Time has come for an upgrade to my CPU/motherboard, but I'm a bit lost at what I should be getting. If you could pick some parts for me to get that would be appreciated!

Most taxing work it needs to do is iRacing (currently big time CPU limited) and AC (GPU limited at the moment, but worry that story might change come full grids). I would like to make my computer a bit quieter as well.


On the shopping list:
CPU - not bothered about overclocking
Motherboard
RAM
Quiet CPU fan - only bothered about noise so if retail is quiet will stick with that

Carry over:
Nvidia 460 GTX
Windows 7 Home Premium
Hard drives and DVD drives

Not sure if carry over (only considering changing for noise really):
Antec Basiq 500W (only has 4 pin CPU connector)
Aztec case

For the bin:
Intel E6750
3GB DDR2


Budget: as little as needed for the next gen sim racing/max £350

Would like to order from somewhere that still does delivery before Christmas in the UK. Aria, eBuyer and Amazon spring to mind, if you could pick some bits from one of these that would be great!

Sell that ram on ebay. i bet u can get 10 pounds or so for it

Although your PSU isn't ideal, you should be ok with nothing more than a 4->8-pin adaptor to save on cash (I think, with the options and budget your working with, you want to be saving cash for the good stuff).

Ignoring your request for request for Christmas delivery (realistically it'll be Christmas Eve before an order is dispatched unfortunately), if it was my £350 I think I'd look on eBay for a second hand i5 3rd generation (or even a 3770k if budget allows) / motherboard. The problem is that Socket 1155 is "dead" so it seems counter productive to sink too much cash in, but if you go for the Haswell socket then you end up spending quite a lot more on the motherboard and get little real performance improvement.

Memory is a tough one - it's very expensive right now, but for a gaming PC all you *need* is 8GB. But for a day-to-day PC, I wouldn't want less than 16GB...

(as always, my opinion != the best advice)

I thought £350 would be more than enough to cover what I need. What do you think to the list attached from Aria (they are still advertising guaranteed delivery)?

As for motherboards/CPU generation, the i5 4670 and H87 seems to be well within budget. I can't see why I need anything more than a basic H87?

More silly questions:
1. I've got IDE DVD drives and can't see it listed on the motherboard specs, is it no longer standard fit/do I need to buy a new DVD drive?

2. What is the 4/8 pin CPU connector called on motherboard spec? I read somewhere that a 4 pin power connector can be used in an 8 pin socket without adaptor is this true?

3. What happens to my Windows install (got legit Win 7 Home Premium retail) if I change motherboard, do I have to do a full reinstall or just some verification thing?

Regarding the DVD drive you would probabaly need a new one for the latest m/boards. But they are around £12 so its not going to be a big dent in the budget.

I believe your copy of Win7 allows for unlocks on 3 different machines (i.e. an entire mobo change for example). If you haven't hit that limit, you should be able to still use it.

As for the CPU connector issue, this might help. The ATX connector is standard across all consumer PC boards so it'll still stand true for the H87 boards you had in mind. I'm sure it'll work fine. I'm running a H77 system which only has a 4-pin CPU connector on it and it runs absolutely fine. The i5-4670 shouldn't be an exception considering its TDP.

I don't know how much do computer components cost at where you live, but I think some kind of Asus Z77 board with Ivy bridge i5 or i7 would be good. If you have the money, buy Asus Z87 board with Haswell i5 or i7.

For PSU I recommend Corsair CX430.

I hope that helped you!

Never buy a Corsair CX series. The ripple on those is catastrophic and the build quality is cheap, all you're doing is paying for the brand with them.

Ok. Didn't know that. Thanks for correcting!

Do you think the CX series only one that has been build badly? Or are the other Corsair PSUs also bad?

AX (up to 850W) HX (up to 850W) and RM (ONLY up to 650W) are good.

In the end I ordered a 4570 from ebuyer and it arrived as advertised on Christmas Eve, see the pic for everything I got including a CX PSU!

The difference is remarkable, iRacing now stays on a 100fps cap with everything on maximum throughout race starts and in AC the increase in frame rate has been minimal (I knew it was GPU limited), however, it now runs a lot smoother, the red & blue traces in the render stats app (don't know what they mean) just stay as straight lines now, they used to jump all over the place.

Also very impressed with how quiet it is now, going from an 80 to 120mm PSU fan and maybe the new Intel CPU fan have made such a difference.