Upgradeing my brothers AM2 system look for a bit of advice

SBD

SBD

SBD

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Joined
24 Oct 2007
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Location
Leicester/Norwich
Here is my brothers current spec:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz (Socket AM2)
MSI K9N Neo-F nForce 550 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Corsair 1GB DDR2 Value Select PC5300 Dual Channel Kit (2x512MB)
BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express)
Samsung SpinPoint P HD080HJ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache
Antec TruePower 2.0 430W PSU
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower Case
Netgear WG311 54Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter
Samsung SH-W163 16x16 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer ReWriter
Belinea 1925S1W 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor

I built this for him in 2006 :eek:

He will be going to uni and i would like to upgrade his pc not really wanting to spend more than £80-£100 otherwise i would just build him a new rig ;)

From looking at his motherboard spec i can put in anything up to a X2 5200+ which would be a great boost. I was thinking about geting 2-4Gb of ram, a new graphics card and a bigger harddrive, while using the 80Gb hard drive for the OS and a larger one for storage.

What would you guys recommend? I am thinking about buying from the Members market so if you could give me average prices for each component that would be great.

Or do you think i am being silly/cheep and should just sell what he has and go for a new build :confused:
 
First of all you will not be making any worthy upgrade with £80-£100.
Secondly you will not be able to make much from selling the old rig.
For £300 or so people can buy themselves a brand new pc that is easily 3-4 times better than your brothers' old system, if not more!
 
PakJai said:
First of all you will not be making any worthy upgrade with £80-£100.
Secondly you will not be able to make much from selling the old rig.
For £300 or so people can buy themselves a brand new pc that is easily 3-4 times better than your brothers' old system, if not more!
Click to expand...

If you delete the dash from between the 3 and the 4 thats prob more accurate, lol
agreed though, sry but with such a small budget youd be struggling to upgrade so many things, cpu/ram/gfx/psu to power new gfx
think you pretty much have to bin it n start again, sry
 
95thrifles said:
If you delete the dash from between the 3 and the 4 thats prob more accurate, lol
agreed though, sry but with such a small budget youd be struggling to upgrade so many things, cpu/ram/gfx/psu to power new gfx
think you pretty much have to bin it n start again, sry
Click to expand...

I should have to be honest... :p
 
lol well this is what i was thinking:

CPU-£25 (gives me around a X2 4400+)
ram-£15 (gives me 2Gb of ram)
Graphics card - £50 (gives me around 8800GTS performance)
Harddrive with what ever if left lol :p

Since he only plays games at a low resolution I would have thought it would be sufficient well i would hope so :(

I'm going to price up some new components, the only problem being the more it costs the more cash i need to pay out :eek:
 
Hi SBD,

If you looking for a small upgrade then you can still do this. I agree the biggest improvement is to build a new machine but thats not what your asking for. So in answer to your question yes you can improve the performance of your current system.

Your board will take a AMD 6000+ and you should be able to pick one up second hand for £40 (I just sold mine for that)

Upgrading the memory to 4Gb will make a big difference and this is faster stuff.

Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400 £33.99

I recently bought a 8800GT 512Mb second hand for £30 and that was a big boost from my 8600GTS and would be a big improvement from a 7600.

8800GT
Corsair XMS2 4GB
AMD X2 6000 @ 3Ghz (Had mine at 3.3)

So for around £103.99 that would be a nice improvement.

Links - Your board PC1 CPU List

Edit: Just noticed the current CPU you have isnt even dual core. This will be a nice boost. Ignore the above posts..
 
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Thanks Spooter :)

Well i am in a dilemma I think i have 2-3 options i can take with his PC

1. buy some cheap second hand parts gives him a boost and will last maybe another year.

2. buy him a new motherboard cpu ram and gfx going for am2+/3 or intel lga775 which is kinda dead now so seems a little pointless.

3. Upgrade my current pc and give him my motherboard, cpu, gfx and 4Gb ram as this way, I get new toys even though my pc runs everything fine, my brother gets a good pc and i know everything will work and it still has warranty lmao

I dono the 3rd option would be the best for me and my brother but would cost the most lol why can't anything be simple lol
 
Option 1 would work in this case and he should be able to be on par with you for £100.

The X2 6000 aint bad and is much better than the Single Core 64 3200
4GB PC6400 will improve things a lot over 1Gb pc5300
and a 8800GT will be better than your GPU and his 7600.

Checkout my £7 upgrade Its almost fun.

Then save until you can afford i7 or AM3.
 
It's situational.. If I put myself in your shoes, I would probably have more budget for myself to upgrade my own computer and a lot less for my brother.

It would make more sense to upgrade your computer (depending on your budget of course), give your brother your old parts to keep him going for another year. This way you get a decent performance boost until whenever you decide on a major upgrade for yourself... you can keep feeding the old parts to your brother's pc to keep it going lol

If you make minor changes to his pc now then in a year's time you will end up looking at replacing both yours and his old systems. By then it would be even more difficult to get rid of the parts, considering how quickly technology advances thesedays!
 
Well atm I am looking at the X55 motherboards. I haven't really kept up to date with the i7. Considering i have my CPU clocked at 3.2 Ghz would i see a massive improvement going to an i7 @ 4Ghz.

I hate the cost of the i7 platform :p £200 for a cpu and £200 for a motherboard my last upgrade to lga775 was £120 cpu and £160 motherboard and at the time it was a very high end PC. Currently looking at the cheaper X55 motherboards but I need to have a look at some reviews before i can even start thinking about buying i7 and then i have DDR3 to worry about :rolleyes:

If i had to I could get £600 to upgrade my pc to i7 but is it really worth it :confused:
 
It really depends on what you do.

The entry level i7 920 is great, because 4-4.2Ghz can be safely reached on air cooler and even more on water coolers (it's immense!), no point thinking about the i7 965+ (way over priced IMO).

AMD Phenom II x4 955 is comparitively similar to the i7 920 in terms of gaming performace, but anything to do with multitasking or when you run graphic design applets (rendering), the i7 will kill it.

Why not play around with the overclocked bundles OcUK have on offer? I honestly think they are great, saves you a lot of work and the quality of the bundles are great!
 
My senses are kinda coming back to me now and I just cannot justify spending £600 for just the cpu motherboard and ram. My PC does everything i need it to so i think i will just buy him some second hand gear. Otherwise i'm going be spending crap loads on myself and i think i would feel a little underwhelmed with the performance i receive.

I know i7 is the best of the best but since i mostly game and do DVD and HD decoding will i really see much of an improvement :confused:
 
Just to illustrate for you, a budget build

b-2.jpg


less delivery as u get it free its 347
If you re-used case and optical drive that saves 50, dont know if the old PSU would do or not, maybe
 
Yeah there you go. 95 has a decent budget build for you.
What I would also suggest you do is to wait until mid August. AMD will be releasing their Phenom II x4 965 then. You will see a drop on the current CPU prices and bundles that's for sure :)
 
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