Any problems with this £500 upgrade?

[nails666]

Hi all,
I've finally got around to putting some money aside to upgrade my aging C2D E6300 based system. I've got a £500 budget and for that I need a new cpu, motherboard, RAM, an SSD boot drive and Windows 7.
From my current system I'm planning on re-using the case (Antec 900), psu (Corsair HX 520W), graphics card (ATI 4890) and data drives (320GB WD and external 1TB USB) along with all the various peripherals (mouse, keyboard, monitors etc).
I'll be mainly using the machine for gaming and will probably do some gentle overclocking but nothing extreme. I've come up with the shopping list below but I'd like to hear if anybody knows of any potential problems/incompatabilities or improvements on what I've chosen.

Many Thanks,

Ross

Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1) £114.99

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail [HDZ955FBGMBOX] £111.61

Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard [GA-870A-UD3] £86.99

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) [GFC-00599] £82.99

Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS34G1600LLK) [PVS34G1600LLK ] £70.49

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £18.99

Total cost = £486.05 (inc VAT)

 

[Mr. May]

might be better off looking second hand mate

 

[Big.Wayne]

£500 upgrade

The memory with large heatsinks can sometimes "clash" with a 3rd party HSF . . . if you put the memory in the slots furthest away this is a non issue but if you intend to eventually populate all the slots then perhaps low profile memory is preferable?

The mobo you choose looks nice but for an extra £13.00 you can get one of these beauties and still come in on budget . . . (Backup IGP, heatsink on PWMs & PCI-E 2.0 Crossfire X8/x8) . . .

ASRock 890GX Extreme3

£99.99 inc


ASRock 890GX Extreme3 Product Page
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 Product Page

 

[mp260767]

cooler wise have a look at the akasa venom or Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus.

edit:


memory wise have a look at the Corsair XMS3, if you want something without the cooling fins on.

 

[nails666]

Blimey, wasn't expecting responses this quickly, thanks

I did think of going second hand but I think at the moment I'd rather pay a bit more for new gear with (hopefully) lower risk of problems/hassle.

That mb does look rather nice, I'll definitely consider that one. With the RAM, I mainly choose that set as it was the cheapest but yet also has better timings than more expensive stuff, seems like I'd have to pay a fair bit more for 'smaller' ones that are actually slower or am I missing something? I'm probably unlikely to upgrade any more for a while now anyway so I think losing 2 of the RAM slots shouldn't be too much of an issue.

On the coolers, that Coolermaster one looks good, it's picture makes it look a bit smaller that the Arctic Freezer so less trouble with it covering slots on the mb? I think the Venoms are probably a bit overkill for me as I won't be doing any major overclocking so probably not worth the extra cash for me.

Thanks again,

Ross