£300 Upgrade

HouR · 14 Oct 2010 at 20:59

Hi guys,

Looking for some assistance with an upgrade as birthday money plus some of my own will hopefully be going towards a new core build.

Current system:
CPU - E2180 @ 3.00 - Getting tired as it will no longer sit happy at 3.2
CPU Cooling - Freezer 7 Pro
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA x38 DS4
Ram - 4x1gb OCZ 800mhz @840ish
Graphics - 2x5770 1gb Crossfire
PSU - Corsair TX650w

Extras:
1xSata HDD
1xSata DVD writer
Mouse, Keyboard
24" Samsung T240 @ 1920x1200

I want to upgrade the CPU, Motherboard and Ram to get away from 775 and get onto 4-6 cores.

Idealy I like the idea of the new 6 core Phenoms due to me upgrading my cpu once in a blue moon so logic states it should last me a while as cores seem more important than speed to a degree now.
I assume I can still use the freezer 7 to overclock on an am3 board?
As far as the motherboard is concerned I need crossfire support and good overclocking if I feel the need. Other than that I guess most will support 1 hdd and a dvd drive

Ram is whatever comes into budget as long as there's 4 gig of it.

Pretty much the only use of the system is gaming now and I like to be running at max settings where ever possible.

Note:-Selling current hardware cannot come into this as its being put in my parents pc.

Many thanks for any replies,

Ash

stulid · 14 Oct 2010 at 21:01

Q6600 -£75 second hand.

RJC · 14 Oct 2010 at 21:06

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1055T 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £159.99
(£136.16) £159.99
(£136.16)
MSI 870A-G54 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £77.98
(£66.37) £77.98
(£66.37)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £70.49
(£59.99) £70.49
(£59.99)
Sub Total : £262.52
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.00
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £47.52
Total : £319.04

Intel option:

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £149.99
(£127.65) £149.99
(£127.65)
MSI P55A-G55 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £84.99
(£72.33) £84.99
(£72.33)
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £70.49
(£59.99) £70.49
(£59.99)
Sub Total : £259.97
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.00
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £47.07
Total : £316.04

Unfortunately you can't re-use your current cooler on either builds.

Some benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/147?vs=191

Snapples24 · 14 Oct 2010 at 21:12

RJC has posted up a good option. The Intel Option. Its definitely a good start.

HouR · 14 Oct 2010 at 21:12

stulid said:
Q6600 -£75 second hand.

Dont want to go down this line.

Cheers RJC i'll take a look

Cookeh · 14 Oct 2010 at 22:48

Snapples24 said:
RJC has posted up a good option. The Intel Option. Its definitely a good start.

Is it?
Its already pretty much a dead socket, whereas AM3 has barely started.
AMD also has new architecture and 32nm process coming out soon

HouR · 20 Oct 2010 at 21:33

would the AMD be the better long term upgrade, or is the i5 going to do untill both sockets are dead?

stulid · 20 Oct 2010 at 21:36

with the AMD spec, you can carry the cpu and ram over to the new AM3+ motherboards that are out next year, then when you want a better cpu, just put the new AMD "Bulldozer" cpus in.

so there is some forward compatibility.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...rocessors_Will_Require_New_Platforms_AMD.html