New PC please help

Turbulance · 21 Feb 2010 at 21:12

Just wondering if anyone could help out as I am looking at upgrading mycurrent machine as itsstarting to struggle with some games and with my current motherboard I cant really overclock my system.

Anyway my current system is using an 8800GTX, 4Gb DDR2 Corsair Dominator memory and aQ6600 in a budget Asus micro ATX mobo, which doesthe job but firstly has no room for overclocking and hasno built in raid card. I currently have 2 150GB raptor HDD's which seem to work fine so I would rather have them raided together and use them that way. My only vice with the upgrade is that it will have to fit into the following case and have built in raid or a raid card:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-154-LL&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=187

Because of the parts I have, I wont b needing a case, a CPU cooler (got the corsair watercooling one), any Harddrives an optical drive any monitors, keyboard, mouse, PSU or a sound card. I'd ofthought the restcould do with being replaced.

Thanks,

Turbulance

Frozennova · 21 Feb 2010 at 21:21

That 8800GTX will be holding you back as far as games are concerned you can look at a cheap GPU upgrade replacing it with an ati 4890 which although last generation card will walk all over the 8800 in most games.

You want a board based on the P35/P45 chipset, however oveclockers don't stock any which are MATX

Turbulance · 21 Feb 2010 at 23:28

Thanks for the reply, isit really worth keeping hold of my Q6600? I was thinking of ditching it as I wasnt able topush it past3.2Ghz stable onmy previous board,DFI lanparty p45Darkseries. If its worth keeping then like you say, maybe I can survive on a new graphicscard and a new overclockable motherboard

bagzer · 22 Feb 2010 at 00:36

the q6600 should do you just fine if you upgrade your graphics card. i had 2 8800's and upgraded them to 2 gts 250's and i have no problem playing any game's at the moment and ive only overclocked to 3.0GHz, plus i only have a **** dell 650i mobo. but i wont be keeping this setup as i am starting a new build this week. but in the future the q6600 wont be much use compared to other cpu's out there and that are just about to be released. as far as upgrading your cpu it depends what you are using it for, if it's just gaming you are fine for the moment. plus if your thinking of going i7 you will have to swap out your mobo as well