£280 to spend...This ok?

[Ollienator]

Hey there,

Towards the middle of august i plan to get my pc upgraded a little (everything but my graphics card - buying the 4870 i want would blow 60-70% of my budget and leave with nothing else) Running on a amd athlon 64 2ghz 512mb cache 939, really basic stuff at the moment and motherboard is a basic gigabyte model. I have approx. £280 to spend possibly more depends how many other costs i can cut down on

So far was looking at these >

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139971 (Best dual core out there on the market right now so i believe the extra 0.16 just isnt worth it for the money, can overclock way beyond that if need be anyways)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/116755 : I hear this is good stuff, and OCZ is reliable and easily overclockable (though voltages have to be set in BIOS to get correct speeds anyway?)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142854 <<Asus are a quality brand and ive seen this particular board appear in many test rigs for gfx and such. This ok or can you improve on it ? I trust asus so if theres something this is missing that a higher asus model has, let me know

This doesnt get me up to budget, but im not sure what to do with the extra cash (which isnt enough for a decent gfx card) new mouse maybe? Logitech G5 looks good. extra stick of ram? Running on vista premium 32bit so ram is always handy, though 3.25 is all it will recognise apparently.

Constructive critisism welcome

Thanks in advance,

EDIT - My PSU is a 500W Q-TEC brand one. not too good i imagine

 

[Joel~]

That looks good to me. But what brand is your PSU? If it's a good one, then perhaps you could spend a bit more on the RAM and save yourself having to buy more in the future?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141930

If you can stretch to it, that would be a good buy. Alternatively, maybe a nice CPU cooler to replace the stock Intel one? It's not necessary, unless you do go ahead and overclock the CPU.

 

[Ollienator]

ill take the side off and have a look, ill update both this and OP when i find out

EDIT - Its a 500W Q-TEC one. Never heard of them before so im assuming their are poor. (as in quality)

 

[Joel~]

I've never heard of Q-TEC before, either, so it's possibly the case. But it's really up to you. If it's working fine, then you have to decide whether or not you feel it's worth the upgrade at the moment.

 

[Ollienator]

I've never heard of Q-TEC before, either, so it's possibly the case. But it's really up to you. If it's working fine, then you have to decide whether or not you feel it's worth the upgrade at the moment.

What should i be looking out for? any tell tale signs i need a more powerful psu other than slow pc (which it isnt tbh unless running multi-apps). will new CPU hog the power? not sure on how much power a pc uses at any rate.

 

[Joel~]

Well, the new machine I just put together has a quad-core CPU and a HD 4870 and it runs fine on 530w. My old computer was similar to what you'd be putting together here and had a 500w PSU, so you've definitely got enough power on tap there.

 

[Ollienator]

Well, the new machine I just put together has a quad-core CPU and a HD 4870 and it runs fine on 530w. My old computer was similar to what you'd be putting together here and had a 500w PSU, so you've definitely got enough power on tap there.

Sounds promising considering thats the GFX i plan to upgrade to in december. Thats takes me up to about £285 which is great and practically on budget. Might even be able to squeeze a logitech g5 in there sometime soon after, complete the package for gaming.

Thank for very much for the advice/help

One more thing if anyone is able to help. Excl. Anti-Aliasing (the Point of View cheapo 7600GT i have doesnt like any at all for some reason) do you think it would run Call of Duty 4 with a framerate >30fps?

 

[worshipme]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142854 <<Asus are a quality brand and ive seen this particular board appear in many test rigs for gfx and such. This ok or can you improve on it ? I trust asus so if theres something this is missing that a higher asus model has, let me know

I wouldn't spend that much on a P35 board, you can get a decent P45 which will have PCI-E 2.0 and CF support for the same money, plus they're brilliant OC'ing boards. The P5Q-E is the best board for ~£100 IMO: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145747