Spec me an Upgrade

GWillow

GWillow

GWillow

Associate
Joined
16 Jun 2003
Posts
818
Location
Romney Marsh, Kent
My current system is

Akasa Zen case
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (now very poorly after an old psu blew)
Athlon xp 3200 Barton
Zalman CNPS7000A CPU Cooler
ATI X1950 Pro 512mb
1 * Audigy 2
3 * 512Mb Crucial PC3200 DDR
1 * Samsung SH-S202N/RSMN Lightscribe PATA DVD-RW
1 * Seagate 500GB SATAII 7200rpm 16mb Cache H/D
1 * Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 200Gb SATA 8mb Cache H/D
1 * Enermax Noisetaker 485W PSU
1 * 22" Samsung SM-2232BW

I don't really plan on doing any overclocking (but I'm not ruling it out) as I wouldn't know where to start.

My main use is games (mainly WoW for my sins), general windows use (email, browsing, word etc), listening to music and watching films. I'm also just trying to get into Linux as well (will be a dual boot). I would also like to do some, but not too much, video editing with footage from an HD camcorder.

I'm looking around the £400 mark (preferably no higher) for the hardware. I see the Q6700 is on special this week, it may be over kill but it will certainly last me like my current one has. Is this a good place to start?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 
This is under budget to allow you to buy an additional hard drive etc if required. The Q6700 is no longer on special offer that I can see and it isn't worth the extra.

OcUK GeForce 8800 GT 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £93.99
(£110.44) £93.99
(£110.44)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £119.99
(£140.99) £119.99
(£140.99)
Abit IP35-E (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £52.99
(£62.26) £52.99
(£62.26)
Sub Total : £296.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £53.53
Total : £359.44
 
Since you aren't overclocking at the moment then the retail cooler should suffice, it is relatively easy to replace later if necessary.

The BFG will perform the same and probably overclock to about the same levels since they are both built to a reference design but the BFG has a better warranty so if that matters to you then it is a worthwhile swap.

Your PSU should be absolutely fine for the system.
 
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I wouldn't pay £35 for an extra .26ghz when you can easily overclock the Q6600 to at least that on the stock cooler. However it does give you a higher starting point I suppose.

As for the two Q6600s, you are paying £6 for the guarantee that you can return the CPU to OcUK if it doesn't reach 3ghz, almost all do, certainly that I've heard of unless you are seriously unlucky and even then it is more likely to be a supporting component such as the Ram or motherboard that limits you.

The IP35-E fully supports the SATA standard including 300mb/s transfers, NCQ etc so yep, what is sometimes known as SATA2 is supported.
 
Thanks for all your help (and patience), it's a long time since I've built a PC and I'm so out of touch and because of the time between builds I like to make sure I get it right.

The good news is that the wife didn't flinch when I said I wanted to upgrade the PC.
 
Abit IP35-E is a good board, I have it aswell. And don't go for the Q6700, it's not worth the extra cash. I would be really suprised if the normal Q6600 wouldn't run @ 3.0Ghz, I'm sure all others on here would agree with me :) That spec semi-pro-wasted suggested looks absolutely fine, I'd go for it, you won't regret it. Also, WoW runs absolutely fine on that spec in case you were wondering...
 
Thanks to all (especially to semi-pro waster). I've ordered your recommended spec with the only minor change of the graphics card to the BFG card.

Hopefully it might turn up Wednesday, although after I pressed the 'confirm order' button I realised that there probably isn't any one in on Wednesday so I'll guess I'll have a trip to the City Link depot to pick it up - damn.

It also now means that I can replace my sons Geforce 4 card with my old X1950 pro.
 
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