Spring RTS Engine

I would like some hardware advice, and I hope someone can/would like to help me.

I now have a HP elite laptop that I got from my university. I has served me well, but for various reasons I need a new system. I can't play new games. But most importantly, it overheats rather quickly and turns itself off. I don't think running a web browser, a spring lobby, a 3d environment and a 'painting' environment all at the same time should be a luxury, so I've decided: no more laptop.

I was thinking about buying a Club3D Radeon HD 7850 royalQueen for around E 160, and compose the rest around that.

I'm not really up to date on any of this pc hardware stuff any more, so I was wondering if anyone though that'd be a good idea. Or maybe give some alternative advice.

I think my total budget should be somewhere in-between 400 and 600 (maybe 700) euro's, (without monitor and such.)

All advice is appreciated.

I built a pc about 8 months ago, and I found these to be invaluable resources:

http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc
http://pcpartpicker.com/
http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales

I would advise against ATI. While you do get 10% more performance for your money, you also get 2x as many driver and legacy game issues. Especially for OpenGL apps. (GTX-650 125 EURO)

Definitely get an SSD, even the cheapo ones are nice. (Samsung 840 100 euro for 128 gigs)

I recommend Intel for the CPU, because of the superior single threaded performance for money. Socket 1155 is most likely your best bet in this price range. The performance difference clock for clock between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge is negligible. So a proper 4 cored (at least 4 core 4 thread) CPU is recommended. (i5-2400: 175 EURO)

Since only a few users run multiple GPU-s, you dont need to spend much on a motherboard. (75 EURO)

Ram is cheap, get 8 gigs of whatever fits your motherboard. Dont waste money on 'enthusiast' memory. (50 EURO)

Hard drives are a bit expensive cause of price fixing, so 1-2TB or something cheap should fit your budget well. (100 EURO)

Case and PSU for another 75 EURO lands you at 700.

what behe said

Beherith wrote: Case and PSU for another 75 EURO lands you at 700.

Don't neglect the PSU: Buy a good brand PSU, I have a corsair VX550, but that was a couple of years ago. But make sure that the PSU has a good efficiency, and enough current on the +12V rail, I have 41A. Don't just look for wattage. A good PSU will save you electricity cost and also possibly be quite silent. But then you don't get a case + PSU for 75 eur. My PSU cost maybe 75 eur.

Great solid advice guys. Thanks a lot! Much appreciated.
I'll most probably order it next week, and when I do, let you know what I've decided on exactly.

Out of curiosity, what was your old laptop model? Also, do you plan on getting a beefier monitor or do you already have one?

Agree 100% about spending a little extra to get a good power supply. I've had enough cheapo pieces of shit fail on me over the years, but I haven't had a good one fail yet. I've got a modular OCZ which has been running almost 24/7 for 3 years now, a Seasonic which has been running 24/7 for 2.5 years, and put a Corsair in my brother's which he runs most of the day for about a year.

I've also had no problems getting mail-in rebates back from OCZ and Corsair.

I don't know what site you European guys prefer to buy parts from, but make sure you check for bundle deals too. On sites like Newegg over here, you can usually get an extra $15-20 on the motherboard in a bundle deal with a CPU, assuming you get a popular one. My brother got 8 GB of RAM bundled free with his mobo in his last PC.

FireStorm_ wrote:Great solid advice guys. Thanks a lot! Much appreciated.
I'll most probably order it next week, and when I do, let you know what I've decided on exactly.

Third generation Intel Processor Ivy Bridge has been out for almost a year now and the new architecture Haswell will be released around Q2 of this year. I would hold purchase until then to make an upgrade.

Haswell will feature transactional memory and other new features that will supposedly help utilize more core or make it easier for developers to parallelize their code.

Another thing that will most likely coming out is DDR4 DRAM, and these days, things are built around DRAM for faster fetch. Going for reliable RAM is better than going for performance RAM since speed delta is marginal. Samsung is lead in this area of technology with specialty being efficiency and smallest transistor size, but Hynix is also good alternative. 8GB is good size if going 64bit operating system.

SSD if you can afford it since Windows is crap at caching your RAM. If you need large capacity, one hard disk drive should also be considered. Also if your going to overprovision on SSD make sure you calculate proper size before buying. I too have Samsung 256GB SSD which is like the best in that range and got huge DRAM cache which should be about 4 times faster than NAND flash. For hard disk drive if your going to get it get desktop version if they are still making one.

Motherboard and chipset, currently top of the line Ivy Bridge compatible chipset is Z77, but Z75 has all the features it needs for almost all people, but mobo manufacturers doesn't usually make them or make nice ones. I would say get the best chipset if good mobo with second best chipset is not available.

Graphics well nvdia of course, but it be only rebadge. New architecture will come out next year. I think 192bit gddr5 is currently the best value, just calculate the price per performance ratio and get the best one.

More data! as promised

Monitor of my old pc:
Samsung SyncMaster 2443NW

Laptop:
System Model
HP EliteBook 8530w
Processor
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9600 @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
Memory (RAM)
4,00 GB
Video Adapter
NVIDIA Quadro FX 770M
Adapter RAM
512,00 MB (536.870.912 bytes)

And here is a (partly Dutch) copy/paste of my-game-PC-to-be:

*
Grafische kaarten NVIDIA PCIe
ASUS GTX650-DC-1GD5
VGA, 2x DVI, HDMI 1 x € 117,90*
*
CPUs Socket 1155
Intel® Core™ i5-2400S
FC-LGA4, "Sandy Bridge" 1 x € 177,90*
*
Voedingen
Sharkoon WPM500
2x PCIe, Kabel-Management, Zwart 1 x € 45,99*
*
Solid State Drive 2,5 inch SATA
Samsung MZ-7TD120BW
SATA 600, 840 Serie, TLC-Chips, Trim, Zwart 1 x € 89,90*
*
Moederborden Socket 1155
MSI Z77A-G41
RAID, Gb-LAN, Sound, ATX 1 x € 81,90*
*
Geheugen DDR3-1333
Kingston HyperX 8 GB DDR3-1333 Kit
KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G, blu 1 x € 51,90*

I expect to be assembling it upcoming weekend, into an old case.
Probably some people think I've could have done better, but I think this will be more than fine for me for while to come. In any case, thanks everyone for advising me. Much appreciated.