Upgrade - Need Mobo/CPU/RAM/GFX - £700 - Can you help?

[Spon]

Hi Guys,

Its that time of life again. Hope you can pass on your usual good advice. My present rig you guys advised on has lasted overclocked to 3200 speeds for 2.5 years and the only upgrade was a stick of 512 ram to bring it to a gig for Warcraft, but she's running out of steam now...

AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2500+
Abit NF7-S v2.0 nForce2
Kingston HyperX 512MB (2x256MB) DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Kit
Leadtek WinFast A350TDH LX GeForce FX 5900 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case - 380W TruePower Silent PSU
Samsung SP1213N 120GB 8MB Cache - OEM
Coolermaster Aero 7 Lite
LiteOn LTC-48161H 48x/48x/24x/16x CD-RW/DVD

Case, Hard drive, CD-RW/DVD will remain so just need a good stable mobo with overclocking in CMOS and i'd imagine an Nforce 4 chipset? A good overclockable CPU preferably AMD and 64 bit if pos, 2 gig min RAM. Graphix wise I lean towards Nvidia cards though I'm interested in SLI options if for my budget 2 lower cards can be better than a largers single? (though who can ever bring themselves to buy a lower spec card *L*). Then its just cooling options. I prefer as silent as possible as im sure we all do and i guess air cooling for cheap price though i'm not adversed to trying out water/vapour cooling if they have come down in price.

My only concern is my present PSU is 380Watt. How does that stack up now-a-days?

Anyway budget is around £700! Can you help me out?

 

[Spon]

Some great suggestions there naffa thanks! What kind of overclocks are people geting from the 3700+ San Diego?

Im guessing listing a 580Watt PSU is telling me my old 380 watt is pased it *L* But 580W!? do systems really need that much these days? I believe you but its quite a hike *L*

Hmm new case is certainly possible however i do like my old Antec. Do newer cases provide any increased benifit worth investment? If so cool! if not, then i'm always in favour of saving cash

 

[Spon]

Thanks Bigdom! Big graphics there! On paper i do love ATI but everytime in the past that ive gone for one I'd have driver or compatibility probs and it put me off. That was a few years ago now so im open to looking into giving them ago however im not too comfortable spending £350 on a gfx card. I usuall only spend around £200 and putting more into CPU so i guess im looking at a 7800 or an X1800XL. On the CPU topic I see a lot about "dual core" CPU are they worth going for?

Thanks for the PSU info I can see the need now for a new PSU

 

[Spon]

Thanks Naffa I have had a look at the 1800 and can see its advantages
Hows about this then......

HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £189.95
Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard £69.95
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 £109.95
Tagan TG430-U15 430W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU £46.95
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail £137.95
VAT £97.09
Total £651.84

Could rise up to an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego 90nm @ £204.95 making a final total £750 if i include a £20 cooler? Any idea what the 4000+ SD is like overclocking?

 

[Spon]

Excellent BigDom thanks dual core with ATI it is !. Nice setups. Thank you both for your guidence! Time to play!....