Budget Upgrade not inc PSU/case

eveyuk · 5 Oct 2006 at 19:43

I'm looking to Upgrade my tired old computer. It's a pentium 4 2.4 with a gig of ram.

I have a 480 Tagan PSU and three IDE Hard drives I'd like to keep with a case. I imagine I'll need 2gb of ram, a CPU/Mobo and video card plus a cooler.

I use it for Photoshop/word processing/web surfing Skype.

I'm looking to spend £500 ish and I hope it will do Vista well and be reasonably future proofed.

Can you help me?

burtie · 5 Oct 2006 at 20:35

CP-135-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN)
£107.99 £107.99
MB-061-GI Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
£91.99 £91.99
MY-034-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC) (MY-034-GL)
£139.99 £139.99
GX-042-OK OcUK GeForce 7900 GS 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-042-OK)
£98.99 £98.99
Subtotal £438.96
VAT £76.82
Total £515.78

eveyuk · 5 Oct 2006 at 20:57

Great

That seems great and on budget, is this a good processor for the Photoshop/ digital photography that is the majority of my workload?

burtie · 5 Oct 2006 at 20:59

eveyuk said:
That seems great and on budget, is this a good processor for the Photoshop/ digital photography that is the majority of my workload?

Its a fantastic cpu duel core and perfect for you needs

eveyuk · 6 Oct 2006 at 08:36

I've sobered up now, is that motherboard ok for my 3 IDE drives?

Many thanks

burtie · 6 Oct 2006 at 09:12

eveyuk said:
I've sobered up now, is that motherboard ok for my 3 IDE drives?

Many thanks

No as it only has one IDE port, most new motherboards now only have one as Sata is the way to go,i sure you can convert IDE drives to Sata with a convertor.

eveyuk · 6 Oct 2006 at 10:13

So should I factor in a new Hard drive to install windows on then perhaps a PCI to IDE card?

eveyuk · 8 Oct 2006 at 17:42

i think I need to stretch to a couple of 200GB+ HHard drives too, which ones are the best deal at the moment?

eveyuk · 13 Oct 2006 at 17:18

Nearly ready to buy, do I need a cooler for the CPU too?

Anyone else got an opinion?

Goodeh · 13 Oct 2006 at 18:51

eveyuk said:
Nearly ready to buy, do I need a cooler for the CPU too?

Anyone else got an opinion?

Yes you would as the specced cpu is the oem version, you could pay a bit more for the retail, and I wouldn't go for something as high as the 7900GS if you don't play games

EDIT: As for hd's, seagate barracudas are the best peformance/price/noise ratio by far.

EDIT2: And please use the edit feature in future instead of triple posting

eveyuk · 13 Oct 2006 at 19:35

Thank you forum police.

Darg · 14 Oct 2006 at 03:47

The asrock Dual-VSTA LGA775 board has 2 IDE channels which I needed as I also have 3 IDE harddrives. It has 2 SATA connections for future HD upgrades and also supports your old DDR RAM as well as the new DDR2 ram. It can take AGP and PCI-E graphics cards and is conroe ready. It also has 4 PCI slots if you have a lot of expansion cards like myself.

I have mine installed in the beautiful Titan 550 case and am just waiting for my E6300 to move my main computer over to that.

It's also very cheap costing only around £50 incl VAT and postage but is not available from OCUK so you will need to hunt around for the best deal for your PCUpgrade

If you're not going to be using the PC for much gaming then I'd go with a cheaper card. I have a 7600GT AGP card that came for around £115 from OCUK that overclocks nicely.

Your best option that I can see would be to buy the asrock board for £50.
Buy an E6300 for £110
Buy an 7600GT AGP or PCI-E for £110

With postage and VAT on the second two it would come to around £350 in total for a very good upgrade that keeps most of your old components. As for a CPU cooler there are some very cheap options for around £20 or £30 that would suit you perfectly from OCUK. Just make sure that you get an LGA775 version