After CheddarTrek got such a huge quantity of advice, I thought I'd post my question for our resident tecchies to endlessly debate over ;D

I'm currently looking at dropping around £600 on a new processor, mobo, RAM and GFX card because the PC I'm using at the moment is dying a painful death. (Either the RAM or the slots on the motherboard are fucking up horrendously and I cba to figure out which one it is)

Currently I'm looking at the following specs:

Core i5 2500 3.3GHz Socket 1155 (Sandy Bridge)
ASROCK Socket 1155 P67 Pro
G Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333mhz
XFX 5770 850M 1GB

Now here's my dilemma; in approximately 5 months I'm going to have another £500. I was planning on, at that point, buying another couple of 4GB sticks of RAM. However, at the moment I'm running a BFG 8800GT graphics card and as I only really play source games is there any point in my buying a relatively cheap card like the 5770? Should I invest in the extra RAM now and wait to buy a much more expensive graphics card?

 

5770's are fine. They can run most current games at high-mid (though not absolutely maxed) settings on relatively large resolutions (1920x1080 etc). Is there a reason that you specifically need a large amount of RAM? I'd suggest sticking with 8GB and try and stretch your CPU a little further and look at one of the i7s.

 

Okay so I talked to a mate of mine, who's far more knowledgable with this sort of thing than my crippled little mind can handle. He gave me an awful lot of techno-babble that I didn't really understand and then suggested the following:

Asus P8P67 PRO
Intel i7-2600
ATI 5770 HD
8GB Corsair Vengeance

Is this a better purchase? Can anyone explain why?

 

The difference in performance between 1333MHz RAM and 1600MHz RAM aren't worth the price IMO. You can fairly easily overclock it if you're so inclined, but it's not really a bottleneck that you'll need to worry about.

The Intel i7-2600 is pretty awesome. It outperforms the i7 980X Extreme fairly consistently in benchmarks and in the few cases where it's outdone, it's a close call.

I don't know enough about the new MoBo's to have an informed opinion regarding that, so I can't help you there.

As far as the video card goes, I like Nvidia more than ATI but I don't want to get into a flamewar. If you use a Linux distro, Nvidia has better drivers. You can have a fairly easy upgrade in the future by buying an identical card and running it in Xfire/SLI. The GTX 460 1GB is a really good card that avoids the heat problems that most of the Fermi cards had. Video cards can be a bit tricky when it comes to drivers and performance, but there's nothing wrong with the 5770 and it'll run nicely in Xfire on 1900x1200 monitors without a problem.

Whether it's a better purchase overall really depends on your needs. Do you need the i7, do you need a lot of fast RAM, etc. Hyperthreading won't really give you a huge performance boost unless you spend a lot of time encoding video or something. That's a problem a lot of people have building/buying computers. They want to future-proof, and all you should buy is what you need. You can't future-proof, so when the time comes to replace your (insert component here) there'll be something twice as good on the market and what you need is probably cheaper because of it.

Threw this together in 20 minutes, hope it helps.

 

I mean this is exactly that I was thinking. I originally went with the i5 because I'm literally only going to be gaming on it, not doing anything intense with video or shit, like PSCS5 is about the closest I get to anything like that. So I guess it comes down to the following question:

Will I see an increase of performance during gaming equivalent to the £120 extra I'd have to spend to upgrade from an i5 to an i7?

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

No. The difference in gaming is miniscule at best. There are even several comparisons where the i5 is outperforming the i7. Personally, I'd go for the i5. The real difference between the two is hyperthreading and it doesn't sound like you need it.

Also, overclocking (K series is unlocked). Games benefit from higher core clocks, not a higher number of cores (generally). You could get a stable 4 GHz out of the older i7's without too much trouble IIRC, and there are guides that can tell you exactly what to do. A quick search shows people getting 4.5 GHz fairly easily. You'll want a good HSF, the stock one might be ok but they're not too expensive. Good ones go from $30-$100 or so.



As a side-note involving a potential problem regarding your MoBo, read this.
http://www.intc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=546454&ReleasesType=Financial%20News
That way if it happens, you can RMA the Motherboard.

 

Jesus...reading that made me feel so out of the loop. My computers are still running Core2Duos. I need to get back into keeping up with hardware...

 

Guys, hold off on buying Sandybridge for a few weeks. Intel have just suffered an embarrassment.

http://forums.aria.co.uk/showthread.php?t=48599

EDIT: Seems while I was typing Cheddar got there before me. But the link above is still helpful to those who want to look into the situation further.

 

Pretty much everything has already been said, though I did feel the need to comment on this:

Basically true, but there's no reason to skip the P67 board on a regular 2500 unless you plan on using the onboard graphics (you don't have to use them).

Oh, and on the overclocking front, the Sandy Bridge processors do actually overclock well despite the limits placed on the BCLK rate, so long as you get the K series (about $15 US more for the 2500K). Tom's Hardware has an article out today where they easily got to 4.5+ GHz on air cooling with an i7-2600K.

 

ASRock's quality has really gone up in the last year or two. They're still on the low end in terms of pricing, but I've heard very few complaints about their recent products. They also seem to be the kings of packing as many features into a board as will fit.

Here's a review of a bunch of P67 boards that Tom's Hardware did a week or two ago; the ASRock was near the top of the pack in most things, and had the best UEFI (new iteration of BIOS) interface. It's not the same model (the reviewed one is the Extreme4, not the Pro), but it'll give you an idea of the improvements they've made.