My brain is starting to melt (Advice needed)

Associate
Joined
27 Aug 2007
Posts
7
Hi Everyone,

I`m hoping some kind people here can help me with a few upgrade choices before I go insane and jump to my death. I`m about to do my first PC upgrade in about 4 years and to my horror, although not my suprise, everything has changed. My Current PC is as follows:

AMD Athlon Barton XP 2500+ (Clocked to 3200+)
1.2 Gigs of PC2700 memory (Also have 2x256meg of PC3200)
NF-7S Motherboard
Radeon 9800 Pro
IDE Hard disks 2x 250 GB, 2 x 120 GB, 1 x 60GB, 1 x 40 GB
17" Hitachi TFT
Maxtor 2 Channel IDE Controller card
NEC DVD Writer

I think a lot of you guys had exactly the same spec at the time, I built that machine from reading the posts on this forum. Now after my reading I know that everything will go in the bin except for the monitor, controller card and drives.

So, for the upgrade I am looking at the following (My budget is about £500 - £550):

EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£187.99) £159.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.33GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
(£115.14) £97.99
Antec NeoHE 500W Modular ATX2.0 PSU
(£64.61) £54.99
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB)
(£78.71) £66.99
EVGA nForce 650i Ultra (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (122-CK-NF66-T1)
(£64.61) £54.99

Sub Total : £434.95
Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £77.68
Total : £521.58

So my questions, that I would be ever so grateful if someone could answer, are:

1. PSU got enough juice for all that plus my existing 7 drives?
2. I plan to overclock (Not too much, 3ghz tops) the CPU using only retail heatsink, doable without keeping a fire extiguisher handy?
3. The difference in 8800 320mb GTS models are just the overclocks right? If so can I achive the same myself without the fire extiguisher?
4. Motherboard much cop?
5. And the last big question, can I get the same or better performance for the same money? (by overclocking cheaper gear) Radeon or Geforce, Intel or AMD I dont care.

This was a long, boring and mispelt read so thank for taking the time and bigger thanks for the kind words that I`m sure will shortly appear below ;)
 
Last edited:
I would recommend the following:

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £54.99 (£64.61)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.33GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
(£115.14) £97.99

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
£69.99 (£82.24)

Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU £77.99 (£91.64)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC £159.99 (£187.99)
or a BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £174.99 (£205.61)

Total with postage about £512.47 or around £540 with OC2 8800GTS

Gigabyte mobos are very good, stable and easy to overclock, I would go for the P35 'Bearlake' chipset unless you are going to use SLi. RAM is excellent and low latancy at stock (800MHz) it will run very stable (I'm told!)at 950MHz DDR at 5-5-5-15 @ 2.3V so plenty FSB overclocking potential here! Good solid CPU 1333FSB(Quad)
BFG VGA cards are king!
This one comes already factory overclocked, even higher on a OC2!, and a lifetime warranty! Finally I have this PSU which is very good! My two cents hope this helps!
Jonnygrunge.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom