Upgraditis - Spec check and Cooler advice

[Kirth Gersen]

I have 3 Vista PCs in the house:

1. Mine as specced below. Mainly used for FSX, il2, Hearts of Iron 3, as well as normal duties.
2. Media Center in the lounge - E2160 - mild oc to 2.4Ghz so as to keep the noise and heat down.
3. Family PC. Old AMD 3700+ CPU (really can't remember the rest of the spec). Surfing, children talking crap to other children on MSN and facebook and basic office duties.

Number 3 started getting flaky recently. I wisely saved the data, and last weekend it decided not to boot up at all, or even let me into BIOS. I've done the usual swapping out components, clearing CMOS de da de da de dum.. nada. I'm assuming the board is kaput. There may be a fix, but I can't be arsed anymore and have developed the very common desease on this forum of upgraditis.

The plan:

1. Upgrade machine 1 to a i5 750 jobby, Gigabyte P55 mobo, 4 Gb Dual Channel DDR3 RAM, and a new cooler to support a 4Ghz overclock and stay quiet - c£400.

2. Move machine 1s board, CPU, and RAM into Machine 3, fire it up and hope it works.

3. Upgrade all 3 PCs to Win 7 using the £130 family upgrade deal found elsewhere in this jungle . Specifically for the new version of Media Center, but also so that SWMBO can see some visible value in the spend.

Questions.

1. Is there a better plan for this c£500 given the usages of the machines.

2. Could you recommend me a quiet cooler, which plugs straight in (no back plate), that will tame a 4Ghz clock on the new machine 1.

Hope you can help.

Thanks

 

[Kirth Gersen]

bump - anyone?

 

[SMAndy]

This looks like you've got everything sorted. You'll have to get quite a beefy graphics card to put in the new Number 1 PC to notice a huge difference. a GTX260 is only one or two steps up, but with an i5 to go with it, that'd give a nice steady framerate.

To be honest, it looks like you've already decided whats going to happen. No reason to question your judgement here. And Upgradeitis isn't an illness... It's a state of mind.

I'm afraid that I'm not so into which coolers will tame a 4GHz clock on an i5... I'm an AMD fan, and have been since Athlon XP.

 

[Kirth Gersen]

Thanks for your comments.

I thought about a GFX upgrade, but both FSX and HOI3 are CPU bound games, and I am not sure the current card is a limiting factor, though I will review when IL2: Birds of Prey comes out.