Trim the fat...

Dancer · 9 May 2006 at 16:47

I've found a good uppgrade for my machine, but it's about £150 over budget.

I can reduce to 1 GIG RAM, which saves me £50, get a Athlon 64 3700+ (OEM) plus cooler for £120 in this weeks deals or I can go for a lower spec GPU like X800XT for £112.

£54.95 Abit KN8 Ultra nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express
£169.95 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail
£144.95 GX-121-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3
£99.95 Corsair 2GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x1GB)

Subtotal £469.80
VAT £82.22
Total £552.02

Any suggestions how I can bring the price down without taking too much of a performance hit?

Thanks.

Dancer · 9 May 2006 at 23:00

Thanks guys, appreciate the suggestions... even if they seem to suggest I can't really downspec much.

The machine is used for gaming. Nothing too heavy duty, but I would like to be able to use it for at least a couple of years with most games. At the moment I play mostly World of Warcraft, with a bit of Civ IV, Dawn of War and Oblivion. So yes, I'd like to keep the X1800XT...

Other than that it's a TV, stereo and Word processor, but never while I'm playing games of course.

I don't use the machine for multitasking of any kind so maybe going for the 3700+ is the best option. That's £50 saved. If I also go for 1 Gig RAM then that is another £50. I can always scrape together £50 extra for the graphics card. I have even seen on this forum that there can be problems running a multi core CPU with many games and XP needs patching...

I might just bite the bullet and save up for the extra £150 if that makes a huge difference. Do I really lose out by doing 3700+ and/or 1 Gig RAM?

Dancer · 10 May 2006 at 09:26

Will my Antec Neo 480W power supply be enough and is it of the right type to power the motherboard and PCI-E X1800 XT graphics card?

It has to be ATX2.0 compliant right? I believe it is but am not 100% sure...

Dancer · 10 May 2006 at 10:12

Thanks, yes it has a 24 pin connector for the motherboard, so I guess it is ATX2.0 compliant.

Not sure it has a 6 pin adaptor for the the graphics card, but if I'm looking at the right model on the Antec site it does. I'll check when I get home.

Phew... if I had to get a new PSU that would have really blown the budget.

Dancer · 10 May 2006 at 10:24

Now if I go for this one AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM), I'm assuming it comes without a fan as it's OEM.

So I'd have to add something like Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler and Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound which brings the total to £130 + VAT. I still save around £40 from the dual core though... not much I know but it does help a little...