Worth the upgrading?

Too Tall · 2 Jan 2009 at 00:59

Hi guys, i have a few spare quid lying around and am looking at possibly upgrading my tower.

At the momenty i have an E6750 @3.5ghz, 4gb of OCZ Reaper 6400, GTX 280, 500gb WD AAKS, antex p180, Corsair TX 750W . I'm thinking about upgrading the motherboard, cpu, ram and case to the following;

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail £219.99
(£252.99) £219.99
(£252.99)
Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £214.99
(£247.24) £214.99
(£247.24)
G.Skill 6GB DDR3 NQ PC3-10666C9 1333MHz (3x2GB) Triple Channel DDR3 (F3-10666CL9T-6GBNQ) £149.99
(£172.49) £149.99
(£172.49)
Lian-Li PC-B25B Aluminium Midi-Tower - Black (No PSU) £119.99
(£137.99) £119.99
(£137.99)
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/LGA775) £29.99
(£34.49) £29.99
(£34.49)
Thermalright LGA1366 Bolt-Thru-Kit

Will i see a lot of gains from this? as 850 is lot of money and i dont want to be upgrading gain for another year at least.

jak731 · 2 Jan 2009 at 01:00

Depends on what you do with your PC, i7 won't give that much benefit to games. Media encoding would benefit quite a bit...

The case and cooler look good, remember you will need a 120mm fan or 2 for the TRUE.

Too Tall · 2 Jan 2009 at 01:10

Mostly gaming with a bit of video encoding.

jak731 · 2 Jan 2009 at 01:12

For gaming, minimal improvements for now, a fast dual core would serve you better in a lot of games, if you got an E8400 or E8500 your basicly guaranteed to get 4GHz out of it with decent cooling. You would save a few bob as well (price of i7 may well go down depending on the performance of the phenom 2s).

For encoding, the difference will be quite noticeable with i7.

Too Tall · 2 Jan 2009 at 01:17

I have a few red wings spare here for the TRUE, shame there isnt a fitting kit available for my tuniq tower as im more than happy with that... guess it will be going on an auction site along with the other components if i do upgrade.

-iceblade^ · 2 Jan 2009 at 01:38

not worth it.

your PC is powerful enough for games. that's a lot of cash you could be doing something else with - maybe taking out the wife / girlfriend to dinner or something?

DIABLO · 2 Jan 2009 at 11:54

As the others said it really ain't worth it you'll see minimal improvement in speed.

AlexTrickle · 2 Jan 2009 at 12:08

If your case is the Antec P180 on the overclockers website - then i'd upgrade that at the least just to improve air flow and perhaps enable you to coax just a little more out of your c2d.

Also if your case is the one on the ocuk website then are you on a mATX board atm?

Too Tall · 2 Jan 2009 at 13:53

The P180 is the predecessor to the P182, its exactly the same minus some of the cable management features of the 182.

alex24 · 2 Jan 2009 at 13:55

I wouldn't bother upgrading until your current rig can't handle the latest games. There are much better things to spend that money on! perhaps you could buy some nice new peripherals though, maybe speakers, new mouse, new keyboard?

miniyazz · 2 Jan 2009 at 16:22

AlexTrickle said:
If your case is the Antec P180 on the overclockers website - then i'd upgrade that at the least just to improve air flow and perhaps enable you to coax just a little more out of your c2d.

Also if your case is the one on the ocuk website then are you on a mATX board atm?

Heh a p180 with a mATX board? Would look a bit weird. Anyway, one of the main reasons for getting the p180 is the sound-dampening build. I've currently got the p182 (practically the same case, as pointed out earlier) and have no problems with all fans on minimum, Q6600 OC'd to 3GHz (not the biggest OC but temps are low and I could push it further), and that's with an 8800 GTX spewing out heat beneath. I reckon you'd get a decent enough heat transfer improvement with a CPU cooler upgrade, keep your current case and save the money from that for something nice. Hell, if you were worried about temps and upgrading the case for that, turn the fans up

Edit: About the mATX board, I just remembered there's the full-size chassis tower that I've got and the mATX case, both with the same name. If you've got the mATX one then yes it would be worth upgrading the case for better temps.

Too Tall · 2 Jan 2009 at 19:16

alexhull24 said:
I wouldn't bother upgrading until your current rig can't handle the latest games. There are much better things to spend that money on! perhaps you could buy some nice new peripherals though, maybe speakers, new mouse, new keyboard?

I'm more than happy with my keyboard and mouse, i think a new sound card could be an option though being as im using on board sound, i've never bought a stand alone sound card! speakers are logitech z560's

littlepuppy · 2 Jan 2009 at 23:18

In answer to your first post, if you like playing with new toys and have money to burn I would do it...

If you dont I wouldnt, I dont think the outlay is quite worth the outcome (for you)

all IMO.

Method · 2 Jan 2009 at 23:24

-iceblade^ said:
not worth it.

your PC is powerful enough for games. that's a lot of cash you could be doing something else with - maybe taking out the wife / girlfriend to dinner or something?

hihi what dinner is that expensive?

but yeah looking at your current spec its good for a while yet.