Upgrading PC as a novice

Ratboy

Phew! Who was that member that wrote their life story!?

To OP, afaik, the game has been renamed 14, the spec level is listed; so buy what they suggest, or buy a ps3 xbox whatever to play it.

You can spend *whatever*, and everyone has an opinion, but at the end of the day, you don't even know what game you want to buy?/play?

bluesnake

Taiko wrote: »

...and try to futureproof things.

Future proofing, in the majority of cases is (a) expensive (b) rarely worth the money (c) often not the best option

Expensive because you are buying into the latest bleeding edge of technology. You are never sure if that technology will be supported, or used. Version 2 is always faster, better and cheaper than version1. By the time a spec becomes standard, there will be a new motherboard, new standard, different bus, or spec out, or be no longer supported.

Ask anybody whom bought usb ports on motherboards around 1995 only to find in 1998 the only and first peripheral - usb mice would not work. Or the first versions or pentiums that could not do floating point calculations correctly. Or people buying the first sata3 motherboards, to find that the initial Marvello chipset would not support sata3 drives correctly, so you end up buying another sata3 controller, then the sandybridge mboard comes out a few months later, which a few months later is found to contain problems etc.

At the end you keep on chucking money into bottomless pit with little return. It is often just not worth it. Saying that SSDs are awsome - but small capacity, but their predecessor ram drive on dimms cost an arm and a leg.

gonzo127

the pic of your motherboard does look like there is not that much room so you will need to measure well,

having gone to MSI website the GTX 660 has dimensions of
220x111x36 mm (LxHxW)
http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N660-2GD5-OC.html#?div=Specification

the 7850 i posted to measures 202x115x38mm so is a tiny bit shorter, if these dont measure up properly then we can look for some smaller cards

Taiko

Thanks Gonzo, shall do some internal measurements to check there's enough room once I shut down for the evening.

Lum

Biggest issues I can see based on the information so far

1) Graphics card length. That looks like a small PC, bigger cards may end up hitting the hard drive or anything.

2) Power supply. 300W isn't enough for a decent spec gaming graphics card, you'll need to get one that has one or more PCI-E power connectors, make sure it has at least as many as your chosen graphics card needs to run

Replacing a PSU is 4 screws and a whole bunch of cables. It's pretty hard to get it wrong as the cables all go in the same way.

Taiko

Upgrades done over the weekend, gone with the recommended power supply from this thread, but found a slightly different graphics card.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-msi-gtx-660-ti-oc-28nm-pcie-30-(x16)-6008mhz-gddr5-gpu-941mhz-boost-1019mhz-cores-1344-dp-hdmi

I actually picked that card up for £199, and have to say the entire system now seems amazing. Thanks again everyone for your help.

Taiko

Guess I spoke just a tad too soon.

I've installed both parts, however when I go to startup I get 5 beeps from the computer. Took out the graphics card, and things have booted up fine.

I've checked all the motherboard drivers are up to date, so getting the feeling it may not actually be compatible after all (hard to work that out!). Any suggestions?

Taiko

It's a 530 in there now, had installed that this evening and that is working fine.

Lum

Taiko wrote: »

It's a 530 in there now, had installed that this evening and that is working fine.

Did you connect up the dedicated power cable from the PSU to the graphics card, should be 6 or 8 pin. There may be one or two



(Photo taken from my GF's recent upgrade)

Taiko

Was two 6 pin connectors going into the PSU. Shall take apart in a moment and take a photo to illustrate.