Rate My Rig and tell me what needs upgrading

daveydave

daveydave

daveydave

Soldato
Joined
1 May 2006
Posts
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UK
hi guys new to modding to a certain degree, recently got a new case and components. let me say first though, that this pc was a packard bell imedia 1507 and was brought october 2005, (im a uni student so NO super expensive parts please guys)

Case: Enermax CS-527 Case Black
OS: XP Home service pack 2
CPU: Intel P4 519J (prescott) <<--- I know its one of the half-cut chips intel sold on the cheap to the big pc manufactures..no hyer threading or steaping :(
LGA775 sock, 3060MHz, FSB 133, Bus Speed 532....i'm missin one mhz accordin to cpu-z
MOBO: ASUS P5S800-VM, chipset SIS 661FX, Southbrigde SiS 964
RAM: 1GB, 2x512, made by Infineon, 200MHz bandwidth
HardDisks: 1 seagate barracuda (ST3200826A) 200GB & 1 Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (HDS722525VLAT80) 250GB
Graphics Card: ATi Radeon 9600 Pro Saphire - Overclocked Using ATi Tool - Core 465MHz and memory 255MHz
Heatsink- Gigabyte G-Power Pro (GH-PDU21-MF) with arctic silver 5 thermal compound
WinTv Card - Lol
Areogate 1 fan controller and a NEC DVD RW
PSU - Sumvision 400w ATX PSU
Fans - 2x 80mm akasa sucking in from the back and one the side window and a 120 exhausing from the front. the reason i have the airflow the other way is i seem to get better MOBO and CPU temps this way.
TEMPS - CPU load 53-59C, idle as low as 44C, MOBO sits between 28 and 32
extras - blue cathode 12inch, 2x 4inch green
Majority of parts from OCuk ;)

I've put sum pics in, could you please let me know what you think, this is my first "build" and i'm looking to increase performace a bit to. I use it mostly for gaming. cheers guys :D
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although you haven't put in a price, i would upgrade your graphics card - would probably give you the most performance increase. You can get a 7800gt agp for quite a decent price (i think)
 
welcome to the forums mate...

you'll need to upload those images before you can link to them (try www.imageshack.us)

without spending an arm and a leg, i'd pick up a better P4... the P4 640 is on this week only, clocked at 3.2GHz with 2mb L2 cache (double what your P4 has) and the bonus of HyperThreading should offer a nice boost to games/apps.

a 6600GT or x1600 (if your an ATI man) should be a nice improvement over the 9600 card.

i moved from 9600 pro -> 6600GT -> 7800GT... and the boost from 9600 to 6600 was very nice indeed :)


if you stick up a little price guideline it may be easier to spec bits and bobs for you mate.
 
oh rite yeh soz, erm as far as graphics cards, i'd happily spend £100, i'll try sort out those pics, as far as my fans i dont seem to get much air flow out of the back two 80mm's the case has lots of small holes in each fan position...is there anyway of increasing airflow without getting out the dremel multi? btw the case cant take a 120mm in the back

How much do you reckon i could sell my p4 for??
 
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It looks ok but if you can afford it buy one of the Dual Core 805 CPU's (If your mobo will support it) And overclock it... Dont forget a decent cooler (Arctic Freezer) If not you will have to replace the mobo as well. (But remember you can sell the old bits as plenty of ppl want bits like that for HTPC)

Then get rid of the GFX card and replace with a Nvidia 7600 GS or ATI X800XL or GTO and you should see at least double the performance.

Make sure you have plenty of airflow in the machine too, fans are cheap components arnt... Its really strange that the airflow in your way id soolin gcomponents better...

If you can also afford it get another 200gb HDD (Same model and capacity) and RAID0 them. I would also put the IBM HDD In an external caddy for backup (No redundancy in RAID0)...

Hope that helps...
 
If you want a decent upgrade on the cheap then simply get a better graphics card.

Any of ..

PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-050-PC) £117.44 Including VAT

Sapphire X1600 Pro 256MB DDR2 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-116-SP) £86.89 Including VAT

Leadtek WinFast GeForce 6600 GT 128MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-050-LT) £93.94 Including VAT


The CPU is decent & i wouldnt bother upgrading that for the time being.
 
ok thanks....what is i will read up on the RAID thing....as far as my heatsink...if i got a new dual core cpu would mine not be good enough?? hopefully when conroe comes out dual core prices will slide
 
Your heatsink probably wouldnt be good enough if you got a dual core but I'm quite sure your mobo WONT support dual core. A new graphics card is more important anyway, any of the above choices should be fine, although I have heard some bad things about the x1600s.
You can remove the fan grills you speak of with a dremel quite easily.
 
RAID 0 is a VERY VERY poor suggestion.. Real world it's difference is negligable, risks data problems and is not something for someone who doesn't fully understand why they are doing it.

Graphics and/or a CPU upgrade are both good suggestions. Graphics is probably the best.
 
Mikey1280 said:
Your heatsink probably wouldnt be good enough if you got a dual core but I'm quite sure your mobo WONT support dual core. A new graphics card is more important anyway, any of the above choices should be fine, although I have heard some bad things about the x1600s.
You can remove the fan grills you speak of with a dremel quite easily.
Click to expand...

i thought i had a good cpu cooler!!?? :confused:
 
BigDom said:
RAID 0 is a VERY VERY poor suggestion.. Real world it's difference is negligable, risks data problems and is not something for someone who doesn't fully understand why they are doing it.

Graphics and/or a CPU upgrade are both good suggestions. Graphics is probably the best.
Click to expand...

ok cool, what would you suggest BigDom? i was thinking about a new board too? any suggestion...bare in mind im a uni student but will be working over the summer. so dont want to break the £100 mark with the board or the same goes for cpu and graphics...i would sell my cpu, gfc but the board would be going into a new another rig at home
 
Definatly go Graphics card..

PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-050-PC)

will do just fine :).

(pretty sure your board is AGP)
 
Mikey1280 said:
Sorry I didnt read it properly :o , yeah it would probably ok although these pentium ds pump out a lot of heat, as I said earlier a new mobo would be needed though.
Click to expand...

so which cpu would personally recommend...i have no quibble with buying cpu's off ebay...recently saw a P4 3.4ghz with hyper threading etc for 65 quid...should i wait til conroe b4 i get a dual core ?
 
Well I dont know much about intel cpus, might be worth asking in the CPU section. You could get a pentium d 805 for about £85 but I'm not sure its the greatest idea, it would mean a new board and if you want to overclock then ideally you need a board with an intel chipset so that means new DDR2 memory as well. Personally I would upgrade the gfx card and if you have much spare then you could get a second hand p4 with HT, would wait till conroe for a full upgrade.
 
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