Better my current PC for £500?

GWillow

GWillow

GWillow

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16 Jun 2003
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Romney Marsh, Kent
Hi,

My son is in real need of a new PC (his old one will go to his sister), I have a budget of approx £500 (now updated to £600).

Ideally I'd like to give him my current PC and have the new one for myself, therefore the new one should be a better spec.

It'll be used mainly for gaming (LotRO) and some HD video editing (from video camera) along with the usual webby stuff.

My current spec is

Abit IP35-E (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition"
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 XXX Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
GeIL 4GB (4x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency Dual Channel

I need the case and everything that goes in it, no monitor, mouse, keyboard or O/S required. The case should have space for 3 extra hard drives which I will take out of my current machine into the new one.

Your challenge awaits
Thanks in advance
Willow
 
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You won't get significantly better performance than that PC for £500 if buying all the components new (maybe _slightly_ better if the Q6600 is at stock speeds.)
 
Well I gave it a go anyway:
500spec.png


If your Q6600 was overclocked you probably wouldn't notice much difference.

If LotRO/MMRPGs are your thing then you probably wouldn't notice much difference swapping the Quad to a Dual Phenom 555 or something like that, although I'm not sure how much video editing uses quad cores.

edit: oops that's a laptop HDD, meant to include this one:
 
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No O/S will be required.

Would it make much of a difference to the spec to add an extra £100 to the budget (Total now of £600 - saves anyone having to look up the original budget).
 
What resolution are you gaming at?

If it's 1920 x 1080 (or 1200) you could swap to a HD 5830 and pick a better hard drive such as the Samsung F3 500GB/1TB.

Or possibly go for a slightly nicer motherboard such as this one
 
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GWillow said:
No O/S will be required.

Would it make much of a difference to the spec to add an extra £100 to the budget (Total now of £600 - saves anyone having to look up the original budget).
Click to expand...
Unfortunately going from Q6600 to Phenom II X4 955 would be a little bit like side-stepping with a tiny step up, and pushing the budget from £500 to £600 would just may be get you a 5830 instead of 5770 plus a bigger HDD may be.

How about this? Keep the Q6600 for yourself, build your son a Athlon II X2 base system (around £300) and give him your 5770, and use the £200-£300 spare and grab yourself a 5850, plus a decent cooler for overclocking your Q6600 may be?
 
If you're running at stock you'd notice a nice little improvement even going for my first suggestion.

Titan krypt comparison to my suggestion:

TK system has an Athlon 630 CPU which is pretty good, but the phenom is a fair bit better for most things.

TK system has a 700W PSU, nice but not completely needed

TK system has the Seagate 500GB drive (similar performance to the Samsung F3 I linked)

If you want it to allow for higher resolutions in the future I'd suggest doing the custom build with the HD 5830. If your budget allows you could also swap the PSU for one of the OCZ 600-700W options for extra 'future proofing'.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
How about this? Keep the Q6600 for yourself, build your son a Athlon II X2 barebone (around £300) and give him your 5770, and use the £200-£300 spare and grab yourself a 5850, plus a decent cooler for overclocking your Q6600 may be?
Click to expand...

I had thought about that, it would certainly save me the hassle of moving all the Hard drives around and removing all the software just to reinstall it sll again on the new PC.

I just thought that as mine is not as new as it used to be, spending £600 I could easily better it, obviously not.

Maybe "Primo Trinity" Intel Pentium Dual Core E6500 2.93GHz DDR2 System and a XFX ATI Radeon HD 5850 XXX 1024MB GDDR5 for me.
 
Personally I wouldn't suggest basing a gaming system on the Primo Trinity... Not the greatest case for cooling and it's 'old tech' DDR2/LGA775. Also I'm not sure how the OCuk Value PSU would handle the 5850.
 
Redmint said:
Personally I wouldn't suggest basing a gaming system on the Primo Trinity... Not the greatest case for cooling and it's 'old tech' DDR2/LGA775. Also I'm not sure how the OCuk Value PSU would handle the 5850.
Click to expand...
He meant "Primo Trinity" Intel Pentium Dual Core E6500 2.93GHz DDR2 System plus his existing 5770 for his son, and a 5850 for himself XD

>GWillow
There will be limited upgrade route for the socket 775, but if you don't mind that, and don't want the hassle of building a Athlon II X2 base system for your son, it is fine for the price.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
He meant "Primo Trinity" Intel Pentium Dual Core E6500 2.93GHz DDR2 System plus his existing 5770 for his son, and a 5850 for himself XD
Click to expand...

Ah that makes more sense, well if you're buying the 5850 for yourself you might as well spend a little extra on a new CPU cooler and try a bit of overclocking too. ;) 3GHz on Q6600s is usually hardly any effort, 3.2 is still usually pretty easy and most of the G0s can hit 3.6GHz with a bit of fiddling. If you leave the Q6600 at stock speeds you'll probably find that it will bottleneck the 5850 card so you wont really get the most out of it.
 
i have both a 955 and the q6600 and you wont notice much of a difference between the two

i would suggest you oc your q6600 a bit and see how much you can save over the next 3 months then have a rethink when you have £800
 
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