worth with the i5.
Thanks
 
Hmm. You probably won't need the GeForce GTS 250 then, unless you're going to run more than 2 digital screens. Like my colleague is running 4 screens: 2 off his motherboard and 2 off his GTS 250.

The motherboard has 8 SATA ports in total: 5x SATA3G + 3x SATA6G
So you can install your HDD's on the SATA3G ports and your SSD on the SATA6G one. The only issue is that the motherboard does not appear to support RAID - but you haven't mentioned anything about that either ;)

If you have time, I'd suggest that wait for comments from other people too.
 
lol.... for me that does not even cover half the price of my GPU.... that is a very tight budget. Photoshop can be a little graphic intensive, but you could probably get away with an onboard GPU and an i3 maybe i5 processor. Esquire have some good priced Asus boards.

Esquire:
i5 3470 (3.2ghz quad core 4 threads) @R1589.00excl (R1811.46 incl)
Asus P8H77-V @R1299.00excl (R1480.86 incl)
Axtrom Seitec 4.0GB DDR3 1600MHZ @R199.00 excl X 2 for 8GB R453.72 incl

Tot = R3746.04 (a little over budget)
 
HI
Yes I do run two screens at the moment and dont think I use RAID. I do have a Mede8er 1000X3D that I connect to my PC via Lan Cable from my Router to view my TV series. My movies sit on the Mede8er. We all connect to the Router and sometimes the other view some files ( Movies & TV series etc ) from the a laptop and ipads. I keep checking to see what is recommended, thanks for the help so far. You guys know what you talking about.
 
@SirFooK'nG:
The OP won't need such an expensive motherboard. Secondly 8GB is on the low side in terms of RAM, especially if you're going to create a RAM drive for a scratch pad.
 
@Pada ... was looking at Esquire prices, thats all... me I know jack about RAM drive / scratch pad (something for a kitty?) lol. CPU is good tho (your reccomendation too) I agree there are cheaper mobos...
 
I'd go with Pada's suggestion, that's pretty much the best one can do with your budget if your workload is productivity-orientated. I'll chip in with an AMD build to keep things even:

AMD FX-6100 @ R1533
MSI 970A-G46 @ R943
TEAM Xtreem Vulcan DDR3-1600 16GB @ R760
Total: R3236

Only slightly less expensive and it'll perform about the same, with the extra two cores coming in handy if you use multi-threaded plugins with Photoshop. Otherwise, it's Intel all the way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X