Help with picking hardware

Wizzfizz · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:10

Looking at spending around £550 - £600.

I need the following items as i've got the rest: -

CPU (Intel
Motherboard
Ram (4gig)

The main use for the system will be gaming.

I've not upgraded since 2004 and i'm still using a socket 754 setup. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

semi-pro waster · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:13

You just want those three items? If so I'd be considering these, you can go more expensive but I'd struggle to justify it unless I was overclocking by quite a bit.

OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Platinum Series DDR2 (OCZ2P10664GK) £54.99
(£64.61) £54.99
(£64.61)
Asus P5Q-E Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £84.99
(£99.86) £84.99
(£99.86)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.83GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - Retail £184.99
(£217.36) £184.99
(£217.36)
Sub Total : £324.97
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 : £58.31
Total : £391.53

sibeer · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:18

You may also want to consider a good overclocking Dual Core CPU as the higher clocks are benficial in more games than the extra cores:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-232-IN

£182 inc VAT and it seems to be easy to take the speed up over 4Ghz. You would also want a half decent cooler for this or the Quad if you are considering overclocking

Wizzfizz · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:20

Ok cheers for the setup. So if I was looking for something to overclock with. What should I be looking at?

Also I was looking at the CPU

cheers

sibeer · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:24

Either of the two mentioned CPU's are decent for overclocking. The Dual Core one though is supposedly outstanding. The motherboard and RAM suggested would be fine, just get a good cooler such as the Thermalright Ultra 120

sibeer · 21 Aug 2008 at 16:26

Personally I moved from a 3Ghz Quad to a 3.6Ghz Dual and found my system ran cooler, quieter and faster in most scenarios. Quad is the technology for the future, not really come into it's own yet though in my eyes.