What to upgrade to?

hartgeh3 · 8 Jun 2006 at 23:02

Hi all

I have the below rig, and am thinking about upgrading. I want too keep it quiet as possible, maybe overclock later..

Opty 146
ThermalRight SI-120 with 120mm fan
1gb Geil One ram (2x512mb)
MSI Neo2

would like to keep price under £350
any help would be great, thanks.

Joe42 · 8 Jun 2006 at 23:59

You want improvements to make it silent or new parts to make it faster or both?

If you want advice on silence you need to give details of fans and coolers you currently have.
I would start by finding out what the main sources of noise are. Gfx and chipset are usually top of the list and the hardest to deal with.

hartgeh3 · 9 Jun 2006 at 11:48

Would like abit of both tbh.
On the mobo I replaced the Norhtbridge with a heatsink, which made quite abit of difference.
Fan wise I only have the SI-120 with 120mm Akasa ultra quiet and Seasonic PSU (120mm) to keep things quite.
Graphics card is only a 6200 which is passive, so that is ok.

Joe42 · 9 Jun 2006 at 12:09

If you want to game on it then the first thing to upgrade is the graphics. You could also try selling your current ram and getting 2 1gb sticks, this will give massive performance improvements in games such as bf2 at high detail.

You've already got some good quiet components, if you want to make it even quieter get a fan controller to reduce some fan speeds and a silent box to put the harddisk in. You didn't mention what case fan you have, but that will probably need to be either slowed down with a fan controller or replaced with a silent model. I recommend a panaflo 120x38mm fan.

It would be a great waste not to overclock it, if you need guidance let me know.