Looking to Upgrade

[Braeden]

I'm looking for some advice on an upgrade of my system.

I am currently running an Athlon 64 3000+ socket 754 CPU with 1Gb Corsair Value Select RAM, with an X700 Pro housed in the cheapest possible case and PSU.

I am looking at getting a new case, board and CPU as well as a fast hard drive.

Initially I was thinking of the following:

Akasa Eclipse 62 case
580W Hiper 4R580 psu
Lanparty UTnF4 Ultra-D mainboard
Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 cpu
74Gb Raptor 10kRPM 16MB Buffer hdd

I will be keeping my current RAM and Graphics card (I know they will cause a bottleneck but I wont have enough to complete the upgrade until after my house is sold) and my 250Gb HDD will become a storage drive.

A colleague has said he wouldn't bother upgrading to 939 at the moment so I thought I would ask for your advice on whether to upgrade and what to change, or whether I should wait etc.

As for budget, I am looking at £450 initially, and after the house sale goes through I will be adding a high end graphics card and at least 2gb of decent RAM

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Braeden]

The reason for the 74Gb Raptor isnt storage - I have a 250Gb drive for that (and will probably add another 250Gb when I do my main upgrade). Its for a new install on a fresh drive and decided that a nice fast drive would be a good addition.

A suggestion I just received (which closely matches Admiral Huddy's) is to change my board to a decent socket 754 PCI-E board (mine is a cheapy foxconn/winfast), leave the CPU as it is and get a 7900GT or similar as he says I will notice more of a difference doing that, and I can keep the high end card for my main upgrade which will happen when I move house.

I'm at a loss as to what to do now.

I finally get my wife to agree to an upgrade and now I dont know what to spend the money on!

 

[Braeden]

The board and card I currently have are already PCI-E.

I think the only reason he is suggesting I change my board is because he doesn't rate it very highly.

The board I have will take a PCI-E 7900GTX, but I will certainly need a new PSU.

 

[Braeden]

I don't have the hiper yet, it's one of the things I am looking at buying.

thanks for all the replies - I still haven't made my mind up yet as to what to do but I'm sure I will do soon.