Upgrade check, advice needed.

Cannaton · 23 Sep 2007 at 10:45

Hi all, I've decided its time to upgrade my PC and give myself a much needed performance boost. What I've done in this thread is post my currect spec and then post what i think i'm going to purchase to upgrade. Now, I've been out of the loop for about 12 months so I'd just like a little advice as to whether the parts I have chosen will give me the best bang for buck, Im just looking for faster desktop performance (some video editing and working in flash etc) and gaming performance.

I'm not too fussed about cranking AA and AF up on games so I've decided i probably wont upgrade my graphics card (ati x1900xt) at this point but i do want to upgrade my CPU, mobo and RAM. Anway heres my current spec:

AMD 3700 SanDiego @ 2.6ghz (260x10)
2gb GSkill DDR500
Asus An-8 mobo (i think )
ati x1900xt
Seagate 320gb sata
seagate 120gb pata
Samsung DVDRW (havent a clue on the model)
Thermaltake Tsunami dream case
Hyper R 580watt modular PSU

Anyways, i am thinking of upgrading to the following below, i want to change case too as the tsunami is a bit battered after numerous lans etc.

Akasa AK-184-L2B Amber Ultra Quiet 92mm Fan - 3 pin £5.99
Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower Case - No PSU £49.99
Asus P5K Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £74.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.66GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £106.99
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £46.99

Sub Total : £284.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £51.61
Total : £346.51

Now with delivery thats £346 but i can push to around the £400 mark (tops i am a poor student

)

Anybody reccommend a different upgrade or improvements to what i've selected?

Thanks in Advance,
Paul

semi-pro waster · 23 Sep 2007 at 11:02

That looks fine as an upgrade, no obvious changes to suggest but you might want to check that the X1950XT fits into the case if you haven't already done so. I'm sure there will be no problems but sometimes you can slip up on the simplest things.

Cannaton · 23 Sep 2007 at 11:36

Ah yes i will look into that, cheers. Also would it be worth my while going quad core over that CPU??

semi-pro waster · 23 Sep 2007 at 11:39

If you can afford it and will either be keeping the CPU for a while or have software that will use quad core then I see no reason not to. One of the newer Energy Efficient 95w chips (G0 stepping) would be best.

Cannaton · 23 Sep 2007 at 11:44

See thats what i'm not sure about, i think i may just get the dual core and maybe use the extra money towards an extra 2gb of ram or towards a new card.... agh i bet i'll end up spending twice the amount i set out to knowing me ha

Edit: sorry for the 20 questions, but are the 1333mhz chips the 'newer' ones? IE better ones to go for???

semi-pro waster · 23 Sep 2007 at 11:49

The 1333mhz chips are the newer ones yes, any of the P35 motherboards will support them. It is up to you which you go for, just to make it more difficult for you the quad cores (G0 steppings) have been overclocking nicely as well.