CPU and memory upgrade time!

BigHairyBloke

BigHairyBloke

BigHairyBloke

Associate
Joined
29 Sep 2007
Posts
86
Hi all,

i have an Asus A8V Delux MB with an AMD 64 3000+ cpu and 1gb (2X512mb PC3200 GEIL) RAM.

What is the most cost efective upgrade for the CPU and the memory? I'd like more memory cus i tend to have lots of applications open most of the time and i suspecct the current setup is strugling.

Cheers!

Steve
 
Welcome to the forums, the best upgrade you can make would involve changing the CPU, motherboard and Ram but it depends on your budget how realistic that is. For about £150 this would allow you to keep your existing graphics card but give you a much faster CPU, double the Ram and allow a future upgrade path to PCI-E. However the motherboard is currently out of stock unfortunately.

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Sub Total : £118.97
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £22.26
Total : £149.48
 
Thanks for that. If i'm going the whole hog, is it worth bumping up the RAM to 4GB? Lets say i have £250..what do you suggest? I'd like to keep my nice quiet Zalman Flower cpu cooler tho if poss.

Steve
 
What do you currently have in terms of parts? I don't want to recommend you a graphics card that your PSU couldn't handle or something similar. Also is your Zalman cooler socket 775 compatible? If not you would need a new one but I could easily put something suitable into the budget. :)

//edit and one last thing, is your OS 64bit? If not then you wouldn't be able to access the full 4gb of Ram but you would get maybe 3.5gb of it.
 
I have an Asus V9999 graphics card, but i dont tend to play games..more heavy duty office work, indexing, scanning, file conversion and multiple aplications running. have a sata HD, and 2 IDE drives, a cd burner and dvd burner.

400w power supply. Nowt special.

steve
 
In that case then I'd put the additional money towards a new power supply and 4gb Ram. There is a slight problem in that the motherboard (in common with most socket 775 motherboards) only supports one IDE channel i.e. two devices so I'd keep the largest/best of the IDE hard drives and the DVDRW - if necessary pick up a cheap IDE controller card with the spare cash. :)

Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK) £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £36.99
(£43.46) £73.98
(£86.92)
Sub Total : £195.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £35.86
Total : £240.76
 
Oh just noted there is only 2GB there, do i just need to double up on those memory banks? I read something somwhere about if you had large Ram to go for buffered/registered memory? Not sure what thats all about. Also, i forgot to mention i'm using XP Home!

cheers

Steve
 
Well noticed, it was too late at night for me obviously, don't buy the 4gb that I put into the specification. The motherboard only supports 2xDDR or 2xDDR2 slots so 2x1gb or 2x2gb would be the best you can do and 2x2gb costs quite a bit more.

Buffered/ECC/Registered Ram is best used in server environments.

XP Home won't allow you to use 4gb of Ram anyway, it will be a bit closer to 3.5gb or thereabouts. :)
 
You could do that if you wanted but generally the boost between 1gb and 2gb is a lot more noticeable than the difference between 2gb and 4gb. A decent PSU would also stand you in better stead for any future upgrades but the choice is, of course, up to you. :)
 
Thanks for that, my Page File is being used up to 1.1GB, so i think the extra 1 GB will help speed things up. I will go with your second suggested upgrade. I think you allowed for 4gb of memory after all looking at the prices!

Many thanks

steve
 
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