Upgrade Help Please

Are you the sort of person who may want to use a dual card(crossfire) setup in the future?

If not a cheaper 8** chipset motherboard will do everything you want.

The 890 chipset main claim to fame is its ability to do proper crossfire, which you may not be interested in?

The asus I linked too in my first post will keep costs down.
 
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Thats what its looking like at the moment, can someone just reasure me that my GTS 250 will fit in the case thats the only thing i'm worried about at the moment. Also the motherboard i chose hows that? I will most likely end up heading over to ATI in the future.

EDIT: just checked your first post Stulid and its the motherboard i chose. Do you think i'd be better off getting a better one now or will that one be fine?
 
The graphics card will fit that case(I believe even a ATI HD5870 will squeeze in)

The motherboard has everything a modern board should.

Aslong as you keep to single card use its fine.
 
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Densityy said:
Doesn't Crossfire work on this board i take it then?
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It does.

Just not properly, the second card slot is limited to 4X speed, the first gets a proper 16X.

This means the second graphics card could get less data per second.

For true 16X/16X you want the more expensive 890chipset.

It also depends how big your monitor/resolution you play at, if crossfire is beneficial for you.
 
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At the moment i play on 1440 x 900 and i don't think i'm going to be getting a new monitor for a good few years. 1440 x 900 is big enough for me.
 
Densityy said:
Ah ok so thats where i'm heading in the future then i take it. Hmm do i need to bother with having 2 PCI x16 slots then?
Click to expand...

A single decent graphics card upto say a 5830 will be perfect.

If you decide on the future to stay with nvidia, you can't use two cards with these boards anyway.
 
stulid said:
A single decent graphics card upto say a 5830 will be perfect.

If you decide on the future to stay with nvidia, you can't use two cards with these boards anyway.
Click to expand...

Ah ok, think i'll stick with the mobo anyway even though i won't use the 2nd slot.

Is there anything else i'll need to put it all together?

Thermal paste? Or will that be supplied with the CPU
 
stulid said:
Does your psu have a 24pin and additional 8pin ATX connector for the motherboard?
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it has the 24pin believe not sure about hte 8pin ATX connector i'll go check now for you.

EDIT: Yeah it does.

It has

1x 20+4
1x 8 pin
2x Sata
6x 4 Pin(retangle one)
2x 4pin (small ones)
1x PCI-E 6 Pin
1x 4Pin (square one)
 
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Only other thing to check is.

Is your harddrive sata or the old ide?

Reason is I believe these boards your looking at(asus or gigabyte/870 or 890chipset) only have one ide connector, if you have a DVD drive and harddrive on the same ribbon cable, then the harddrive will only run at the same speed as an optical drive.

That's a big bottleneck.
 
Densityy said:
My HDD is a Sata, i suppose i don't have to plug my DVD Drive in all the time? I barely ever use it.
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If its sata, uses a thin little cable with a 1cm wide connector?

Your DVD drive uses a ide wide flat cable?

then your good to go.

The problem I was on about only occurs when a ide optical drive and ide harddrive are placed onto the same ribbon cable, it slows down to the speed of the slowest drive.
 
So the optical drive is sata too? Sweet!

You got nothing to worry about, the power connectors being on the same cable don't affect it.

You don't need anything else to build your system.
 
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Ok Thanks for all your help everyone and espcially stulid. This will be what i'm ordering and please expect me to be posting next week saying my computer won't turn on or something ;). Thanks for the help and wish me luck on building my computer.

- Depending on how much money i do have in the bank will determine if i buy some more fans or a new CPU fan.
 
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