Time for an upgrade

[Mac2]

I have quite and old machine now, Athlon 3200, 2GB ram, 6800GT and a couple of IDE drives. Its time for an upgrade methinks.

I have an Enermax 575watt PSU (I think) so I think I just need mobo, processor, ram, graphics and hard drive/drives. I haven't a clue what all the latest and greatest hardware is anymore but it will only be used for gaming and the web, no overclocking etc. Any suggestions for around £400 to £500. I am still on XP, will I need Windows too?

 

[mp260767]

How about the following, could drop the hard disk to a smaller model and swap the 4870 for a 4890.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.16GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £172.49 (£149.99)

Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £151.98 (£132.16)

Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD6400AAKS) £57.49 (£49.99)

Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (KHX8500D2K2/4G) £42.99 (£37.38)

Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775) £31.99 (£27.82)

Sub Total : £397.34
Shipping : £9.50
VAT : £61.03
Total : £467.87

 

[toon_mad]

just a suggestion, unless you really need the hard drive space, dont go for higher gb, go for less with a better cache and faster rpm, i got the 500gb and i only use about 180gb, the other free space just slows down error checking, virus scanning etc - you can easily expand with large usb pens, cheap these days.

i would go for a quad core cpu, a lot of games are supporting them, although generally they are factory att 2.4ghz or 2.6ghz, you can overclock them to get a easy 25% increase or so aslong as he mboard is good - and your cooling is good.