Upgrade Needed

[GolfNovember90]

right so i havent upgraded my PC in a few years,
currently running a Athlon 64 3200+
2gb DDR ram (333mhz lol)
ATI Radeon X1550

looking at upgrading to:

motherboard has a bult in ATI 4200 so im happy upgrading to something better later on
am i on the right track or is this seriously ****ed?

 

[baroniuk]

What are you mainly going to be using your pc for?

 

[mp260767]

fairly certain the am3 motheboards use dual channel memory rather than the tri channel so might be worth checking that.

overall looks fine, as per baroniuk, would be worth letting people know what you intend to use it for in case they can offer up anything better.

Alos, what sort of budget are you working with ?

 

[GolfNovember90]

mainly using it gaming, ie. eve online, supreme commander
want to be able some of the newer games when they come out also
not too bothered about high perfomance games like crysis and stuff like that tbh, just want something that will last a few years
i'd like to keep it under £500

 

[95thrifles]

Comes in just over at 515, if you want to keep it under drop the cpu down to the tri core, you need a dedicated gfx card for decent gaming performance, case isnt as good but psu is much better (this is more important)

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £149.98 (£130.42)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £105.00 (£91.30)
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £76.99 (£66.95)
Patriot G Series AMD 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-10666 1333MHz Dual Channel (PGS34G1333LLKA) £70.99 (£61.73)
Be Quiet! Straight Power 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant Power Supply £66.99 (£58.25)
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £45.99 (£39.99)

Total : £515.94

Edit: missed off aftermarket cooler, Id go for the sunbeam, excellent cooler, adding this in means you prob do want to drop cpu down to tri core, wont effect gaming performance

 

[GolfNovember90]

cheers, so maybe drop down to a tri core black edition?
was thinking of gettting a ATI HD 4670 as a graphics card to start off with, and maybe upgrade to soemthing more high end towards christmas

 

[cmndr_andi]

This would be my suggestion, very similar to 95thrifle's:

Should do very well in games, overclock nicely and is a touch under budget. I suggest using the rest of the budget to buy 1 of these fans for the front and some of this thermal paste.

 

[GolfNovember90]

thanks for the help guys!! much appreciated

 

[SfnX]

+1 to cmndr, see no problems there, bloody ugly motherboard