Upgrade advice

Havana_UK · 22 Sep 2008 at 18:58

Hi all,

It's been a long time since I last posted here, and I'm quite out of touch with the current PC market.

You can see my current spec in my signature. It's now about 3 years old (I think).

I'm considering an upgrade, and I'm fairly sure Intel is the way I want to go, but I know nothing about the current crop of motherboards. I'm not a serious overclocker, although I don't mind a little dabble.

I would really appreciate some advice on three options:
- £500 upgrade
- £750 upgrade
- £1000 upgrade

I would be looking for CPU, motherboard, RAM and ideally graphics, although the latter is not 100% essential it would be nice to get DX10. Also from the graphics point of view I'm an nVidia man all the way.

Thanks in advance to all who help

Hav

goujon945 · 22 Sep 2008 at 19:04

Tbh you wont need to spend too much if you aren't a serious gamer. Basically a P45 board, an E8600/Q9550, any decent make ram and a GTX260 would be a hell of an upgrade! Although many on the forum will reccomend ATI for the GPU, a GTX 260 is still a damn good card

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17883751&highlight=htpc+tower for more detailed reccomendations

ACESHIGH · 22 Sep 2008 at 19:31

Above sounds about right.

But pitty about the Nvidia thing as they are getting a right spanking at the moment. The 4870 is the better choice.

AlexTrickle · 22 Sep 2008 at 19:36

If you have waited for 3 years and you're in no rush then I'd wait for the next batch of Intel processors such as the Core i7s - especially if you can stretch to 1k budget.

goujon945 · 22 Sep 2008 at 19:43

Yeah if you want the best performance i would wait for the I7's to mature a bit. Personally i favour bang for buck and imo thats still the 'current' gen architecture

Havana_UK · 24 Sep 2008 at 13:09

Hi again all,

Thanks for the advice of those above.

I have tentatively selected the following:
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £179.99
(£211.49) £179.99
(£211.49)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 2.40GHz Guaranteed to run at 3.30GHZ (1466FSB) - Retail £139.99
(£164.49) £139.99
(£164.49)
Asus P5Q Pro Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Sub Total : £459.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £82.06
Total : £550.97

One quick question about the above. Is my ThermalRight SI-120 going to fit the Intel CPU, or will I need a hew HS? If so, could someone recommend one of a similar quality for the Intel CPU?

Thanks,
Hav