Too many choices...

[bJN]

After looking at funds currently available to me and planning for income / outgoing cash I think I'm comfortable in spending some money on upgrading this oldschool machine

Now I currently have around £200 of free cash and will continue to get £200 at the end of each month due to paychecks.

My aim by the end of the year is to have a full AM3 rig up and running if possible, but being as impatient as I am I don't trust myself to wait until I have all the funds available to me (looking at about £600). If all goes to plan I should be able to sell my current system to a mate for about £220 give or take a few, but I won't be letting this go unless he's certain and has the money ready for me, so bare that in mind

The system I'm aiming for at the end of all this is;
AMD Phenom II x4 955 BE
Asus Crosshair III Forumla or the Asus M4A79XTD Evo.
Any 4GB RAM kit from this set.
A smart looking case (unfortunately as much as I love the 800D the price and size just seems too much, so probably looking at the sub-£100 level - Lancool Dragonlords or the Xigmatek Utgard).
Windows 7 64bit - preferably Retail but due to the cost it will likely end up being OEM.
A nice 1TB hard drive such as the Samsung F3.

Now my real question is, as I'm upgrading bit-by-bit, what should I look at getting first?

I had narrowed the buying sections into different parts;
1) CPU + Mobo + Ram + HDD + windows 7
2) GPU + New Monitor
3) Case + Cooling (by this I mean fans etc, not a full w/c system, possibly a H50).

So, I'm looking at either getting a HD5770 Vapor-X right now (don't see any bottlenecks in current rig?) and possibly a nice new monitor in a few weeks like the Ben-Q 21.5" LED.

The second alternative would be to grab the Sapphire HD5850 (reason for Sapphire is because I know they're a reputable brand and would only purchase ATI components from them unless anyone else can give me a good reason not to). This option could possibly cause a bottleneck in the system I've got and I'm not sure whether I would like that fact or not - knowing I've got something that will be under-performing. Having measured the GPU and my case (Coolermaster Cavalier, internal pic) I'm certain it will fit in, I may have to move my single HDD down a slot though which isn't a problem. I'm also not too certain on whether my PSU could handle the 5850, as far as I remember I've got a Hiper Type-M unit in there currently, but can't remember the wattage - I replaced my old one with this as my 9800GT decided to make it go bang

I would not purchase a monitor on it's own right now as the 9800GT would not be up to the task in my opinion (especially as it's only 512MB VRAM) and don't want to put that to the test.

Thoughts on where I should head?

NOTE I'm also rather impatient and I probably don't want to wait for an extra two weeks so I can get free shipping, after all it isn't too much anyway.

Any help is greatly appreciated and apologies for the wall of text

 

[Frozennova]

First of all I would suggest upgrading that PSU to either one of the corsair units or one of the OCZ modular series as Hiper are known for poor quality PSUs.

Do you plan of going xfire with graphics cards at anypoint? If not go with the evo instead of the crossfire.

The 9800GT wouldnt cause any problems with a new monitor, the card has HDMI, DVI and D-SUB out so that won't be an issue using any monitors.

And as far as building a system up as time goes by thats currently what I'm doing as well.

 

[freezin8472]

Personally I'd save up and buy all the parts together. That way, with any luck, the prices may have dropped a bit. For example, Nvidia's fermi could be released once you have the funds to get all your bits.

If you do want to buy now I'd probably get the CPU, mobo, RAM, first

 

[bJN]

First of all I would suggest upgrading that PSU to either one of the corsair units or one of the OCZ modular series as Hiper are known for poor quality PSUs.

Do you plan of going xfire with graphics cards at anypoint? If not go with the evo instead of the crossfire.

The 9800GT wouldnt cause any problems with a new monitor, the card has HDMI, DVI and D-SUB out so that won't be an issue using any monitors.

And as far as building a system up as time goes by thats currently what I'm doing as well.

I know about the explosive Hiper series but as for "poor-quality" that's the first I've heard of it, they've always seemed fine to me - and the ones that went bang were a dodgy batch which if I remember correctly was even admitted by them

If I was going the 5770 route then chances are yes I would likely Crossfire them as I have read and heard they're not quite up-to-standard in "newer" games when only a single is installed. The 5850 would probably last a fair while before either getting another one to Crossfire or upgrade to a better card that's available - I'm one of those people that prefer a single card option.

The 9800GT could display up to full HD fine (mine doesn't have a HDMI port, only two DVI I do believe), but gaming on native full HD resolutions will be painful, especially with only 512MB VRAM, currently it's fine but I'm not going to enjoy it much if I'm getting horrendous FPS (which is more likely than not).

 

[Frozennova]

You can always run at a non-native resolution.

As mentioned previously I'd suggest getting the graphics card last and take a look at Nvidias DX11 offerings