£450 Upgrade Time!

Dharok

Dharok

Dharok

Associate
Joined
9 Jul 2007
Posts
512
Location
Ramsgate, Kent
Current Spec:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 3.1GHz
2GB Geil PC-6400 800MHz
Gigabyte P35C-DS3R
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Coolermaster 650w PSU
Nvidia 8800GTX 768mb
250GB Seagate 7200.10
24" DGM Widescreen

Machine used for casual gaming, running multiple applications and lots of music playing. Would have liked to get some decent speakers in the budget but haven't been able to? How would this perform over what I have?


 
Edit: Realised theres no point really upgrading my motherboard. Any ideas on a decent upgrade now with £450 to spend?
 
What case do you have now? I'd keep the headphones, sound card but ditch the RAM and get another 2GB of GeIL. I just got the same on the same board as you and it flies. Great quality stuff. Case might be worth a change, depends what you have, the 300 is very good but with your extra you could get something much nicer depending on what your taste is.

More storage space for downloads?

Blu-ray drive?

Depending on how much you play games you could go down the GTX260 or 4870 1GB route.
 
Personally no point getting another dual core as performance increase wouldn't be as huge, only really going to a quad core, i personally would say. I would say buy a better cooler than your current one and overclock higher.
4GB is a must now-a-days.
A i would read up about the headphones as i dont think they might be ok, i think. I generally consider sound equipment with you get what you pay for.
 
Currently I have an Akasa Zen which I bought over a year ago now. Definately would like to upgrade that one. I've now taken out the CPU as I agree with you, the performance increase isn't justifiable for the price.

About the ram, I'm gonna stick this 2gb into another machine which already has 2gb of Geil in, to make that one 4gb aswell.

Here's the update, is it worth saving the £125 or is there anything else I'd need to upgrade hardware wise...


 
I'd get a couple of good, quiet fans for the cooler, the noctua ones are excellent, but it does end up making it a bit expensive. This is considered to be really good

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...=Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775)

Those headphones are brilliant for the price, I've got myself a pair, they perform to the level of headphones twice the price. Plus with that soundcard, they will be a great buy, especially when using dolby headphones.

The LG HD-DVD blu-ray drive is also a great buy, get a few cheap hd-dvd's, add a few blu-ray's to the christmas list ;) Obviously if you go down this route, make sure your graphics card is HD capable and also your monitor supports HDCP, or else hook the PC up to a HD ready tv.
 
Mm interesting. I have 5 Yate Loon D12-SL's hanging about that can be used for the case fans. I'm not going to bother with the new heatsink any longer, 3.1GHz is fast enough for me I think..

Actually that Bluray/HD-DVD drive might make sense for the future. I have a 24" monitor so will be able to playback 1080p movies, not bad for £65!?
 
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