Comments on upgrade (dual to Quad) and budget case/PSU, please?

Belisarius

Belisarius

Belisarius

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Hi,

Unexpectedly I finally have a chance to pick up a Quad Core processor and bump my system up from dual (see Sig.). I'm looking to pick up an ABit P35 Pro mobo and a Q6600. I'll keep the Geil Ram I currently have for a while. I've opted for the Abit board as I need firewire and it has 2 PCI-E 16 slots and I want to put in a second 7600GS. Not bothered about SLI or anything as not a gamer. Just want all four of my monitors to run 3D. I'm also looking to put in 2 Samsung Spinpoint 500Gb drives as well.

Any comments on this, please (alternative mobo etc.)? I want to be able to clock the Quad to at least 3GHz

And also...

I'm looking to pass on my ASROCK mobo and E2200 (running at 3Ghz) to a mate but need a budget case and PSU for it - his current PSU is rather cheap and nasty and as I'm OC'ing the E2200 I think a nice stable PSU will be better. Any recommendations please (needs to fit a Arctic Cooler heatsink.

Cheers

Andy
 
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Case looks OK. I think a 380W would probably do him. He's only putting an FX5200 GPU in and there will no extra cards. Couple of HDs and the usual DVD-writer. Shame he's juts bought a nice beige DVD. I'd personally be appalled at the aesthetics of mixing the colours but I'm sure he won't mind! :)

Noticed that the second PCI-E 16 on the ABit is down as (4xbandwidth). Will this have any impact if not doing any high end gaming?

Andy
 
It won't matter much that it is 4x if you are just using it for displaying 3D images rather than gaming.

You can get a silver version of the case if that would help or even get a drive cover for it I suppose.
 
Is that only if you want to link them? Assuming I'm just using 2 cards (NVIDIA) they should just run as two separate cards, yes? I'm not planning on using SLI anyway. Surely the board isn't ATI only?

Apologies if posts confusing as at work and need to type quickly ;)

Andy
 
Thought so, just had a moment of indecision there!

Hopefully will order this lot tonight so it arrives on Thursday when I'll be working (honestly!) at home.

Cheers

Andy
 
No problems...I'm generally easily confused...

I've currently got a PCI-E and a PCI but because they are incompatible GPUs (7600 and TNT2) Xorg won't activate 3D on all three monitors as the TNT2 is a legacy card. I'm planning on putting a second PCI-E in so I can add a fourth monitor and run all 4.

That's the plan anyway. I'm sure something will happen to mess it up though :)
 
Waste of money imo...

It's still pretty good rig and the diff aint gonna be that huge for the price ...
I would leave it for next 4-5 months and get the new hot stuff. Then you gonna see an upgrade, here you're looking at max 30% I would say ( which ofcourse is good but still, not for the price imo).
 
I can see your point. But I've had to do a lot of 'trading' to raise the cash for this at the moment and it works out well with the mate taking the spare parts for a new system and another buying my old PC.

On top of that we've get a second child arriving next week and in 4-5 months I can guarantee I won't have the time or money to do an upgrade :)

As long as at some point in the future I can put a much better CPU in than the Q6600 and lots of extra RAM then the setup will do me for a while.

Thanks for the comments.

Andy
 
Thought of looking at the Asus P5K Pro Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard as an alternative as it's slightly cheaper and has 2xPCI-Ex16.

How does it compare with the Abit?

Andy

Edit: Or Asus P5N-D nForce 750i SLi (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard? Would at least give me the option of SLI?
 
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