upgrade advice

arishi

arishi

arishi

Associate
Joined
17 Sep 2008
Posts
11
Hi everyone,

I just installed Warhammer Online and realised just how badly in need of an upgrade my PC is for games. This site was recomended as being good value, but my knowledge of hardware is about 5 years out of date, so if I could get some advice, that'd be great.

I have a good case, and my existing PC has a 400w PSU, so hopefully that will be enough. Also got a monitor, keyboard, mouse, floppy drive, DVD/CDR combi... think that covers everything I can reuse and don't need to upgrade.

So I need a motherboard, processor, memory, cooler, video card, new HD (preferably 1tb). I want to spend up to £700, though that's just an estimate given I don't know what I ought to buy -- I might be persauded to spend a bit more, if there's a good reason for it.

What do you advise?
 
Welcome to the forum!

Motherboard: A P45 board, P5Q range is getting good press
CPU: Personally i would get a dual core, maybe a E84/5/6/00. Quads still good tho!
HDD: Spinpoint F1 1Tb
RAM: Probs PC6400 - Geil, Corsair, G-Skill are good
Cooler: TT, TRUE, Noctua are v.good
GPU: 4850/70
 
How does this look? I'm not quite sure how to figure out what CPUs and RAM go with which motherboards.

How much memory do I need? 2 or 4 gig? Also, is it worth getting DDR3 yet?

Anyway, this list fits my budget at £690.84. It doesn't include a cooler because the CPU comes with a heatsink+fan -- will that be enough? Finally, will a 400w PSU be enough for my needs?

Motherboard: Asus P5Q3 Deluxe @ Wifi-N Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.16GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
Memory: Corsair 4GB DDR3 DHX 1600C9DHX Twin3X (2x2GB) (TW3X4G1600C9DHX)
Video card: Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Hard drive: Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ)
 
Go with DDR2 for now and a DDR2 motherboard and spend the money you save on an aftermarket cooler, and you are probably going to need a new PSU so that as well.

What size is the monitor you are using?
 
Alright, hopefully I won't need to revise this. It comes to £640.25, including shipping.

Motherboard: Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 3.16GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
Memory: Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB)
Video card: Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Hard drive: Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ)
PSU: Antec NeoHE 500W Modular ATX2.0 PSU

Hi Nick,

What size is the monitor you are using?
Click to expand...

Digimate... think it's 19" -- plenty big enough for my needs.

Btw, I just realised that my existing PSU doesn't have the right connectors, so I need a new one in any case, regardless of power issues.

I think I'll hold off on the cooler. I want to see how everything runs first, then if I want to overclock in a few months time, which I probaby will, I'll buy one (along with a DVDRW, maybe).

Oh, and is it worth installing Vista, or should I stay with XP (I have both already)?
 
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