New year, new hardware


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Hi guys, looking for a bit of input for my new year hardware refresh.

First up what I've got now

 

Phenom 2 x4 3ghz

8gb ddr2 800 corsair ram

Radeon 6990 4gb

 

With two 22inch monitors maxing out at 1920x1080 each

 

what I'm looking to upgrade to

 

Pretty much sorted on the i5 4690k

No preference on the z97 board maybe the asrock extreme6

again no preference on the ram, would like minimum 8gb ddr3 would prefer 2400mhz

 

A new CPU heat sink/fan. Not immediately planning on overclocking, bit would like the option in the future

 

If theres any money left in my budget id like a new hdd too, my current 1tb is nearly full so would like another 1tb

 

Looking to spend ?350-?400

 

I mainly game on this pc, it runs windows 7. The game in particular will be gta5 when it comes out

 

 

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know, looking for uk suppliers and I've an amazon prime account for free delivery if applicable

 

Thanks in advance

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Kingston Hyper-X Beast 2400MHz modules in 8GB or 16GB pairs are quite commonly on discount on Amazon UK (I bought mine earlier this year for around ?112 for 16GB). Not availible on offer at the moment for a good price, might be when you're looking to buy though.

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Kingston Hyper-X Beast 2400MHz modules in 8GB or 16GB pairs are quite commonly on discount on Amazon UK (I bought mine earlier this year for around ?112 for 16GB). Not availible on offer at the moment for a good price, might be when you're looking to buy though.

 

Cheers, I see they're at ?136 at the moment, looking to buy in Jan so lets hope they come down a bit by then

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As far as the new heatsink fan - it would really depend on what you have now, and what you are expecting/wanting to get out of it.

If you have the stock setup, then going to something like a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is great @ $30 USD
Or if you are wanting to get something with water, the Corsair H80i is very popular.
I too will vouch for the Hyper X - great stuff before any G.Skill stuff

 

As far as the RAM speed -
it doesnt mean a whole lot unless you spend a lot of time with benchmarks.
You mention OC-ing in the future - thats fine, just realize its really just about testing/bragging rights - dont expect a performance boost.

You mention its mainly for gaming - then there is NO need to get more than 8GB.
 

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I use this 8GB with my Z97 UD5H

G.SKILL Trident X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model F3-2400C9D-8GTXD

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B00A3KIFRW/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

 

 

Cheers for the info, motherboard looks good too

 

As far as the new heatsink fan - it would really depend on what you have now, and what you are expecting/wanting to get out of it.

If you have the stock setup, then going to something like a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is great @ $30 USD

Or if you are wanting to get something with water, the Corsair H80i is very popular.

I too will vouch for the Hyper X - great stuff before any G.Skill stuff

 

As far as the RAM speed -

it doesnt mean a whole lot unless you spend a lot of time with benchmarks.

You mention OC-ing in the future - thats fine, just realize its really just about testing/bragging rights - dont expect a performance boost.

You mention its mainly for gaming - then there is NO need to get more than 8GB.

 

 

Yep 8gb of ram will save me money too! Not too interested in a water cooling setup, probe more than I need.

The ram speed was just to make sure that any future bottlenecks in my system would be with the graphics card or ssd. Those would be the next things to upgrade in 18 months or so

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Yep 8gb of ram will save me money too! Not too interested in a water cooling setup, probe more than I need.

The ram speed was just to make sure that any future bottlenecks in my system would be with the graphics card or ssd. Those would be the next things to upgrade in 18 months or so

Well if you are facing some kind of noticeable bottleneck in the future- it wont be RAM speed that you are "feeling" - because only a benchmark can tell the difference.

Just wanted to point that out - so if you are deciding between 2 types of RAM, the higher clocked on will cost more - just realize that there isnt much of a ROI on that stuff.  Just get the speed that works for your mobo/CPU

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