Spec Check

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Aberystwyth
I'll be trying to get a nice upgrade when my Student Loan goes through, and I've come up with the following:

Sony AD-7240S 24x
AMD Phenom II X2 545 3GHz
Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Mid Tower Case
ASUS M4A78 770 Socket AM2+
Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 HyperX Memory
PowerColor HD 4850 PCS 1GB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card

Which comes to £295 on a competitor.

I currently have:

C2D E4300 @ 2.4Ghz
MSI P6N SLI-Fi
Geforce 8600GT
Antec Sonata III + EA500
4GB Crucial Value 667Mhz
1 WD 250GB 7200 RPM
1 WD 320GB 7200 RPM
Samsung Sata DVD RW

I have an Acer 22" Monitor at 1680x1050 and I'd be looking to playing games and doing the old Uni Work on it. Although I do have a Dell Studio 1535 Laptop, so I'd rather get the best gaming performance I can over anything else.

The reason I'm ditching the Sonata III is the front Panel is Broken (Stupid accident) and I think the earthwatts should be ok (it's just over 2 years old). The Ram I'm ditching as I'd like to get some higher speed ram to better match the new processor.

I'd love it if I could upgrade my Processor and not have to go the new motherboard route, but A) My Motherboard won't support any 45nm CPU's (who would've thought a 2 year old 80 quid motherboard would be so crap at upgrading) and B) It only supports 1GB Dimms (apparently).

If anybody has any better ideas, please share them, as I've researched a fair bit and this is what I've come up with.

Maximum Budget is £350.

Thanks.
 
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Well firstly you should buy from OcUK, not only is it better service but you can get a better rig, for example

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.98 (£86.94)
Asus M4A785D-M Pro AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £57.99 (£50.43)
AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 245 2.90GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £50.99 (£44.34)
Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650W Power Supply £43.99 (£38.25)
OcUK 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel £39.99 (£34.77)
Asus TM-261 Case - Black/Silver (No PSU) £25.99 (£22.60)
Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe Optical Drive (Black) - OEM £18.99 (£16.51)
Sub Total : £293.84
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £45.84
Total : £351.43

Processors not quite as good no, but its better for gaming, and if you have some more cash spare next year you can just drop in something like a quad core 955
 
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Aberystwyth
I'm not sure if I'd really need a new Power Supply.

The Antec Earthwatts I have is 500 watts and has 17 amps per rail on 2 rails so it SHOULD be adequate for a 4870. It's nearly over 2 years old, but even with capacitor ageing it shouldn't bee too bad.

Is it worth going for a Regor X2 or a Phenom II X2, the Phenom II X2 seems like a bargain at the price, from the Benchmarks I've seen the Athlon II does suffer slightly but do you think the extra performance is worth an extra £15?.

I've gone backwards and forwards between those 2 and I'm still not sure which one to go for.

Thanks for the help, some further musing will be required before I commit.
 
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Id just change the card in your current rig tbh

Your current cpu is not much slower than the Phenom 2 to make this upgrade worth while.


Also your current cpu will do 3ghz + easily.
 
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It's hard to choose.

The Motherboard doesn't have Pci-e 2.0 But it is still a 16x link, so I can't see a performance hit there.

There's conflicting information about the Dimms, but I guess I could just try 2Gb dimms, I can't see WHY it won't use them, as it's maximum supported memory is 8Gb.

I need a new cooler as it's on 2.4 on the Stock Cooler and It's starting to suffer the dust of age (I've cleaned it out a few times.).

Any Cooler Recommendations to get it up to 3Ghz?.

I need a new case as the Sonata III suffered a Memory stick and an Ipod Charger accident and has no working Front USB ports and the case connectors on the Front Panel snapped when I tried to open it to get at the fan grill (I couldn't get it out the bottom for some reason).

Any more advice would be great. I plan on getting Windows 7 when I go to Uni (MSDNAA) and need something that'll game well on Windows 7. I'm running the RC and I get 5.8 in the Performance Index which shot up from when I tried it at 1.8 (It was something like 4.5). If a Phenom II is a sub 10% Performance Increase then I won't bother as that's not enough to shell out money for.
 
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You wont have any perf hit due to pci-e 1.0.

Pick up a AC freezer, cheap and cheerful:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-017-AR

Just keep nudging up the fsb until you hit around the 3ghz mark while making sure your ram is on a low divider. Most chips will do 3ghz with no added volts, some might need a little.

Games tend to respond to a gpu better than a cpu these days anyway.

Then I would prob pick up a cheap 4890, very very quick cards for little money.
 
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I managed to get it up to 3.0Ghz by changing the FSB to 1333, which is the Maximum the Mobo supports. I had it at 1066 previously. I'm not happy with the temps though so I'll go with that cooler, New Video Card and Case.

I really don't think my Antec would even have a problem with a 4890 as it's got 34 amps across 2 12v rails and it's 80% efficient.

Thanks for your help, It's ended up saving me a fair bit of cash.
 
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Speaking about CPU cooling - as I expected the box cooler for my athlon II x2 240 is doing just fine. Even after I overclocked to 3.8 GHz. Even after I slowed the cooler down from 3k rpm to 2.4k rpm, for no particular reason, i don't hear it anyway.

BTW my CPU + MB costed just 71GBP together new. I'm using ASRock N68-S

Savings like this let me buy radeon 5850 now.
 
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