Out of touch need some help with new system...

BENdage · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:55

Hi all,

I used to be a bit of a hardware guru myself but have got very out of touch over the past few years, a career change, uni course and a genuine lack of money made it difficult to keep with the times. The last upgrade I did was just after AMD launched their skt 939 dual core products and is the spec shown in my sig.

I'd like an upgrade now and ideally want to know what hardware will give me the best bang for my buck (well, pound). I wont need to replace the case, or optical drives, and would potentially leave the hard drives as they are too unless there is something significantly better. I'll defo want new CPU (I'm thinking E6300), meaning new mobo, with new RAM (preferably 4gb), and obviously a new graphics card which will necessitate a new PSU also. No need to worry about cooling, I'll adapt my existing water cooling to accommodate whatever processor I end up with.

BTW, system is used for moderate gaming (mainly FPS) and working from home.

As I said, the name of the game is value for money, I'm quite happy overclocking so cheap parts that oc well are just what I'm after.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated...

Sudden_SD · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:04

If you can give us a budget you have in mind, it would make things much easyer .

BENdage · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:07

No budget in mind. Could be £200, could be £2000, just want to know best performance for my pound. Wanting to know current good components, like the old Athlon XP 2500+ that you could almost always turn into a 3200 with no difficulty whatsoever, saving you £100 or so, that sort of thing. Also, is there any memory around at the moment that is as revered as BH-5 or TCCD??

pinkaardvark · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:15

Well on the cheap front My 4300 and P5NE is running very cooly at 3.2ghz and that was a relatively pain free overclock ie just bump up the fsb and leave the ram stock. So with a couple of Gb of 6400 ram your looking at around £250 for ram cpu and mobo. Lot of bang for buck.

Sudden_SD · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:20

Well bang for buck i would choose the Asus P5N-E SLI with the E6420 and should reach 3ghz on stock volts.
Granted if i was buying a cpu to overclock i would include the Noctua NH-U12F and some Arctic silver 5.

Pair that with the Crucial Ballistix ram and the EVGA 8800 GTS 640 which should reach a over clock of 900-1000 on the ram and 640/2000 on the 8800.

The corsair psu is rated as one of the best if not the best around at the moment also.

BENdage · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:28

Sudden_SD said:
Well bang for buck i would choose the Asus P5N-E SLI with the E6420 and should reach 3ghz on stock volts.
Granted if i was buying a cpu to overclock i would include the Noctua NH-U12F and some Arctic silver 5.

Pair that with the Crucial Ballistix ram and the EVGA 8800 GTS 640 which should reach a over clock of 900-1000 on the ram and 640/2000 on the 8800.

The corsair psu is rated as one of the best if not the best around at the moment also.

Great stuff, thanks. I should be alright for cooling, got a pretty beastly custom watercooling setup. Would that PSU have enough spare capacity to possibly upgrade to SLI?

Sudden_SD · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:43

Ah sounds like your all good in the cooling department then.

As for the HX 520w, it wouldnt be enough for sli but it's bigger brother the HX 620w would be.

If you wanted to go even further future proof for a little bit more money then the Enermax Infiniti 720w would be a worthy choice, as it includes the new 8 pin pci-e connectors.

BENdage · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:51

8 pin PCI-E connectors?!? I am out of touch... Whats that all about? Is it just to provide more juice?

danoliver1 · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:01

I would get the 8800 gtx now rather than getting another 8800gts in the future.

t31os · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:27

A GTX for moderate gaming... i'd say thats a bit excessive wouldnt you?

For moderate gaming he'd be better with an x1950 or perhaps something less.

Good rule of thumb when getting bang for buck is set yourself a figure that you won't go over for each individual item, generally i try to never pay more then £150 for any one part, though i have once..... and i ended up selling it. It doesnt mean you need to hit that figure on each part, just never break it, keeps the system cheaper, and you can still get good performance.

You don't need to be on the cutting edge to get value for money.

1mm3 · 28 Apr 2007 at 11:15

Personally i think paying extra for an EVGA product is a waste, i ended up paying nearly £50 extra thinking i'll use they're step-up feature and now i regret it, bang- for-buck evga definately does not fit the bill.