New very budget build help

[ChrisLandin]

Hiya peeps.

Ive just finished my budget build pc for my front room and im just wanting to have a few questions answered.

My system comprises the following

E5200 at stock
MATX Asus 775 board
2GB Geil DDR2 800Mhz ram
HD3450
250GB Seagate HDD
Liteon Blu Ray drive
Windows 7 64bit

All housed in a very ancient Advent case. Going to get hold of the OCUK Athena budget case next week hopefully.

Now its working ok. I wasnt expecting it to be any great shakes if im honest but ive been pleasantly surprised so far. Its not a gaming machine and wasnt designed to be.

Would I see a gain if I got hold of 4gb of ram?

My gpu is passive and my case dosnt have the best airflow in the world so what is a reasonable temp for the gpu to be operating at?

And finally is the hd3450 suitable for bluray playback as I can get hold of a HD3650 with hdmi out for only a few quid from a pal?

Cheers

 

[Superjeep4x4]

If it is just a light duty HTPC for playing movies and such you should be golden with what you have. That said if you can get a HD3650 for next to nothing I would jump on it. You get a faster GPU and it never hurts to have a spare in the closet.

As far as ram goes ill put it this way. If money is tight then you will be ok with the ram you have. It is not going to make the comp run twice as fast but if you have the money to spare 4 gigs for Vista and above is always recommended.

I am sitting here at right about 1600 MB used with several chrome windows open in the same OS but if I open a prog its gonna go over that really easily. Kinda come down to what you use it for and do at a sitting.

As far as CPU temps go as long as your under 60 during load you should be ok. 60 would be fairly high as that chip should run fairly cool as it doesnt use a ton of power but when you throw "passive" in the equation things could change. Might be worth your time to look in to some decent aftermarket replacement fans if you start having temp issues.

Hope this helped.

 

[ChrisLandin]

Cheers mate

 

[Cookeh]

As aforementioned, I'd pick up that HD3650, will help.
Otherwise, looks good. 4GB of RAM would help, but Vista can run movies etc. fine with 1GB so it's not vital