Hardware & Technical Help me decide on my PC upgrade.

[Kar]

I play on a old PC and I am currently saving to upgrade my MB, CPU and of course going to buy new ram sticks.

I am on very low budget. The reason I do not mention buying a video card is because, been old, my video card is the one for the old cards that can do DX 11.

I can tell you that I play ED well with my current setup and some other games that are a bit demanding too, of course I always need to adjust graphics settings.

For my shame, here are my current specs:

Athlon 64 XP X2 Dual Core 5000 2.6mhz

Asus M2R-MVP 32 -

5GB ram - (I know, dont ask lol)

HD 7750 VGA

I play on a Asus 21" monitor at 1680x1050 60hz

This is a old system, the MB alone is like 10 years old, and sometimes i have problems with the computer due testing hardware and other stuff, lets just say, my case is opened often.

I cannot buy a shiny new CPU or the latest kickass graphics card.

I was waiting for ZEN CPU's from AMD since the new RX video cards already came out.

Since my video card is, I guess, ok, I can wait to upgrade it in a few months when the recent ATI cards get more cheaper. (sorry Nvidea fans, I am all AMD )

I am going to buy a cheap mini atx board from MSI ( MSI A88XM-E35-V2) and a AMD Athlon X4 860K 4-Core 3.7GHz.

Have not decided yet what brand and what kind but the ram sticks are going to be kingston or corsair, DDR3 (prob corsair) 2x4Gb 2133mhz.

These are my short term upgrade. I can still use my video card and the rest of the stuff.

Then I will get a SSD, a hardrive with 2 or 3 TB and then the video card.

What are your thoughts about this plan and the hardware involved? Also, I would like to know if there are any people with similar hardware and their thoughts on how well ED runs.

Thanks.

 

[Esral Sa Nikto]

This is not on topic, and a moderator should move it to another forum.

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

Have not decided yet what brand and what kind but the ram sticks are going to be kingston or corsair, DDR3 (prob corsair) 2x4Gb 2133mhz.

Well with your system and since your looking to save a few bucks. Just buy 1600mhz ram. It will make no difference. Get the beautiful ones with a green PCB and no heat spreader. You would be amazed at the price difference.

 

[Kar]

This is not on topic, and a moderator should move it to another forum.

Well, then sorry, if any mod see this plz move to the right place.

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

This is not on topic, and a moderator should move it to another forum.

There is no 'right' forum for this. That guys just an uptight       .

 

[Kar]

There is no 'right' forum for this. That guys just an uptight .

Yea, could not find a "technical" forum or a "off topic" forum" lol.

And since this is Elite related, because im not asking advice on building a PC to play no mans sky or whatever. I want to play elite, in a bit better of what I currently have, using Elite to improve my PC is great because any other games that I usually play, will play very well.

Also, my long term plan is to have 3 monitors to play Elite. I do not care much about VR, because I believe VR tech is not yet good to play games, at least, not in the sense of image quality and resolution.
But that will depend of the graphics card to support 3 monitors, hell, any cockpit would be great!

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Well with your system and since your looking to save a few bucks. Just buy 1600mhz ram. It will make no difference. Get the beautiful ones with a green PCB and no heat spreader. You would be amazed at the price difference.

I am thinking in OC.

 

[GG7]

I would suggest just saving your money until YOU CAN afford a proper upgrade. Until you replace the majority of those aging components with something more current, I would consider it a bad investment to buy anything new just because it happens to work with the other old parts. Never a good way of choosing upgrades.

 

[Modgier]

What exactly is the budget though?

 

[Zeeman]

I would suggest just saving your money until YOU CAN afford a proper upgrade. Until you replace the majority of those aging components with something more current, I would consider it a bad investment to buy anything new just because it happens to work with the other old parts. Never a good way of choosing upgrades.

This. Honestly,my original ED setup was much like yours, except with a GTX 750. I went to an 4690K, Asus Ranger, SSD and GTX970, the difference is... Rather large.

If you're looking to save cash, find yourself a 4 core Athlon x64 processor to slot in, some more ram perhaps, and an SSD (if your hardware supports it, which it should). I think you're better off saving pennies for a proper upgrade.

Considered second hand? My rig was all second hand, except the power supply and graphics card (GTX970 was mid life at the time).

GTX970's go for $200(Aussie) these days on the second hand market, that is a boatload of grunt for not much cash. I don't presume to know your budget, but I've seen a lot of seriously good complete systems going for $600-$800 (i5 4xxx, Z/H97 with GTX 970). I'd be much more inclined to go that way, if possible.

I know you said you're all AMD, but right now, I think Intel/nVidia have a more efficient system, no point saving money on the hardware if end up spending more on the power to run it.

