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- Joined
- 11 Mar 2009
- Posts
- 18
Hi all,
I'm thinking of upgrading my aging pentium dual-core system to this i5 bundle. It's been a few years since I last upgraded, and I'm a bit out of touch with more modern hardware and I have a couple of concerns that I would like clarified:
1 - this bundle isn't overclocked by default? The description says 'Prebuilt, overclocked and configured...' - the 2300 i5 runs at 2.8 GHz without clocking doesn't it? I expect it can be taken to well over 3 Ghz?
2 - I currently have an antec 550W PSU - will this be enough for the above bundle and my HD6950 gfx card? (I also have an SSD and one HDD)
3 - the Gigabyte motherboard doesn't seem to have any long PCI slots, so I won't be able to use my Creative x-fi sound card - is this correct?
4 - Do you think this is a worthwhile upgrade compared to my intel E8400 which is currently running smoothly at 4GHz? I intend to use this machine as a general purpose rig, including quite a bit of gaming - I've pre-ordered BF3 already!
5 - I'm on a tight budget - is there better that I can get for the same £250 price? I intend to keep my current case, psu, drives etc - all I need is mobo/cpu and ram.
6 - If I do get this bundle, will I be able to drop an i7 into the mobo at a later date?
Thanking you in advance for your advice.
I'm thinking of upgrading my aging pentium dual-core system to this i5 bundle. It's been a few years since I last upgraded, and I'm a bit out of touch with more modern hardware and I have a couple of concerns that I would like clarified:
1 - this bundle isn't overclocked by default? The description says 'Prebuilt, overclocked and configured...' - the 2300 i5 runs at 2.8 GHz without clocking doesn't it? I expect it can be taken to well over 3 Ghz?
2 - I currently have an antec 550W PSU - will this be enough for the above bundle and my HD6950 gfx card? (I also have an SSD and one HDD)
3 - the Gigabyte motherboard doesn't seem to have any long PCI slots, so I won't be able to use my Creative x-fi sound card - is this correct?
4 - Do you think this is a worthwhile upgrade compared to my intel E8400 which is currently running smoothly at 4GHz? I intend to use this machine as a general purpose rig, including quite a bit of gaming - I've pre-ordered BF3 already!
5 - I'm on a tight budget - is there better that I can get for the same £250 price? I intend to keep my current case, psu, drives etc - all I need is mobo/cpu and ram.
6 - If I do get this bundle, will I be able to drop an i7 into the mobo at a later date?
Thanking you in advance for your advice.
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