Good Upgrade or not?

D

Duncan

Geek Trainee
Well ive got roughly £400 to spend on an upgrade at christmas, my old pc specs etc are under my computer to the left<<.

This is roughly what im thinking of buying, could someone confirm whether this motherboard i post will connect to a CD-RW drive, a DVD Drive and a floppy drive. If anyone knows somewhere i can get cheaper, please suggest, remember it must be a uk delivering site ;). Also is the onboard sound better than my 4 year old sound card?

Antec TrueControl 550w PSU with 5.25ins drive bay control panel
AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+ Socket 939pin 512k L2cache 90nm Retail Boxed Processor
Ebuyer 1GB DDR PC3200 400MHz 184pin Extra Value Ram
Xfx GeForce 6600GT PCI-E 128MB DDR3 TV+Dual DVI
Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI SKT939 NF4 SLI SATA USB2.0 retail

Im not really looking to overclock anything as ive been led to beleive this will lower the products durability, which is something im not looking to do, the longer the system lasts the better :)

I will be building this into my current case, and its the first time ive ever built a unit, is there any web pages i should be reading?
 
Thats a very good system. Only thing I would change is the PSU to a lower power model, you won't need 550W to power that, 450W more like to be safe.

Also I would recommend a more branded memoru model. Ebuyer has this Kingston RAM for slightly less. http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=49296

The motherboard is fine and will connect to everything you require. The onboard sound on latest motherboards are very good, maybe not as good as your SB card but I'm not too sure.

As for your graphics card, the new value king is the Radeon X800GTO. That should be more powerful than a 6600GT at not much more cost.
 
Addis said:
Thats a very good system. Only thing I would change is the PSU to a lower power model, you won't need 550W to power that, 450W more like to be safe.

Also I would recommend a more branded memoru model. Ebuyer has this Kingston RAM for slightly less. http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=49296

The motherboard is fine and will connect to everything you require. The onboard sound on latest motherboards are very good, maybe not as good as your SB card but I'm not too sure.

As for your graphics card, the new value king is the Radeon X800GTO. That should be more powerful than a 6600GT at not much more cost.
Click to expand...

I was really looking to go with NVIDIA cards so i could slot in another of the same card to use SLI at a later date, maybe around may.

Thanks for the information on the RAM.


Matt555 said:
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=98566
That Hiper PSU would be good, then spend that little bit more money on a better graphics card, like the X800GTO that Addis mentioned.
Click to expand...

Thanks, i thought the 550W was a bit high, but im no expert so wasnt sure. Will the cooling that comes with this PSU along with the processor heatsink + fan and gfx card fan be enough to cool this system, i also have a 3inch'ish plastic fan on the back just under the PSU fan.

Is there a better NVIDIA card i could spend the money ill save on?
 
Matt555 said:
Okay then, go with the 6600GT if you really want to have SLI.
Click to expand...

Think ill stick with it, any idea on guides for building your own system etc?

And any help on the cooling side of this system?
 
I didnt see that 6800, you must have edited it after I posted...I think that 6800 would be better that a 6600GT...(someone either confirm this or slate me for that comment...heh)
 
yea i would get another 120mm or 80mm fan pushing air in

a possible set up:
80mm blowing air out to get rid of some of that heat
120mm blowing in or another 80mm blowing in
not sure if u said the size of the one on the psu but thats good
or possibly look into a pci fan blowing near the video cards
 
That 6800 would be a good buy if you're thinking about SLI in the future.

I'm not too sure about Hiper, its a controversial brand so I'd stick with Antec, Thermaltake, Sparkle.
 
I can see what you're saying there Addis, they're kinda a good brand but do you really trust them? Heh go with something trusted, check out this thread and this thread on PSU advice and performance.
 
Matt555 said:
I didnt see that 6800, you must have edited it after I posted...I think that 6800 would be better that a 6600GT...(someone either confirm this or slate me for that comment...heh)
Click to expand...
This is sort of a tricky one, the regular 6800 has only got regular DDR memory where as the 6600GT has GDDR3 memory. The 6800 has higher clockspeeds and 12 pipelines aswell. Then if you run two 6600GT's in SLi, they will usually equal or beat a X800XT/6800GT. My suggestion is probably the 6600GT due to their uber fast memory and SLi capabilities :)
 
