Time for an Up Grade

Tysonator · 25 Aug 2007 at 21:01

Hi, it’s that time again when I start thinking about upgrading my RIG to something better.
At present I have,

CPU AMD XP3000+
Fan Coolermaster Aero 7+
MoBo ASUS A7N8X Vr 2.0
RAM 2Gb Corsair XMS PC3200
HD 160 GB WD Caviar Special Edition 8Mb Cache SATA 1
PSU Tagen 580watt 18db SLI
VGA Gainwood 6800GT

I will be selling all the above apart from the PSU.

The proposed set is

CPU` AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.00GHz
Fan ! ? not sure yet
MoBo Asus CROSSHAIR nForce 590 SLi (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2
RAM Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX
HD now, I am not sure what to do on this
Do I have a WD raptor 74Gb for C drive or 150Gb Raptor for Program drives, or raptors for both drives !
Or WD Caviar RE 500GB 5000ABYS SATA-II 16MB
Cache for programs,
and 160Gb Caviar SATA II 16Mb cache for C drive.
VGA some 7950 for now
Case All the above set in a P182, does any one know if I can get a Side window for this ?

What are your thoughts and recommendations please.

1337z0r · 25 Aug 2007 at 21:06

Not sure on the CPU I have no idea how the AMD performs. But for the Hard drives I would get two 320 WD drives and put them in raid 0. It would give you real good performance for half the price of raptors.

semi-pro waster · 25 Aug 2007 at 21:15

If you are thinking about overclocking at all then a Core2Duo would make a lot of sense and even if not they are very competitive on price/performance with AMDs offerings.

What is the rough budget here?

Tysonator · 27 Aug 2007 at 12:58

which Core2Duo should I be looking at. As I am not clued up at all on Intel ! ?

semi-pro waster · 27 Aug 2007 at 13:02

It depends on your budget and how much overclocking you are willing to do but I'd probably suggest the E2160, E6750 and Q6600 as being the best value CPUs.

Tysonator · 11 Sep 2007 at 22:14

semi-pro waster said:
It depends on your budget and how much overclocking you are willing to do but I'd probably suggest the E2160, E6750 and Q6600 as being the best value CPUs.

The Q6600 seems good value for me.
What ASUS board is the same as the AMD crosshair ?
As I really like the features of that MoBo

citizen__erased · 11 Sep 2007 at 22:53

I think the X2 6000 is about on par with the E6600 core2duo. However, the E6600 will overclock so easily (hey, even i managed to get mine up to 3ghz!). I reckon the best deal around is the Q6600, as it's only £30 or so more than the dual core equivalent.

semi-pro waster · 12 Sep 2007 at 01:04

The Abit IP35 Pro comes highly recommended but if you want Asus then the P5K Deluxe WiFi is probably about the closest to the Crosshair.

The Q6600 is indeed a great chip, particularly if you get a G0 SLACR stepping and have some aftermarket cooling such as the Tuniq Tower, Noctua NH-U12F etc etc.

Cupra · 12 Sep 2007 at 01:35

ive had the p5k board im trying a dq6 but the ip35 is suppose to be reallygood, the dq6 atm seems a lot better than the p5k tbh