Upgrade advice needed :D

[Alagix]

After enquiring about upgrades for my PC (brought from PCS) ive been recomended:

AMD BULLDOZER EIGHT CORE FX-8120 (3.10GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3+) £139.15
ASUS® M5A78L-M/USB3: M-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s £48.00
4GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 2GB) £18.00
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready £172.50

However, the PSU I have at the moment is 450W, and upon researching the new g-card I see it recomends 500W at least. As Ive not been informed by PCS that I need a new PSU aswell, should I assume it is safe to go ahead with this without getting a new PSU?

If you guys think that a more powerfull PSU is needed, please post what you think would be best (and work) with what Ive been recomended above. Thanks

 

[Fear]

What CPU do you have at the moment and what are you doing gaming, photo/HDvideo editing ? because unless you are using any editing software that makes use of the extra cores you would be better off with a quad core, infact best if you put your uses and the existing spec you already have and a rough budget for your upgrades then we can suggest things better sor you.

 

[Alagix]

This is the current spec I have.

I do mostly gaming, and some video editing. I was initialy looking to upgrade ram, graphics, CPU and the PSU if needed. MY budget is 400-500£.

As im not that savy with hardware as such I thought I would ask on here about these upgrades I was recomended, mainly becuase I saw that the GPU I was recomended to get needed more power than I currently have.

Processor (CPU)
AMD ATHLON II X2 255 (3.10GHz/2MB CACHE/AM3)
Motherboard
ASUS® M4A78LT-M: mATX MAINBOARD, DDR3, USB 2.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD5770 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

 

[Fear]

Well i have just made a spec with the components you are thinking of getting and i selected a 350W PSU which is underpowered just to see what PCS config suggests and this below is what it comes up with.

1. We've checked your specification for compatibility. Please consider our advice below before proceeding:

1. We notice that you have selected a 350W power supply, but based on our calculations we recommend you change your selection to a 600W power supply because your computer could require up to 504W of power including a 20% allowance.

So i would go for at least the 600W but about another £10 will get you a branded 650W corsair which would be a better choice.

If you check your editing software you should be able to find out if it will make use of the extra cores and as i said before that is what will help you pick the CPU so if it does not utilise them go for either the FX-4100 or the FX-4170 or if it will use them then stick with the FX-8120, I would also get the M5A97 motherboard as this has better features and after you sort that out see if you have enough money left over to get the GTX570 as this will give your gaming a good boost over the GTX560Ti, one last thing to think about is getting is a better CPU cooler so you might maybe squeeze a super quiet tripple copper cooler in aswell.

Just a thought i have had while writing the above would you not be better off saving a little more and just buying a brand new system as you are pretty much doing that already with the upgrades you were getting and then you are back with a new system warranty as i am not sure what warranty you get with buying seperate parts.