Time for an upgrade (Barton 2500+ NF7 setup)

[Participant]

I'm a nooby for new technology, so what's out there?! The time has come again when my system cannot hack today's games to an acceptable level, so I'm selling up and moving on. I need your advice on a setup please, and since I'm keeping my 15" TFT, keyboard, mouse, DVD-drive, CD-RW, printer, and maybe PSU for the forseeable future, I need a list of components as follows:

- MOBO
- CPU
- RAM
- GPU
- Raid HDD(s)
- Do I need a new PSU? Just bought an Akasa 460W Paxpower!
- Not sure if I need a new case, but assume I will get one
- 7.1 speakers
- Decent soundcard (currently using onboard as my Soundblaster Live! 5.1 is playing up)

Possible for £600ish? I will upgrade my TFT to 19" in the future.

I will need the machine as a good all-round performer (home office, games, Photoshop, and occasional DivX encoding etc). The one thing I have set my heart on is a blistering hard drive array in RAID 0 with my WD Caviars as backup / storage.

Thank you in advance.

 

[NickK]

A blisteringly fast RAID0 will make an unfortunate dent in that budget. It would be better spending that on memory.

I moved from an XP2500 (overclocked to >XP3200), NF7-S, 1GB, 36GB raptors in RAID0, gf3ti200 to an X2 4400 (oc'd), 2GB, DFI nF4 SLI-DR, X800XL and RAID0 raptors.
A while ago one of the raptors failed, so I'm now down to a single 36GB raptor (I have 1TB raid5 array+ for storage, which so happens to be my old rig).

I would say wait for the Conroe machines to pop out of the wood work. If you can't wait then you'll end up with old DDR ram.

If you do need it now, then I would suggest an X2 - either the X2 3800 if you overclock or more preferable X2 4400 (has a larger cache). Add 2x1GB sticks of DDR 400, ATI X1800 or X19000 series...

Oh - I also have an XiFi ExtremeMusic.. well the XiFi range has issues such as pops and crackling due to starvation due to the card's bad design/programming.

 

[semi-pro waster]

There are a couple of different ways to do this but this would be my favoured option. You could get a case and cheaper motherboard in for £600 but the motherboard would be rather cut-down and not offer all that much in the way of overclocking options. As it is you still have to use your old hard drives, case and PSU(which will be fine). This system will cope with your current monitor easily and the proposed 19" tft plus it gives you a solid base to upgrade from.

CP-166-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-166-AM)
£184.95 £184.95
MY-034-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC) (MY-034-GL)
£109.95 £109.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£144.95 £144.95
MB-070-MS MSI K9N Platinum nForce 570 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-070-MS)
£74.95 £74.95
Subtotal £514.80
VAT £90.09
Total £604.89