Thinking of upgrading, need some advice

[sanofi]

Currently I have an X2 4400 with 1gb ram and a 320mb 8800GTS.

I'd like to upgrade and am wondering whats a good route given a budget of around £200 ish.

I'm looking to keep the graphics card and change the processor to a Core 2. So this would need a new motherboard and ram afaik, as well as a new cooler, unless the stock is any good.

Any advice would be appreciated and I can extend the budget if its not too outrageous and the performance boost is worthwhile.

 

[sanofi]

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Abit IP35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £14.99
(£17.61) £14.99
(£17.61)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB) - Retail £48.99
(£57.56) £48.99
(£57.56)
Sub Total : £163.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £30.14
Total : £202.35

unless you are willing to OC it will not be much of an upgrade, however it will mean you are ready for penryn if you want to go intel.

maybe get the IP35 pro if you can afford it and you want/need the extra features

Thank you for that list.

What would be considered an upgrade over the current setup? One of my main reasons for wanting to upgrade are the system instabilities i've been receiving lately, I had to RMA my RAM twice already and the motherboard has seen better days.

Also would my current Hyper 580W PSU be ok for the upgrades listed above?

 

[sanofi]

How easy is it to OC? I've dabbled at OC'ing but haven't done much.

 

[sanofi]

easy. Set the Vcore to about 1.35, and it will probably go straight to 2.8-3 GHz.

An alternative would be to get 2GB of DDR2 and a 8800 GT

link them if you can plz

 

[sanofi]

Also what would be the next step up from what jak linked?

 

[sanofi]

STOP! (Yes, this is turning into a crusade). Don't buy OCZ Platinum Ram with that motherboard (Ip35 or IP35-E). You might have trouble booting it. Have a look at this thread for further details.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17817819

Apart from that the spec looks spot on.

Cheers.

So what Ram, if this is not recommended?

 

[sanofi]

Just to consolidate, and add the new RAM, this is what we have:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Abit IP35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC)
£24.99 £29.36 inc VAT
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £14.99
(£17.61) £14.99
(£17.61)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.00GHz (800FSB) - Retail £48.99
(£57.56) £48.99
(£57.56)

 

[sanofi]

Right, so I held off buying before xmas, mainly due to me being ill and lazy during the hols. Is the build suggest in the previous post still suitable given the price range or is there anything new that could be added/replaced?