System Upgrade

[SaBBz]

I have about £600 for a system upgrade as I currently have an XP2500+ barton clocked to XP3200 speeds on an ABIT NF7-S! I only need mobo, cpu+hsf, RAM, graphics card and a small (max. 80gb) SATA HDD for windows (already have larger ones for storage). I'd like to keep the PC as quiet as possible as I have it on 24/7 so should I go for a huge heat sink and a quiet fan for the processor? Just wondering if anyone has any advice on what spec I can get for that.

Thanks.

 

[Teaf]

You can get a really nice setup for that price, included a spec for you below. I wasn't sure if you wanted a very powerful graphics card and a good cpu, or a very powerful cpu and a good graphics card. In the spec I picked the first option, so if you prefered a Quad instead of the e2160 then you'd need to drop the graphics down a lot to around a 2900 Pro cost and also reduce the cost of the motherboard, and probably the cooler down to an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro. The cooler included is VERY quiet at low setting and it's barely audible.

 

[SaBBz]

Thanks a lot for that. I'd prefer a more powerful CPU and a less powerful graphics card really, although will I notice much difference with the L2 cache changes in the Intel chips? I currently have an ATI 9800 SE so any newish graphics card will be much better I'm tempted to wait until next month and spend £800 on the upgrade and have the best of both worlds