ANOTHER Spec.

Limehouse

Limehouse

Limehouse

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Joined
8 Aug 2006
Posts
227
I do apologise, but i've been off of the tech scene for about 6 months, and already I don't have a bloody clue as to what is good/bad.

Current Spec:

Dell Value 17" Flatscreen
GeForce 7600GT
2.5gb Ram, generic and old 333.
Seagate Barracuda 250gb 7200.10
Asrock motherboard, reasonably rubbish.
Antec Sonata II & PSU

I'll soon be able to allocate about £200-£300 a month towards a spec and wondered as to what exactly I should do, given the outdatedness of the aforementioned, what would be my best option?

Edit: Mainly for gaming
 
Last edited:
This is in budget and would give you a decent base to work from - the Sonata II has a 450w ATX 2.0 compliant PSU if memory serves which should do you for the moment. Next upgrade would probably be the monitor I think. :)

Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB) - Retail £42.99
(£50.51) £42.99
(£50.51)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £20.99
(£24.66) £20.99
(£24.66)
Sub Total : £188.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £34.63
Total : £232.54

//edit although I should say this would be geared more towards gaming, if you don't game much then I'd alter accordingly.
 
semi-pro waster said:
This is in budget and would give you a decent base to work from - the Sonata II has a 450w ATX 2.0 compliant PSU if memory serves which should do you for the moment. Next upgrade would probably be the monitor I think. :)

Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB) - Retail £42.99
(£50.51) £42.99
(£50.51)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £20.99
(£24.66) £20.99
(£24.66)
Sub Total : £188.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £34.63
Total : £232.54

//edit although I should say this would be geared more towards gaming, if you don't game much then I'd alter accordingly.
Click to expand...

Ooh, that is very nice. Given this spec, what size monitor would you recommend?
 
I'd change the graphics card to the 9600GT that steve258 recommends (I keep forgetting about them at the moment) and pair that with a nice 20" monitor. Obviously not going to be within budget but put the £50-60 you still have towards it and within a month or two you should be able to buy the monitor hopefully. :)
 
Thanks for your help so far guys, but I've got one final query. Is this a good set up for Overclocking that E2180? I hear they're beasts for the thing, but is the RAM/Mobo up to scratch?
 
Yes they are. The P31 overclocks nearly as good if not as good as P35 chipsets. That motherboard is a bit vanilla but is more than upto the job even for a Q6600. Only thing is it doesn't support 4 dual sided RAM (which is the case for almost all memory kits on the market today) occupying all 4 slots so if you want to upgrade to 4Gb in the future you'll need to go for 2x2Gb modules.
 
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