Upgrade Build Advice

SaBBz · 12 Dec 2009 at 13:09

I'm looking to purchase an upgrade for my PC. Currently running on an AMD XP2500+ Barton clocked to XP3200 speeds on an Abit NF7-S with 1 gig of RAM, just to give an idea of how old my setup is!

I'm looking to spend about £600 on CPU + cooler, RAM, motherboard, graphics card and PSU. I have a Coolermaster Black Widow 201 in which the bits will be housed. Ideally I'd like the cooler and PSU to be as quiet as possible.

I really have no idea what is good or whether to go Intel or AMD, or even how much RAM would be advised for running modern games. I think my Windows drive is slowly dying so think I'll be looking to upgrade that as well. Does it make much difference on which drive I go for?

I would also like a monitor approx 24" for 200 quid or just over. The PC will be used mainly for games and a bit of browsing etc, and possibly watching movies.

If you guys could give me any advice on the above I'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance.

95thrifles · 12 Dec 2009 at 13:20

For the build look at the thread in my sig/top of page, theres a couple of builds at £700, if you remove the case from the equation youre almost there, bit of tweaking
Re the monitor, Id recomend this one
And tweaking done

Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £139.99 (£121.73)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card + Colin McRae Dirt 2 Full Game £119.98 (£104.33)
Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £82.98 (£72.16)
OCZ Gold Low Voltage 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3G1600lV4GK) £76.99 (£66.95)
Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK) £69.99 (£60.86)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £68.99 (£59.99)
Akasa AK-968 X4 CPU Cooler (Socket 939/AM2/AM3/775/1156/1366) £21.99 (£19.12)
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99 (£15.64)
Total: £598.90

SaBBz · 12 Dec 2009 at 18:27

Thanks for the advice

I take it the motherboard will fit in my Black Widow? Also are the PSU and cooler quiet?

Would I also be able to overclock using the above setup?

Thanks again.

CSA · 12 Dec 2009 at 18:34

95thrifles's spec looks very good , definately consider the i5 route for gaming

tbh i dont think you going to get much better than that spec for the money

95thrifles · 12 Dec 2009 at 19:01

SaBBz said:
Thanks for the advice I take it the motherboard will fit in my Black Widow? Also are the PSU and cooler quiet?

Would I also be able to overclock using the above setup?

Thanks again.

It should fit assuming your case is standard ATX and not any weird config, lol
The PSU is very good, one of best, and the cooler is very good to, plus iit has PWM so your mobo can control the speed to find the desired balance between cooling/noise
And yes you would be able to OC very well