Upgrade time! Suggestions required....

[DumbGrunt]

Okay. I have a budget of about £1100. First a list of what I'm going to salvage from this fine beast...

Monitors (30" Widescreen HD LCD and a 17" LCD)
Optical drives (16x dual layer burners)
Hard Drive
Case (Coolermaster stacker)
PSU (650W)
Soundcard (Audigy ZS Platinum)

So that leaves me needing....

Motherboard
CPU
Gfx Card
RAM

Starting with the CPU, the Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz looks nice. £237.29 from here...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Intel_Pentium_Core_Duo2.html


Hmmm, mboard to go with that would probably be something along the lines of a ASUS P5N32SLI SE DELUX NF4 SLI, £129.78 from here....

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=443854

(Running total - £367.07)

On to the Gfx card. The BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 was my initial choice, weighing in at £375.94 from ....

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/7950_Series.html

As for RAM, I haven't a clue. If I could sneak in a new psu or sound card that would be cool. Please help me here. I'm stressed out to death over the whole sorry affair! :(

*edit* Damn Mboard doesn't take Core 2 Duo. Shitfuck.

[siddy]

well, looks like you got a really good selection so far.

It's not tough or find a conroe supporting mobo, just keep lookin'

for RAM you could even stck in some value-ram, Corsair, OCZ, and other big memor manufacturers make value ram, which is fine if you're not goin to overclock.

So for PSU, you will have to get something substantial, as your CPU and gfx card will drain a lot of juice!

I've heard a lot of good about the OCZ GameXtreme or whatever they call it, but i'd be looking at a 500 watt plus, from any reputable manufacturer: OCZ, Enermax, Silverstone, Antec, Power and Cooling etc.

They say that 10% of your computer's budget should go towards the PSU, so make sure you drop some decent money. it would be a shame to lose a lot of good compontents to a bad PSU.

[Agent Law]

I have the GamerXStream. It is a nice PSU. :)

The Core 2 Duo doesn't take as much power as it's previous generation, but two GFX cards will be quite beefy (except they're nVIDIA, so they won't take as much power).

The ASUS P5N32SLI SE Deluxe should be the one that's Conroe-compatible.

For RAM, get two gigs of some high end OCZ or Corsair.

[spartan]

Everything's good. If you can possibly wait another week or so for more Intel NForce 500 boards to hit the streets, I feel those would be a better choice than their NForce4 counterparts.

I've heard of people having trouble getting their NForce4s to work right away with the Core2Duo's. That board in paticular also seems to have issues working properly with some DDR2 800 memory.


Besides that... make sure your PSU is up to the task of the 7950X2, and you've got yourself covered nicely.

[DumbGrunt]

Right, I think the spec is now the following....

Intel Conroe Core Duo E6600 2.4 Ghz (4mb cache- YES 4mb Cache) £240.00

Gigabyte GA_965P_DS4 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 £123.32

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL) £146.44

Gainward BLISS GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-039-GW) £370.11

OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply (CA-018-OC) £82.00

Alpine 7 Cooler £7.00

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Edition £135

Any objections?

[Agent Law]

Get Corsair RAM and eVGA graphics card. I would follow spartan's suggestion and wait for the LGA-775 nForce5 boards.

[spartan]

I've got a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 that I used for my latest upgrade with a Pentium D 805 chip. It was pretty much the cheapest board I could have gotten off NewEgg that wasn't an ECS or cruddy board.

I'm impressed with a couple things about the board: For example, they use something called an all solid capacitor design. These things don't bend or twist; they're on there for good. It's also an impressive overclocker, though I don't have any personal knowledge of this just yet. The stock cooler for the 805 wasn't good enough to let me go over 3.3ghz - someday I'll get something better but that's beside the point.

On the downside, this board would not POST with my Corsair RAM out of the box. I had to commondere a stick of DDR2 that operated at 1.8 volts or lower for the board to initially POST - after that I flipped up the voltage in the BIOS and it loaded with my stick of Corsair just fine. But just a warning - I'm not sure if others have had this problem with the DS4 version (just to reiterate I own the DS3). Check on user reviews and see if it's worth your time.

I would have waited to get an NForce Intel board myself if I could have waited the extra month. In any case if you're lucky you can find some of the Intel NForce 570s on the 'net. I've yet to hear of the 590s hitting yet.

[DumbGrunt]

Hit the "authorise now" button a couple of seconds ago. I'm still shaking. This is what the August Santa is bringing me...

Asus P5N32-SLi SE Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 775) PCI-Express Motherboard x1 £119.99

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit x1£124.95

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz x1 £204.99

Gainward BLISS GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) x1£335.99

Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA) x2 £83.90

Arctic Cooling Alpine 7 CPU Cooler (Socket 775) x1 £6.25

Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU x1£74.99

Akasa AK-TK-01 Cable Tidy Kit x1 £3.90

Subtotal £954.96

Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95

VAT £168.86

Total £1,133.77

Odin preserve me. I hope this all fits together. I haven't seen 3d for about three months :(

[Noirceur]

Hit the "authorise now" button a couple of seconds ago. I'm still shaking. This is what the August Santa is bringing me...

Asus P5N32-SLi SE Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 775) PCI-Express Motherboard x1 £119.99

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit x1£124.95

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz x1 £204.99

Gainward BLISS GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) x1£335.99

Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA) x2 £83.90

Arctic Cooling Alpine 7 CPU Cooler (Socket 775) x1 £6.25

Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU x1£74.99

Akasa AK-TK-01 Cable Tidy Kit x1 £3.90

Subtotal £954.96

Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95

VAT £168.86

Total £1,133.77

Odin preserve me. I hope this all fits together. I haven't seen 3d for about three months :(
Resorted to the viking gods have you?

[DumbGrunt]

Screw all them middle eastern ones. They never mention computers in their books. Odin, on the other hand, was a well know electronics enthusiast. His son could even shit electricity!

[Noirceur]

Screw all them middle eastern ones. They never mention computers in their books. Odin, on the other hand, was a well know electronics enthusiast. His son could even shit electricity!
Is it bad that I only know who Odin is because of Stronghold 2?

[DumbGrunt]

Your order is awaiting packing in our warehouse

MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

[Mirsky]

Please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery.

Good luck putting it all together, looks like a damn fine system.

[colonelblake]

lol, ya notice what his total is?
lleett.

btw, with thaT rig you can run FA at like 642 fps.

[DumbGrunt]

Well, it's all here and assembled. Haven't actually played anything on it yet (goddamn work). Will run some benchmarks on it in the very near future and post them.