Having said that, if you insist on AMD, plenty of good second hand AMD rigs out there, too, and even less cash.
Z...

 

[Gator Country]

Another piece of advice I'd give is to not neglect the PSU when you upgrade - I'd go for a new one for sure, especially if your current one is several years old. And buy a good quality unit, too; stay away from the $30-$40 no-name junk.

 

[Zeeman]

Another piece of advice I'd give is to not neglect the PSU when you upgrade - I'd go for a new one for sure, especially if your current one is several years old. And buy a good quality unit, too; stay away from the $30-$40 no-name junk.

Yup, which is exactly what I did. Couldn't agree more.

Z...

 

[Owsla]

I had an older system for a while with a 955 phenom processor and an 7850 Sapphire card, it held up pretty well for quite a while,
but the issue with trying to upgrade on the very cheap usual means having to upgrade components again because their not future proof,
which can work out at costing close to what you would have paid for a better upgrade in the first place.

I would recommend saving up and buying a motherboard first that will take an i3 but also will be able to put an i5 or an i7 into later on down the road,
because if you buy a cheap motherboard you will have to buy another motherboard later on, that will accept higher end processors.
So yeah, I would say keep the card you have for now, and focus on a decent motherboard for about £70-£80 that will take an i3 (you should be able to find one at a good price that already has an i3 and 8gb Ram)
but make sure the board will accept an i5 or i7 as well.

You then won't have to worry about the board not being able to keep up with a later graphics card upgraded, because it won't take a powerful enough cpu.
Perhaps put this into a new big case so you know you'll have room for any card you want to buy later.
You can get very good cool cases for around £30 these days.

I think you should be able to do this with about £250 (ish) all together.

 

[Pville_Piper]

If your in the USA I've got a GTX 660 I'll give you.

 

[Boomer Kay]

I am going to buy a cheap mini atx board from MSI ( MSI A88XM-E35-V2) and a AMD Athlon X4 860K 4-Core 3.7GHz.

I've built 2 "budget" Systems -one for my girlfriend one for a friend- with the AMD Vishera FX-4300 (3.8GHz) (50-60 bucks just the CPU, leaves you about 20 bucks to get a decent, silent CPU cooler ... forget the stock ones, they're really a pain and should be avoided) on a cheap Asrock MicroATX (ASRock 960GM) board <50 bucks. GTX730 / GTX750ti as GFX cards (<100 bucks .. there might be something better on the market by now .. maybe AMD, they have the better lower budget cards?)

Cheapest DDR3-1600 with CL9 (about 40 bucks .. Patriot or GEiL).

About 220-260 bucks (more or less depending if you pay in pound, $ or €) and a pretty solid performer. More than good enough to run ED, even with horizons.

 

[Patrick_68000]

And do not forget. On the second hand market you can find high quality components. For eg : I recently purchased on the Internet, a hard disk of 80GB SATA II of Seagate (for a specific need) for 6 euros (yes 6 euros). Excellent condition. These are often recovery of IT parks of company. Tested and reconditioning, almost like new

 

[Kar]

What exactly is the budget though?

Pretty low. I have about 150-170 Euros. Thats why I am just getting the base.

I would suggest just saving your money until YOU CAN afford a proper upgrade. Until you replace the majority of those aging components with something more current, I would consider it a bad investment to buy anything new just because it happens to work with the other old parts. Never a good way of choosing upgrades.

The main problem on my current system is my motherboard. Not only because it has over 10 years old, but, I know my way around hardware, I know what to buy if I had much more money, but also because my motherboard has seen a lot abuse in the last years of swamping hardware for testing and to fix other computers by testing several components. I started to have many problems with it. Windows crashes, bios sometimes does not boot and give errors. Recently I came to a desperate move and gave up for 4 days since the computer refused to boot. Then after more testing, I just found out the PCI slots are getting bad. I have 2 PCI slot x16 for VGA, and the main on started to make bad contacts with my vga card. That was the main reason I was having problems. The computer is stable now.

The "old" parts that would be mixed, are for the time be, hardrive, dvd and VGA. Instead of buying older stuff like something like AM3+ and a FX CPU, I decided on FM2+ with the Athlon X4. This combo has the particularity to consume less power and it is a quad core and cheap.
I am just asking opinions to the community to get a "sense" if I can say it, to see what would be a cheap system based on your overall experience with Elite.
By buying a motherboard, CPU and ram sticks, I basically have a new computer.

