student computer upgrade, advice needed.

[krisboats]

OKay so i have my natwest overdraught account so now i have the option of buying new parts and replacing the money in the account after i've fitted the new parts and sold the old ones. Ideally i'd like to make it as cheap as possible for the whole lot and the processor choice is obviously a big factor. gonna pair it up with 2gb of geil 6400 ram.

My choices are a DS3R and an e6750, having never overclocked an intel chip before it might be better to spend the extra and just do a teenie overclock.

The other option is the e2180 with the DS3R and overclocking it quite significantly.

After a bit of reading up in different threads i've seen that despite the lack of cache on the e2180 if i overclock it to around 3Ghz then it won't make much of a difference.

I have a socket 754 athlon 64 3000+ at the minute, so i'm sure i'd see a bit of a difference with either chip. Just want some confirmation on the best option to go for.

cheers

 

[Tetras]

I have a socket 754 athlon 64 3000+ at the minute, so i'm sure i'd see a bit of a difference with either chip

What do you do with the PC?

 

[Duke]

Go for the E2180 and a good board & cooler. There isn't a great deal of difference in performance with the 1MB cache.

Is your graphics card PCI-E?

 

[MumboJumbo]

You can easly overclock this and i think it fits well into a student budget, if your buying now get the more tackey looking blue version of the turniq cooler as its got 5 quid off on this weeks offer.

 

[krisboats]

What do you do with the PC?

Listening to music, browsing the net, playing games, watching hd movies.

Go for the E2180 and a good board & cooler. There isn't a great deal of difference in performance with the 1MB cache.

Is your graphics card PCI-E?

Nope, its currently an AGP 7600gt, but like i said in the first post, i'll be selling that off once i have the new parts. Currently looking at a x1900xt in members market.

You can easly overclock this and i think it fits well into a student budget, if your buying now get the more tackey looking blue version of the turniq cooler as its got 5 quid off on this weeks offer.

Any particular reason for the e2140 rather than the e2180? i reckon i'll have to get a new psu as well, my coloursit one probably won't last Enermax liberty 500 do the job?

 

[MumboJumbo]

the E2180 is an overclocked E2140. Why spend more? If your going to be overclocking there wont be a blind bit of difference. Both will go to 3ghz. And im also considering that psu seens as the the corsairs quality seems to be decreasing.

 

[Tetras]

Listening to music, browsing the net, playing games, watching hd movies.

Depending on the kind of games performance boost you are looking for I would be tempted to just get an AGP X1950 Pro, though a clocked up E21xx would be a decent performance boost CPU wise

 

[krisboats]

Depending on the kind of games performance boost you are looking for I would be tempted to just get an AGP X1950 Pro, though a clocked up E21xx would be a decent performance boost CPU wise

F.E.A.R.

Supreme commander (lags like hell in single player)

Oblivion

Eventually crysis, though at low-medium settings obviously.

 

[Tetras]

Aha I didn't notice you only have a GB of RAM, that is gonna slow you down if you just upgraded the GPU, nm go for the upgrade

 

[krisboats]

Aha I didn't notice you only have a GB of RAM, that is gonna slow you down if you just upgraded the GPU, nm go for the upgrade

Yeah, i reckon that about the spec i'm gonna go for then. Forgot to mention i use photoshop a fair amount and use premiere for editing my biking movies.. which can sometimes take a while to render effects and transitions.

 

[Deleted User 234324]

If you original plan was the e6750, i'd use that surplus money to get the e2140-2180 (higher means less stress on memory for overclocks to 3ghz) and more importantly if your into photoshop and video editing get 4Gb of memory as that will help loads with the likes of photoshop.

As for PSU Corsair 520 will be fine, ignore the nay sayers going on about poor quality they are fantastic psu's, sure the number of problems have increased but thats only because OCuk have sold a butt load of em compaired to only a few before.

 

[krisboats]

If you original plan was the e6750, i'd use that surplus money to get the e2140-2180 (higher means less stress on memory for overclocks to 3ghz) and more importantly if your into photoshop and video editing get 4Gb of memory as that will help loads with the likes of photoshop.

As for PSU Corsair 520 will be fine, ignore the nay sayers going on about poor quality they are fantastic psu's, sure the number of problems have increased but thats only because OCuk have sold a butt load of em compaired to only a few before.

I reckon i'll start off with 2gb as i can always grab another pair and stick them in too. I need it as cheap as can be without affecting performance too much. Still doubling the speeds of most of my current hardware as it is though.