Best bang per buck mobo/CPU bundle?

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

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As per title.

Just now I'm sat with a couple of systems.

An Athlon 3000XP with 2Gb 3200 and a Gigabyte GA7N400L mobo with a Leadtek 6800 card.

An Intel D865PERL mobo with a Prescott 3.0GHZ 800MHz P4 again with 2Gb 3200 and a 9800XT card.

So I'm behind the times obviously!!!

I'm looking to upgrade now and want to know whats the best "bang per buck" motherboard and CPU pairing I should consider going for?.

Either brand new or second hand. Obviously if I go the second hand route I could get more performance, but I'm happy with either.

At the moment I'm just looking for suggestions on motherboard and CPU, I'll think about graphics cards later.

Was thinking E6300 paired up with something like an ASRock Conroe XFire E-sata 2 ( yes, been reading PCZ mag....:p ).

Any suggestions welcomed. The cheaper the better, just want best performance for money on a reasonably limited budget.

It will be used mainly for image editing and web developing. I often have most of CS3 Suite opened up and running at the one time.

Not that bothered about gaming as I prefer to do my games on my 360 but it would be nice to have the DX10 option if required ( which obviously would be graphics card dependant ).

Thanks.
 
You don't appear to have DDR2 Ram so that and the fact you have an AGP graphics card really limits your options on the motherboard front and don't include the E-SATA 2. This is probably your best combination. :)

Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £47.99
(£56.39) £47.99
(£56.39)
Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Sub Total : £84.98
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £16.32
Total : £109.55
 
yep i got that asrock 4CoreDual-SATA motherboard, the reason was i didnt needed new graphic card (6800GT 256mb AGP), with E4300 and 2GB Geil Value DDR2, overclocked to 2.8ghz

very happy and didnt cost me much
 
Cheers, very interesting list there. :cool:

To clarify a bit, I'll be going for new memory to suit whatever combo I end up with and ditching the AGP for a new PCI-E graphics card after I've decided what mobo/CPU to plump for.
 
Ah in that case then I'd suggest the E2160 again and a Gigabyte DS3R as it is both good for overclocking and supports DDR2 and DDR3. Ram-wise any good PC5300 or PC6400 would work well and the graphics card depends on your budget and uses. :)
 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard £84.59 inc VAT

RAM: GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) This Week Only Offer (£58.74 inc vat at 17.5%)
 
wesley said:
yep i got that asrock 4CoreDual-SATA motherboard, the reason was i didnt needed new graphic card (6800GT 256mb AGP), with E4300 and 2GB Geil Value DDR2, overclocked to 2.8ghz

very happy and didnt cost me much
Click to expand...

I'm looking to buy the same upgrade wesley. Was that overclocked using the stock heatsink? Could you let me know the settings you used? Cheers! :)
 
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