In my current PC build, I play Elite on medium settings with no loss in FPS (just internet lagging sometimes when loading stations or supercruise). I just wanted to "elevate" a bit the quality.
Also, to help even more my situation, I recently got out of job... I would probably start working in November-December, since a friend told me they need one person to replace someone that is doing bad work, they cannot fire this person because here on my country (Portugal) you work on contract and they must abide the duration of the contract.

Also, I am thinking in a long term to build other machine when I get a stable job. I just need to build a cheap machine now, first for stability, to get new components (new is new whatever the parts be good or high end). The 2nd machine will be built on the ZEN AMD technology but I do want to wait to see what the motherboard brands like Asus, Gibabyte or MSI going to "invent" for the ZEN.

For now, the goals are to get a cheap stable machine that can run Elite (because If I can run Elite much better then now, all other games will run better), so, MB FM2+ CPU X4 and a set of DDR3. This is on my budget. Even a set for a I3 will get over my budget. This combo will work well with my current 7750 ATI card, believe it or not, this card, is the last of the 7700 series that can do DX11, this is way I can still get away in some games with a somehow "ok" performance. After this, I will get a SSD and then a VGA card since I want to bet in a good one but this must be done in some time frame because of my low budget now.

Another piece of advice I'd give is to not neglect the PSU when you upgrade - I'd go for a new one for sure, especially if your current one is several years old. And buy a good quality unit, too; stay away from the $30-$40 no-name junk.

Believe it or not, my PSU is not gold, 80+ and all that stuff. I got a 10 year old 600w CoolerMaster PSU that is pretty dam good. Already saved my PC twice from spikes on the electrical grid protecting the PC!
I have the custom to clean my PC twice per year, usually in the end of the spring, beginning of Summer. I dissemble everything on my PC. I even put new thermal paste on the CPU. The PSU is all disassembled and cleaned. This kind of care I have, increased the life of my system.

If your in the USA I've got a GTX 660 I'll give you.

That is pretty kind from you. I think it is the first time on my gaming experience and in community forums that anyone EVER, offer something to me.
Thank you very much for your kind offer, unfortunately I do not live in the States. I live in Europe, Portugal. In any case, that is the first time someone that do not know me offer me something to help my gaming. I wish all the best to you.

I thank you all for your efforts and opinions here, you give your best to help me. Thank you all.

 

[MickyG1982]

I play on a old PC and I am currently saving to upgrade my MB, CPU and of course going to buy new ram sticks.

I am on very low budget. The reason I do not mention buying a video card is because, been old, my video card is the one for the old cards that can do DX 11.

I can tell you that I play ED well with my current setup and some other games that are a bit demanding too, of course I always need to adjust graphics settings.

For my shame, here are my current specs:

Athlon 64 XP X2 Dual Core 5000 2.6mhz

Asus M2R-MVP 32 -

5GB ram - (I know, dont ask lol)

HD 7750 VGA

I play on a Asus 21" monitor at 1680x1050 60hz

This is a old system, the MB alone is like 10 years old, and sometimes i have problems with the computer due testing hardware and other stuff, lets just say, my case is opened often.

I cannot buy a shiny new CPU or the latest kickass graphics card.

I was waiting for ZEN CPU's from AMD since the new RX video cards already came out.

Since my video card is, I guess, ok, I can wait to upgrade it in a few months when the recent ATI cards get more cheaper. (sorry Nvidea fans, I am all AMD )

I am going to buy a cheap mini atx board from MSI ( MSI A88XM-E35-V2) and a AMD Athlon X4 860K 4-Core 3.7GHz.

Have not decided yet what brand and what kind but the ram sticks are going to be kingston or corsair, DDR3 (prob corsair) 2x4Gb 2133mhz.

These are my short term upgrade. I can still use my video card and the rest of the stuff.

Then I will get a SSD, a hardrive with 2 or 3 TB and then the video card.

What are your thoughts about this plan and the hardware involved? Also, I would like to know if there are any people with similar hardware and their thoughts on how well ED runs.

Thanks.

Honestly, as much as I like AMD, I cannot recommend the 860K at all, not with Zen just around the corner & even though I OWN a system with the 860K in it. You will literally be throwing good money after bad if you do.

I like it, it's a decent enough chip, but there is no upgrade path from it & that makes it almost worthless in a new build.

My recommendation, if you are going cheap and don't plan on overclocking is something along the line of this:

Intel Skylake Core i3 6100: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-BX80662I36100-Skylake-Dual-Core-Processor/dp/B015VPX2EO £92.91 (Yes I know it's dual core, but it will still outperform the Athlon 860K, plus you can upgrade from it without having to change the motherboard

Gigabyte H110M-S2H Micro ATX motherboard https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-H110M-S2H-Motherboard-Socket-Express/dp/B01649KMZS/ref=pd_bxgy_147_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H9PQ7YYPRAMB8A95E94S £51.61

8GB HyperX Fury RAM DDR4 https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-Mem...g_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H9PQ7YYPRAMB8A95E94S £35.05

Total cost of £179.57 or around 207 Euro

Changing the i3 6100 for an i5 6500 ups the price to around £300, the extra performance is worth it (if you can afford the cost) but the i3 will still outperform an 860k in all respects at 1080p.

