2 part upgrade, yay or nay?

Soldato
Joined
9 Aug 2004
Posts
7,795
Location
Milton Keynes
This is plan for uprgade;

i5 2500k - oem £160 or retail £167
Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) - £43
MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 - £84
DVD-RW - £16
Win7 Student upgrade - £40 (elsewhere)

Total - £343 or £350

With old;
1800xt
425w hiper psu
80gb sata drive
1tb sata drive

4 main questions;
1) Will my PSU power the above? Currently running a 2.8 p4 and before that a 939 chip would the i5 use a lot more or not? Will change in future when new gfx card!
2) When I change gfx card & psu would I have to reinstall win7 or does it cope better than xp did?
3) Is the retail fan ok or is there a better fan for £20?
4) Any other mobos around same money better?

Would eventually look to o/c but not until fully updated gfx/psu and poss hdd.
 
cooler: better to go 3rd party as they give better temps/noise compared to the stock cooler(well you do get 3rd party ones that are effectively the same/worse than the stock cooler). some popular ones for ~£25(oc to ~4.5/4.6ghz with decent temps)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-029-CM&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-001-CS&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-001-GD&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

or if you can stretch http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-093-TR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395

mb go with z68 over p67

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-364-GI seems the popular choice, price is till midday monday then up to £90

if you can stretch and want xfire/sli and/or pci-e 3.0 compatibility

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-368-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990 sli/xfire but no pci-e 3.0

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-191-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990 xfire/sli + pci-e 3.0 compatibility

would advice you change the psu now, go with antech, corsair, xfx(use psu made by seasonic).
 
definitely change the PSU. search the forums for the hiper explosive club and you'll see why ;)

Well that's why asked if would use more power, as ideally would like to wait and ir has been running fine for last 4 or maybe more years

Also any ideas about reinstall or not for changing gfx on win7
 
oh yeah forgot that, no you don't need to reinstall windows when changing graphics card. tho if changing from ati to nvidia(or vice-versa) then you may want to reinstall windows to avoid the clash of drivers.
 
If you get a z68 mono you could just use the onboard gpu it's probably about as good as the gfx card you have and would save some power
 
Things change, technology moves on, what use to take a expensive gfx card from (hazarding a guess from when I had a 1950pro) 5-6 years ago? can now be squeezed on a CPU core.
 
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