Hmm I guess, I mean I've had my 6600GT @ 600/1200 it's an XFX AGP one but I think it's almost the same as the PCI-e one (the other 6600GT AGP producers run the exact same memory as on the PCI-e on but they lower the clockspeed to 900MHz, XFX set theirs at the PCI-e speed of 1GHz), the 6600GT AGP just uses a chip to convert PCI-e to AGP. Also the 6800GS is out and might be replacing the 6800 series cards. So there may difficulty finding one in the future. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
 
Yes, the 6800GS is infact replacing all 6800 cards.
Do what you think is best. If you can find a 6800 for cheap, then go for it.
If not, grab the 6600GT :)
 
Ive decided to also get a new case as my old one is 4 years old.
This also means i can choose a case with suitable places for fans, and ive found this.
PCICASE CS2600-SL Hyperline II Silver ATX Tower Case - No PSU
After takeing a look at that, and the images, i got some 80mm fans, 3 of these for the 3 fan sockets on that case?
Ebuyer Extra Value 8cm Case Fan With Red/Green/Blue LED's

I also decided to change to an enermax power supply after your comments on the hiper one and reading through that power supply thread :)
Enermax FMA Series 460W EG465AX-VE PSU

Any comments on the PSU, Case, and Fans?

Ive also had a quick read over this build your own pc site im going to print off there guide before i start assembling my new PC.
Building one doesnt appear to be as complicated as i thought :)
 
That's a nice PSU, Enermax are a good brand - it'll do you good! As for the case, It's nice but there's no grill at the front for air intake over the HDD's, while it's not a complete neccessity it's nice to have as it provides a good intake of cooler air and this then flows over something which could use some cooling. Maybe check out EBuyer SN-C0308BS ATX Middle Tower Case (BLACK), it's got a PSU with it but don't use that one as it's generic and most probably not very good. It's got an 80mm fan included and I'd try and find out the noise level of them, while it's not essential, it is nice to try and have a fairly quiet PC.
It's not hard to build a PC, if you take your time, remember the right tools and steps and ground yourself every few minutes you'll be fine.
You might want to check out:
http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/
and
http://www.buildyourowncomputer.net/learntobuild.html
They should help as well, just be patient and you know we're always here for help and guidance.
 
Matt555 said:
That's a nice PSU, Enermax are a good brand - it'll do you good! As for the case, It's nice but there's no grill at the front for air intake over the HDD's, while it's not a complete neccessity it's nice to have as it provides a good intake of cooler air and this then flows over something which could use some cooling. Maybe check out EBuyer SN-C0308BS ATX Middle Tower Case (BLACK), it's got a PSU with it but don't use that one as it's generic and most probably not very good. It's got an 80mm fan included and I'd try and find out the noise level of them, while it's not essential, it is nice to try and have a fairly quiet PC.
It's not hard to build a PC, if you take your time, remember the right tools and steps and ground yourself every few minutes you'll be fine.
You might want to check out:
http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/
and
http://www.buildyourowncomputer.net/learntobuild.html
They should help as well, just be patient and you know we're always here for help and guidance.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help, im gonna stick with the case ive chosen, i prefer it over that one.
Thanks for those sites, and the first thing i done before choosing my hardware, was order an anti static wristband for safety when building.

When u mentioned the word HDD, it got me thinking, my current 55gb harddrive is 4 years old, and im not even sure if it uses S-ATA technology, should i get a new one?
 
Yes I would recommend a new HD. Most drives now arne't SATA, even though it has become mainstream. So if its more than 2 years old then its probably an IDE drive. You'll notice a good performance boost by getting a better HD. Get a SATA drive with preferably 8mb of disk cache from Western Digital (Caviar drives) or Seagate (Barracudas). Both are reliable and have excellent performance with the newer ones.
 
Addis said:
Yes I would recommend a new HD. Most drives now arne't SATA, even though it has become mainstream. So if its more than 2 years old then its probably an IDE drive. You'll notice a good performance boost by getting a better HD. Get a SATA drive with preferably 8mb of disk cache from Western Digital (Caviar drives) or Seagate (Barracudas). Both are reliable and have excellent performance with the newer ones.
Click to expand...

Would i be able to use both drives with the motherboard i am buying?
And 99.9% of HDDs on ebuyer are OEM, will i have to purchase cables for them seperatly or do these come with motherboard / case?

EDIT
Does this look like a decent HDD? Western Digital WD1200JS Caviar SE 120GB 7200RPM SATA2/300 8MB Cache - OEM
 
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