Upgrade - need help

Cat_In_Pyjamas · 14 Jan 2010 at 10:36

Hi guys,

after 3 (I think) long years I've finally decided to overhaul my rig, however with limited finances (circa 800 quid) I wanted to see how much I can actually keep from my old one, so here goes:

*CPU: Athlon 64 4000
*CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe
*M/B: Asus A8N-SLI Premium
*HDD: 2x 160 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA2 7200 rpm 8MB cache
*RAM: 2x 1Gb Patriot PC3200 XBLK Dual Channel kit
*G/C: Leadtek 7950GT 512mb 256bit PCI-Express Dual DVI
*PSU: Chieftec 550W ATX2.0 EPS12 DUAL XEON/OPTERON
*Case: Thermaltake Shark VA7000 BWA Black

Obviously a lot of this will go, if possible I wanted to retain the case, cooler and the PSU however I'm not sure if 550W cuts it anymore these days.
Anyway, with my budget in mind (and that's the upper limit so not going a penny above it), what would you suggest as the optimal components to go for. I'm not fussed about Intel vs AMD/NVIDIA vs RADEON, so any suggestions are welcome.

Many thanks in advance.

Phatzy · 14 Jan 2010 at 11:40

keep the case, if you want keep the two hard drives and raid them.

you didnt say what its meant for, So this will be great for gaming and professional use like video editing etc

Cat_In_Pyjamas · 15 Jan 2010 at 01:03

D'oh my bad, mainly meant for gaming. No need to include a dvd rom in the suggested specs. I have 2 perfectly working ones.

One more thing, in other threads i noticed people suggesting 550w and under psus for your kind of conf. would it not make sense to keep my old psu (its very reliable, despite its age i never had a problem with it) in that case, and spend the saved money on more ram/better cpu/cooler?

koooowweeee · 15 Jan 2010 at 09:40

that psu is probably no good mate. does it even have pci-e on it? you could keep your hard drives as well. can always buy another later on

Cat_In_Pyjamas · 15 Jan 2010 at 13:24

koooowweeee said:
that psu is probably no good mate. does it even have pci-e on it? you could keep your hard drives as well. can always buy another later on

Well considering my previous gfx was a PCI-E card you'd expect it to have one, and yes it has. The only worry is that it's an ATX 2.0 standard psu where currently I see atx 2.2 on new psu's.

Cat_In_Pyjamas · 16 Jan 2010 at 00:38

Okay, I've had a look at what the shop has and here are two comps I came up with:

and

Now for the questions:

- which of the two will provide a better gaming platform
- which will be better to overclock, and last but not least
- which of the two is more future proof (i.e. if I choose to upgrade something in say a years time, which of the two will cause less hussle)?