Time for an upgrade, but I want to notice the difference

[Gray]

I tried to open a huge (1.2GB) drawing in Adobe Illustrator the other day and my PC told me it never had enough RAM. I haven't upgraded for a few years now, so it may be about time. My current spec is as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.3GHz
Gigabyte 965P-DS3P
6GB DDR2 RAM
Radeon HD5870
Corsair HX620W
Coolermaster ATCS 840

I originally thought of just buying a couple of 4GB sticks of RAM and whacking that in, but it seems DDR2 isn't cheap.

All I need really is a mobo, cpu and ram. My graphics card is fine for what I play and I could always upgrade that later if need be. I've got the OS, optical drive, psu, case. I might consider an SSD but I'd only use that as the boot drive so I wouldn't need a massive one.

My budget would be around the £400 mark. I want a major performance upgrade that I notice, not a negligible one. I do a lot of stuff in AI and Photoshop and some gaming. I've read good things about the i5 2500k if it can happily run at >4GHz on the stock cooler, and I'd buy a better cooler anyway and aim for around 4.5GHz.

All help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Stinger53]

I tried to open a huge (1.2GB) drawing in Adobe Illustrator the other day and my PC told me it never had enough RAM. I haven't upgraded for a few years now, so it may be about time. My current spec is as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.3GHz
Gigabyte 965P-DS3P
6GB DDR2 RAM
Radeon HD5870
Corsair HX620W
Coolermaster ATCS 840

I originally thought of just buying a couple of 4GB sticks of RAM and whacking that in, but it seems DDR2 isn't cheap.

All I need really is a mobo, cpu and ram. My graphics card is fine for what I play and I could always upgrade that later if need be. I've got the OS, optical drive, psu, case. I might consider an SSD but I'd only use that as the boot drive so I wouldn't need a massive one.

My budget would be around the £400 mark. I want a major performance upgrade that I notice, not a negligible one. I do a lot of stuff in AI and Photoshop and some gaming. I've read good things about the i5 2500k if it can happily run at >4GHz on the stock cooler, and I'd buy a better cooler anyway and aim for around 4.5GHz.

All help will be greatly appreciated!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £263.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £81.98
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler (Socket LGA2011/1366/1155/1156/775/ AMD AM3/AM3+/AM2/AM2+/FM1) £29.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38192M1600HC11DC) £29.99
Total : £417.35 (includes shipping : £9.50).



405 with free shipping

by theh sounds of it you will benefit from i7 as you said you were doing a lot in photoshop etc but can drop to i5

edit sorry missed bit about ssd this is a good one http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-008-CR&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=910
if you mean only putting os on it then http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-018-CR&groupid=701&catid=2104&subcat=910 might do

 

[wazza300]

chuck in a cheap 60gb ssd with the z77 board and use it to cache your mechanical hdd,ssd speads with hdd storage space,that would be the best option imo

id save the extra £100 or so by choosing the 3570k cpu,it will still be a big leap from a dual core