Upgrade advice needed!

Straz

Straz

Straz

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Joined
17 Mar 2005
Posts
1,208
Location
Oxfordshire
I'm considering an upgrade for my current machine and was looking for a bit of advice on what i've come up with. My current system is:

AMD 64 San Diego 3700+
ASUS A8N-E Mobo
ATI X1800 XT 256mb
1024MB G.Skill ZX
120GB IDE HDD
400W Thermaltake PSU

It's generally pretty good at running games on medium, but it's starting to struggle with the newer ones so looking for half an upgrade, going to be keeping the Soundcard and case etc, so this is what i've come up with:

Core 2 Duo E8400
Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB)
Maxtor Diamondmax 21 250GB SATA-II
Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU

I may keep the graphics card for a bit longer as that's not a majorly needed upgrade at the moment, however I was looking at the possibility of a 9600GT. My main concern is the Motherboard and CPU, I'm not ever going to go SLI or Crossfire so no need for that, i'd prefer to not have to flash the BIOS, and it needs to be under £80 if possible.

Any advice on any of the above including first hand experiences would be greatly appreciated, cheers.
 
seems like solid choice

just some food for thought (I assume your not harcore gamer, since you said graphics card is an afterthought)

1. if you are not planning SLi then 650W is a lot may want to look for less power (depends on your needs now and in future). But Corsair 650W is definetly a good one (and at that price hard to resist) if that is the one you have your heart set on

2. can aslo consider E8200 if you are overclocking, it's basically the same chip as the E8400.

4. upgrade Maxtor 250G to Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache for just a fiver more
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-058-SA

5. with that saving you could get 4Gb of RAM if you are planning on using Vista x64 (again depends on your useage for the PC) Vista runs fine on 2GB if you aren't gaming

PS - I would not recommend a 9600GT, get a 8800GT it's better and slightly cheaper
 
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Thanks for that, I'm going to look into the E8200 however I've not got any experience in OC'ing CPU's so I'm not sure if it would be worthwhile going for the E8400 afterall.

I'll be using my existing copy of Windows XP Pro, might be a stupid question but is 4GB really a noticeable difference to a 2GB setup these days?
 
XP is 32bit so it won't recognize 4GB. So 2GB in dual channel mode is the way to go.

Not very hard to OC, but if that's not your thing then go for the E8400. FYI they are the same chip, and built on the same line, so same architecture etc.. all they (Intel) do is lock the multiplier to a lower level, when you OC you work around that by increasing the fsb to get higher clock.

That said, I have to admit I had my good ole E6600 overclocked @ 3.4 GHz, but now have put it back on stock 2.33 Ghz speed since I haven't really had any application that needs even all of that. So I am pretty sure E8200 will be more than enough.

Anyway not trying to convince you either way, jsut pointing out some info if you wanted to save a few quid here and there.

PS - if you don't want to OC then you should go for the Gygabite P31 (£45 incl VAT) no need for a P35 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-101-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1015 (NB much to my disbelief, I was told the P31 does not allow for RAID set-up, so if you plan on having your HDDs in Raid then this would be a no go - although I can't say for sure as this is what I have been told, can always check on Gygabite site - I am too lazy :p)
 
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