phoenix
New member
I'll be spoiling myself soon to the tune of a partial PC upgrade.
I aim to have assembled the parts I need for this PC upgrade/transplant by December at the very latest, or whenever I have amassed an additional R4500.
Given the above budget, my requirements are that my new machine be able to run the most current games as well as those to be released in the near future with aplomb, though not necessarily at the highest possible resolution with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering cranked up to eyepopping levels.A reasonable framerate is more important to me than a pretty slideshow. I am also wont to play around with the odd bit of image editing in The GIMP and abuse polygons in Blender. I hardly ever do any video editing, but when I do, the project is small-not more than a Gb or two. That summarises what I use my PC for.
So far as specifications are concerned, I am looking at an H67-based [or even H61] motherboard [I don't overclock] with a Core i5 2400 and 4Gb of DDR1333 RAM [unless Bulldozer turns out to a pleasant-and more economical-surprise] My new case will be most likely be a Zalman Z9. I shall also be bringing across my DVD-ROM drive, a Radeon HD6870, a 250Gb and 160Gb hard drive and my Xonar DS. According to the online power requirement calculator I used, a 600W PSU should be adequate I'd be looking at getting a Coolermaster Extreme Power 600W PSU as I have been satisfied with Coolermaster units in the past.
I am likely to go with Windows 7 Home Basic [if I can get the 64 bit disc from Microsoft once I have bought it] instead of Premium as I shan't miss Aero and don't need to create a home network. Nor do I need Windows Media Centre. [and if I did, there are free alternatives] I have looked at a comparison of Home Premium versus Basic features and can live without the extra as I don't use them. I may even go with Ubuntu for a few months while I wait for Windows 8.
What do you think? Am I going overboard? Is The Witcher 2 going to struggle on that spec? Should I save myself some money and stick with my Core2 Duo E8400 for another year or until it packs up?
I aim to have assembled the parts I need for this PC upgrade/transplant by December at the very latest, or whenever I have amassed an additional R4500.
Given the above budget, my requirements are that my new machine be able to run the most current games as well as those to be released in the near future with aplomb, though not necessarily at the highest possible resolution with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering cranked up to eyepopping levels.A reasonable framerate is more important to me than a pretty slideshow. I am also wont to play around with the odd bit of image editing in The GIMP and abuse polygons in Blender. I hardly ever do any video editing, but when I do, the project is small-not more than a Gb or two. That summarises what I use my PC for.
So far as specifications are concerned, I am looking at an H67-based [or even H61] motherboard [I don't overclock] with a Core i5 2400 and 4Gb of DDR1333 RAM [unless Bulldozer turns out to a pleasant-and more economical-surprise] My new case will be most likely be a Zalman Z9. I shall also be bringing across my DVD-ROM drive, a Radeon HD6870, a 250Gb and 160Gb hard drive and my Xonar DS. According to the online power requirement calculator I used, a 600W PSU should be adequate I'd be looking at getting a Coolermaster Extreme Power 600W PSU as I have been satisfied with Coolermaster units in the past.
I am likely to go with Windows 7 Home Basic [if I can get the 64 bit disc from Microsoft once I have bought it] instead of Premium as I shan't miss Aero and don't need to create a home network. Nor do I need Windows Media Centre. [and if I did, there are free alternatives] I have looked at a comparison of Home Premium versus Basic features and can live without the extra as I don't use them. I may even go with Ubuntu for a few months while I wait for Windows 8.
What do you think? Am I going overboard? Is The Witcher 2 going to struggle on that spec? Should I save myself some money and stick with my Core2 Duo E8400 for another year or until it packs up?
