budget upgrade

[wonderlust]

I've recently cashed in my 4GB (2x2GB) of PC2-8500 ram and sold my G31 motherboard from my server.

This leaves me a kitty of about £70

I already have 2x 1Gb and 4x 2Gb of DDR3 sitting spare on my shelf.

I still have the Pentium Dual Core E6300 processor.

Do I simply buy a G41 DDR3 board and be done with it.

Pros
As i see it low cost and leaves me £30 towards a future upgrade
Windows 7 will need very little effort to get running as both boards are ICH7
Can overclock the chip for a good free speed increase

Cons
Still ICH7 so only 4 Sata ports and no AHCI support
old tech, not likely to have much future resale demand

Or should add an extra £20-25 and get an H61 board and a Pentium G840?

Pros
Ahci support
PCI-E v2.x
possible lower power consumption as it's new tech
upgrade path to a i5/i7 in the future

Cons
Still only 4 Sata ports
more money required
No overclocking for a free speed increase.

I really cannot make up my mind, any other opinions?

 

[95thrifles]

Youve pretty much covered it, sorry cant make up mind for you, lol, but you know the sensible thing is to go with first option (when I say sensible I mean less money spent)

 

[Flashheart]

Is £20 that important to you? If its doable, its probably worth it...

 

[95thrifles]

Is £20 that important to you? If its doable, its probably worth it...

Why? If the extra power was necessary, or even of benefit, I'd agree, but for a server system, theres no point

 

[wonderlust]

managed to pick up a cheap Asus P8H67-M Pro on another forum and added a Pentium G840.

The advantage is that I now have a 4x wired 16X slot if I want to add a Raid controller etc and It has USB3 and 6 sata ports over the H61's 4.

Installed it in my server and using the exisiting installed OS with very little fuss.

Running under my CM Hyper 212+ with the bios set to Silent operation (896RPM) and running IBT for a couple of hours it never went over 35C! (Fan speed didn't ever change either!)