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
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

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