Hardware advice required

[DelayedReaction]

Hi all, my PC gave up the ghost a few days ago so I find myself unable to play elite

My hardware knowledge has been sorely lacking for the last 10 years or so so I need some help with a relatively low'ish - mid-range budget PC that is capable of playing elite well.

Total budget is probably something around £7-800 over a 3 month period.

Appreciate any help you guys can give me on this.


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[Phillipus]

I built my latest PC this time last year. Basic components and prices then were:

Intel i5 4690k quad core - £170
Asus Z-97-A motherboard - £110
Fan cooler - £25
Case - £45
Power Supply - £90
8Gb RAM - £64
GTX 970 - £270

So that's within your budget. It runs E:D great.

(Edit: I already had hard drives and sound card and re-used these)

[Bowza]

What can you salvage from your old system?


is the case and hard drives still usable?
Could the Graphics card be used short term while you wait for a better card? AMD due to announce new cards in June.

[AndyB]

I built my latest PC this time last year. Basic components and prices then were:

Intel i5 4690k quad core - £170
Asus Z-97-A motherboard - £110
Fan cooler - £25
Case - £45
Power Supply - £90
8Gb RAM - £64
GTX 970 - £270

So that's within your budget. It runs E:D great.

(Edit: I already had hard drives and sound card and re-used these)

nice mobo but way ott for a basic system, you could get away with spending a third of that

[Phillipus]

nice mobo but way ott for a basic system, you could get away with spending a third of that

Indeed, but I listed it here to show the OP that his budget can get a good system, or he can get a decent system for less.

[Bowza]

for the Budget he has I would look towards an intel 6th Gen cpu as minimum sitting on a Z170 mobo

something like that

https://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Bundles/ ... ctId=65686

[HazCat]

Just a thought, but that's actually not a bad budget. Take a look at the basic systems on sale around you (don't know if you have access to "big box" stores like CostCo in the U.S.) but you can frequently find a good baseline system and then immediately upgrade the graphics card and memory (if necessary). Integrated systems on sale are often cheaper than BYO... especially if you're willing/able to upgrade from the get-go. The "big box" stores tend to sell the system for the same cost as the rest of the stores but load them with extras (e.g., max RAM).

I'd suggest Intel i7 processor, at least 12GB RAM, and something like a Radeon R9 series GPU. You can also go with an AMD processor, they're often cheaper. Key is leverage the basics then use good old fashioned e-commerce to get the upgrades. To control cost, look for a year or two old hardware. It has the added benefit of being proven and generally having stable drivers.

It really depends on where you live and what you have access to.

[DelayedReaction]

What can you salvage from your old system?


is the case and hard drives still usable?
Could the Graphics card be used short term while you wait for a better card? AMD due to announce new cards in June.

Tbh The only 2 things I'd be prepared to move from the old machine to the new would be a hdd and the dvd-rw, the gpu is an old nvidia 620gt, one of the fan blades is broken on it and I'm pretty sure that's been causing the issues, the ram is ddr2 so that can't be shifted over. The machine is nearly 8 years old lol

[thebs]

Just a thought, but that's actually not a bad budget. Take a look at the basic systems on sale around you (don't know if you have access to "big box" stores like CostCo in the U.S.) but you can frequently find a good baseline system and then immediately upgrade the graphics card and memory (if necessary).

Don't forget there are off-lease true quad-core (not 2/4, but 4/4 core/threads) i5 and (4/8) i7 systems for cheap, especially older SandyBridge, but even IvyBridge. There are a lot of killer deals and those systems are not really any slower, especially after you upgrade the GPU.

Integrated systems on sale are often cheaper than BYO... especially if you're willing/able to upgrade from the get-go. The "big box" stores tend to sell the system for the same cost as the rest of the stores but load them with extras (e.g., max RAM). I'd suggest Intel i7 processor, at least 12GB RAM, and something like a Radeon R9 series GPU. You can also go with an AMD processor, they're often cheaper.

I'd do either AMD/Radeon for cost, especially since AMD has some potent $100 mid-level GPUs, and the board+CPU with AMD is really cheap (while the board very featured, not crippled), or ...

Go Intel/nVidia for performance, and nothing less than $200 i5 with a GTX 960 which runs $170 on-sale, let alone the GTX 970 can be had for $270 these days. Although if you can hold off until fall, there will be more options from nVidia. I couldn't, so YMMV.

Key is leverage the basics then use good old fashioned e-commerce to get the upgrades. To control cost, look for a year or two old hardware. It has the added benefit of being proven and generally having stable drivers.

Word. Here in the US, Fry's used to also put i5 and i7 Haswell boards/CPUs and systems on-sale, especially just before and after SkyLake came out.

It really depends on where you live and what you have access to.

Indeed. Here in the consumer-centric US, it's pretty good for consumers (bad in another way, but I won't go there).

[thebs]

What can you salvage from your old system?
is the case and hard drives still usable?
Could the Graphics card be used short term while you wait for a better card? AMD due to announce new cards in June.

Tbh The only 2 things I'd be prepared to move from the old machine to the new would be a hdd and the dvd-rw, the gpu is an old nvidia 620gt, one of the fan blades is broken on it and I'm pretty sure that's been causing the issues, the ram is ddr2 so that can't be shifted over. The machine is nearly 8 years old lol

That hard drive is going to be slow.

For $60, you can get a 240GB NAND (SSD) device. That's where I put my Windows C: drive, usually 127GiB (purposeful undercommit). This purposely because Windows boots slow, and Windows Update is even worse. Of course, it will eventually wear it out (ignore enthusiast sites, Windows writes 20-200x more "meta-data" than data in FAT-based file systems like NTFS), although that can be mitigated by putting swap and defining TEMP/TMP elsewhere.

If you still have money, then get a $80 1TB+8GB SSHD (platter+NAND) hybrid drive for the Windows D: drive, which is where all software is installed, including Steam. I usually like to get two (2) so I can RAID-1 and backup C: to D: (C: not being RAID). If you're just going to use Elite, it might all fit in the single 240GB NAND though. I don't know what the size of your existing hard drive is, but you could make it the D: drive too. Just beware its performance.

I prefer a SSHD hybrid, and the 8GB of NAND in the SSHD will cache most of the Elite (6GiB) blocks within a few runs, so it will be much faster. But one can still add a 2nd Steam folder (e.g., C:/SteamSSD) so one can install select games (selected at install-time) that can benefit from the read access of NAND. I do this for Fallout 4, which has a horrendous I/O-load design.