What would you upgrade?

Camalot · 29 Jun 2008 at 21:44

Been thinking about giving my PC a little upgrade lately to make it a bit more future proof. I'd probably be spending around £200 from now until Christmas to make it better.

Current spec is as follows......

CPU: E2160 @3GHZ
RAM: 2GB Geil pc2 6400 (2x1gb) running at 4.4.4.12 (May get the Crucial 4gb kit for £55)
Graphics Card: X1800XT (Pondering over swiping a cheap 8800GT, or 4850/4870)
Mobo: Gigabyte P35C DS3R
Hard Drive: Old 160GB WD Caviler SATA
Monitor: 19" Widescreen Acer 1440x900 res
PSU: Seasonic s12 430W (
OS: Windows XP Home 32bit.

I mostly play games and browse the internet. I'm worried about how the PSU will cope if i choose to go quad core with a new graphics card.

Any ideas welcome, cheers.
Adam.

p4radox · 29 Jun 2008 at 21:46

A new graphics card, definitely. Get hold of a nice ATI 4850.

And your PSU will be fine.

Camalot · 29 Jun 2008 at 21:50

p4radox said:
A new graphics card, definitely. Get hold of a nice ATI 4850.

And your PSU will be fine.

Yea, i think the graphics card is going to get an upgrade for sure. Will the CPU be lacking behind, causing a bottleneck in the system?

Also been thinking about a faster HDD and making the move to Vista 64 with 4gb ram. The crucial 4gb kits are going stupidly cheap, its just so tempting to flog my 2gb kit and grab 4gb!

marc2003 · 29 Jun 2008 at 22:05

a 2160@3ghz is plenty fast enough to power a 4850.

PhoenixUK · 30 Jun 2008 at 03:51

The only upgrades I could say are:
1. GPU - A MUST.
2. Another 2gb of ram - option. ( yes, even in 32bit system this will still leave you about 3.5gb)
3. HDD - A must I would say

.
4. PSU - will stay with you for the future upgrades.

Camalot · 30 Jun 2008 at 13:36

PhoenixUK said:
The only upgrades I could say are:
1. GPU - A MUST.
2. Another 2gb of ram - option. ( yes, even in 32bit system this will still leave you about 3.5gb)
3. HDD - A must I would say .
4. PSU - will stay with you for the future upgrades.

1. Looks like 4850 will be next
2. If i buy another 2x1GB sticks to make 4x1GB, will i still have Dual Channel, will it cause problems? Thinking about making the switch to Vista soon.
3. Thinking about getting one of these - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache

Oppinions?

bayo000 · 30 Jun 2008 at 13:56

1. good choice
2. yes you'll still run in dual channel
3. I'd go with Samsung HDD but thats just personal preference

PhoenixUK · 30 Jun 2008 at 14:07

Yep
It will be fine just make sure you get exactly the same sticks that you have now or if you somehow cant get those just sell your current 2gb and get 4gb kit.

That hdd will be fine also, however no idea about you but I am running out of space very fast and to be honest you could spend extra teener and get 500gb.

Budget or not budget - it's sometimes good to sacrifice 3 pints to save yourself a troubles later

.

Camalot · 30 Jun 2008 at 14:14

My RAM is the Geil 2gb kit from overclockers. Currently at £29 i think

As for hard drive, i haven't really come close to filling my 160GB one, so 250GB will be more than enough for me.

Only reason i want to change it, is because its pretty old and slow.

If i go Vista 64bit for future proof, should i just get another two sticks of the Geil, or go for the 2x2gb corsiar (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB)), which will leave me the option for 8GB in future? Not really sure what upcoming games would benefit from 8GB memory, i just hear a lot of people saying 8gb is better :confused: