£200 upgrade

Sammanu · 20 Jun 2009 at 18:21

Hey people,
Am looking to upgrade my current PCs CPU, RAM and Gfx Card:

AMD 64 3000+
ATI x1650 Pro 512MB
1.5Gb DDR ram

I have done a bit of research myself and come up with the following:

I have a budget of a maximum £220, and am looking to use it mainly for gaming, please could you post any suggestions or improvements to the above spec.

Thanks

ArcAneTSGK · 20 Jun 2009 at 18:56

220 is extremely tight for a gaming machine. i would suggest intel over AMD but ofcourse the budget and intel are more expensive generally.

ATi are generally cheaper than nVidia let me see what i can spec for you.

keep in mind you may need a new HDD and CD drive that is SATA complaint, and maybe even a new PSU.

EDIT:

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £78.99
(£68.69) £78.99
(£68.69)
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £55.99
(£48.69) £55.99
(£48.69)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail £51.99
(£45.21) £51.99
(£45.21)
Corsair XMS2 DHX 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX) £24.99
(£21.73) £24.99
(£21.73)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £17.99
(£15.64) £17.99
(£15.64)

Comes to £229

but as i said, you may need HDD, CD/DVD drive, PSU etc

Sammanu · 20 Jun 2009 at 19:19

Thanks for the reply,
I have a 500w power supply which should be sufficient, i am currently using 3 IDE but two of them are CD drives and 1 HDD so can drop one CD drive. The mother board I chose can support two IDE devices so i should be ok on that front

ArcAneTSGK · 20 Jun 2009 at 19:29

does the 500W psu have a 20+4 pin for the motherboard, and a 4Pin for the CPU?

Sammanu · 20 Jun 2009 at 19:45

I have a
Casecom
Model: ATX 500W

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CASECOM-BLACK-500W-12cm-1xPCI-E/dp/B0028I7JU6

Is this OK?

ArcAneTSGK · 20 Jun 2009 at 20:01

I think it will suffice, but it says SATA power connector, you will need IDE power adaptors for the PSU, i assume you already do as you have to powere the IDE drives you already have.

I think that PSU will do fine, maybe someone else can verify.

Sammanu · 20 Jun 2009 at 20:04

Ok thanks for all your help really appreciate it, like you said if anyone else can verify this discussion please post.

Thank you.

hawker1986 · 20 Jun 2009 at 20:21

I would go with ArcAne's suggestion, should be a good upgrade for you.

Hawker

Sammanu · 20 Jun 2009 at 20:32

Thanks hawker for the reply,

I'll take into consideration the options which have been pointed out to me, i'll keep this open for suggestions if anyone else has a different opinion.

Thanks again.

ArcAneTSGK · 20 Jun 2009 at 22:48

4850 will be better than the 9600.

Also in the future, you can crossfire when you have more money.

Generally nForce boards cost more money.

Sammanu · 21 Jun 2009 at 14:13

In the end i decided to buy this.

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 "XXX Edition" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £74.77

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7850+ Black Edition 2.80GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail £42.60

Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (KHX8500D2K2/4G) £33.03

Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2P nForce 430 (Socket AM2/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £32.16 1 £32.16

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro PWM CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) £14.99

Order Total: £238.11