Buy upgrade now or wait a while?

martynsimo · 1 Nov 2007 at 08:22

This is an upgrade I`m thinking about doing for christmas. The mrs said I cant have until santa brings it :rolleyes:

My budget is £350 so managed to keep under that. I use my pc for internet, music, a bit of photoshop and the odd bit of gaming so dont need a powerhouse of a system. I do enjoy doing a bit of clocking though

"LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £49.34
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard £76.36
OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit £58.74
OcUK ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £78.71
Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition £70.49

Total £333.64

Looks like theres plenty of scope to upgrade in the future with this mobo (ram/cpu/graphics) Thing is do i buy now n send off to santa or wait a while to see if theres any price drops so could perhaps improve my upgrade? What do you thing, wait or buy now? Or buy something totally different?

topshot · 1 Nov 2007 at 08:34

i would swap the motherboard for a DDR2 board rather than a combo,

also go for the Geil 2gb or RAM PC6400 as its a fair bit cheaper than that memory

martynsimo · 1 Nov 2007 at 08:43

But that ram is slower? Wont that undermine my ability to overclock? Why would it be better to go for a ddr2 mobo only? Thanks for your advice by the way.....i`ve not upgraded for a couple of years so got some catching up to do as things have changed quite a bit!

topshot · 1 Nov 2007 at 09:39

the memory controllers on the combo boards are a bit ropey, especially if you want to overclock. Plus DDR3 costs a lot more and offers little or no performance gain yet.

That Geil DDR2 will easily overlock and at less than £40 cant be complained at

martynsimo · 1 Nov 2007 at 09:55

ok I'll go for that ram. Which mobo would you suggest? oh and is Vista 64 bit now the way to go?

topshot · 1 Nov 2007 at 10:31

it will be the way to go, make sure there are drivers for any other parts etc you want to use.

As for motherboards:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-085-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-131-AB&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-241-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

martynsimo · 1 Nov 2007 at 10:39

Cheers. The Asus looks tasty! Just noticed the ocz ram on offer so might go for 4 gig of that. There goes the budget ! Will my enermax 460w be able to power this system? Only got 2 hard drives & I did player. What kind of overclock can I expect?

topshot · 1 Nov 2007 at 11:51

I'm going in for the asus next week!
PSU should be fine, as far as overclocking that chip people have had over 3Ghz on air. You will need a decent cooler though, have a look at the Tuniq Tower.