Your 860K build would cost around the same but have DDR3 Memory instead and no upgrade path.

As much as I hate to say it, I'd go for Intel at this point in time.

 

[Kar]

@
MickyG1982

Thank you for your recommendation.

I know ZEN is coming. Also I know with this build I am not going expand. The thing is I do not need to expand it. Even the motherboard is limited. I am out of job right and manged to save just a bit for this.

If everything goes well (fingers crossed) at the end of the year I will have a new job. I have something already fixed but I still need to wait a 2 to 3 months for a place to get vacant.

The idea behind this cheap system is for a future second computer. Next year, when the market starts to settle I want to build a ZEN system. I know there are many Intel fanboys out there, and by no means I am saying Intel sux, I just think Intel (and Nvidia) ask too much money for their high end stuff.

I think this is the first time on my life I will build a PC on a very small budget. My goal next year, hopefully around summer is to have a powerful system with 3 monitors and a custom water loop. I always build computers all my life so I know pretty much about it.

The reason I came with this thread was to see what kind of systems people recommend base on low budget and to play Elite.
Seeing you play on a 860k and dam...lol, your MSI is basically identical to the one I want to buy.
I have to ask: How well you play Elite? I know you play good, at least better then me since you have a 960. How much details can you put and also at what resolution you play?

The final goal for these cheap build is to buy a kickass video card to be used latter, but then I might just go for 2 cards in the future on the next build, we will see if AMD lives to their marketing with the ZEN, otherwise I will get prob a I7. But all this is just thinking too much ahead. First, cheap system, start the new job, getting a SSD, a video card, a solid good big hardrive lol and then start building the "mean machine"

 

[MickyG1982]

@
MickyG1982

Thank you for your recommendation.

I know ZEN is coming. Also I know with this build I am not going expand. The thing is I do not need to expand it. Even the motherboard is limited. I am out of job right and manged to save just a bit for this.

If everything goes well (fingers crossed) at the end of the year I will have a new job. I have something already fixed but I still need to wait a 2 to 3 months for a place to get vacant.

The idea behind this cheap system is for a future second computer. Next year, when the market starts to settle I want to build a ZEN system. I know there are many Intel fanboys out there, and by no means I am saying Intel sux, I just think Intel (and Nvidia) ask too much money for their high end stuff.

I think this is the first time on my life I will build a PC on a very small budget. My goal next year, hopefully around summer is to have a powerful system with 3 monitors and a custom water loop. I always build computers all my life so I know pretty much about it.

The reason I came with this thread was to see what kind of systems people recommend base on low budget and to play Elite.
Seeing you play on a 860k and dam...lol, your MSI is basically identical to the one I want to buy.
I have to ask: How well you play Elite? I know you play good, at least better then me since you have a 960. How much details can you put and also at what resolution you play?

The final goal for these cheap build is to buy a kickass video card to be used latter, but then I might just go for 2 cards in the future on the next build, we will see if AMD lives to their marketing with the ZEN, otherwise I will get prob a I7. But all this is just thinking too much ahead. First, cheap system, start the new job, getting a SSD, a video card, a solid good big hardrive lol and then start building the "mean machine"

Performance wise, it's merely adequate. In space I get a steady 60fps, but no more at 1080p & high settings (No supersampling either). Stations is roughly the same but fluctuating between 50 & 60 fps with 40 - 50 on planet surfaces depending on just how much is going on. It plays the game better than my Xbox One does however & seems to be rather snappy when opening the galaxy map etc. You might get more performance if you spend out on an 880k (it's about £10 more than the 860k) but the difference is marginal & it would still be outpaced (even overclocked) by a current generation i3 unfortunately.

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Something else to look for (it might be limited to my particular motherboard) when I bought it in order to run the 860k I had to update the BIOS just to get the system to boot. Unfortunately, the only way to update the BIOS was to have a system that at least booted to Windows.

To get around this issue I had to buy this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0095VPBM2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 an APU that my Motherboard's BIOS did support, just to update the BIOS so I could use the 860k.

It's an extra expense that may be a factor in your choice.

 

[JetsonRING]

This is not on topic, and a moderator should move it to another forum.

Loosen your sphincter a bit . . .