Best £200 improvements for my PC

AlexTrickle · 21 Jul 2009 at 20:54

Obviously i expect things to change by then but in September im looking at spending ~£200 on improving my PC, mainly for games but generally too.

Currently have:

Intel C2D E8600 (Stock Cooler)
Asus P5E-VM (mATX)
4GB GeIL Black Dragon PC6400
nVidia GTX260 (first edition, so not core216)
Antec 900 (with custom fans and a Zalman fan controller)

Would i be right in thinking along the lines of the following:

I'm thinking:
- Change to a P45 standard ATX mobo
- Get a good cooler (e.g. thermalright)

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Alex

Kennysevenfold · 21 Jul 2009 at 21:07

To be honest, i would go for something like this, wouldnt bother upgrading your motherboard just now as you would be just buying another 775 board, wait till you are able to go i7 with a cpu/motherboard and ram.And you will be able to get a decent price for your gtx260 on the MM or elsewhere and recover some of the money spent mate

Product Name Qty Price Line Total

Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4890 Plus 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £144.99
(£126.08) £144.99
(£126.08)

Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/LGA775/LGA1366) £33.34
(£28.99) £33.34
(£28.99) Sub Total : £155.07 Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : FREE VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £24.69 Total : £179.26

mjones1 · 21 Jul 2009 at 21:07

Prolimatech Fan Wire Clip - 120mm x 38mm £3.44
Prolimatech Megahalems Performance CPU Cooler (Socket 775/1366) £44.99
x2 Scythe Kaze Jyuni 1200RPM Slipstream 120mm Fan 13.78

a gtx 260 is good enough to play all of the new games at a decent setting.

Ducky Spud · 21 Jul 2009 at 23:59

Definately upgrade the cooler, mjones said the Megahalems and thats gonna be hard to beat as an air cooler. Will let you overclock your CPU more and get a bit more speed from it.

Whats the mobo like for overclocking? Ive no idea when it comes to M-ATX boards

But moving to a full ATX board would probably make it a lot easier for you. Im using an Asus P5Q-E and can run my E8500 at 4.5GHz using 1.38V. Would definately recommend it as an upgrade as it can be got for just over £100 now

AlexTrickle · 22 Jul 2009 at 09:12

Will the 4890 offer significant improvement over my 260? (I've been out of the scene a bit, so haven't seen many benchmarks etc)

Another point, is that my motherboard doesn't even overclock - i can't seem to find the fields you need to change in the bios (which doesn't sound right, but believe me i've poured over them for ages thinking i was going mad) - hence why a cooler would only be useful if i could overclock.

Cru54d3r · 22 Jul 2009 at 10:45

AlexTrickle said:
Will the 4890 offer significant improvement over my 260? (I've been out of the scene a bit, so haven't seen many benchmarks etc)

Another point, is that my motherboard doesn't even overclock - i can't seem to find the fields you need to change in the bios (which doesn't sound right, but believe me i've poured over them for ages thinking i was going mad) - hence why a cooler would only be useful if i could overclock.

Id have to agree with mjones1.. that is though dependent on what monitor you have and what resolution you are gaming at - are you playing the latest games or do you wish to as well?

SMN · 22 Jul 2009 at 11:23

New cooler and a better PSU possibly? Possibly even water cooling?

baroniuk · 24 Jul 2009 at 02:05

Alex you are sitting there with the most overclockable cpu and you have it on a stock cooler and no o/c? The best upgrade I can see here is a new mobo the P5Q range are all great overclockers purchased with a Megahalems cooler.
A cheap upgrade of £150 odd and then you can start having some fun in the BIOS!