New Build - Budget Now - Upgrade Later

[Jolyonekenobi]

Hi all

Could you please critique this new build for me? I know this is going to sound a little bizare but I am trying to go budget on the processor and the motherboard at the moment. This will allow me to upgrade both of these in about 6-12 months time without wasting too much money now..



Kingston HyperX Dual Channel Kit - Memory - 4 GB ( 2 x 2 GB ) DDR2 - 1066 MHz / PC2-850

ASUS P5Q SE/R - Motherboard - ATX - iP45

Sapphire 11133-00-20R HD4870 512MB GDDR5 Graphics Card - SAPPHIRE

Intel Core 2 Duo (E7300) 2.66GHz Processor 3072KB L2 Cache 1066MHz

Samsung Black DVD-+RW SH-S202J/BEBN Dual Layer 8.5GB Optical Drive - Samsung

Thermaltake TR2 W0101RB 550W PSU

Samsung Spinpoint 500GB Hard Disk Drive 7200RPM 16MB SATA300 - Samsung

This comes in almost exactly at £500 or roughly $750.

Would this be sufficient to play new games at reasonable settings until I upgrade to i7?


Any help much appreciated!!

Cheers

Jolyon

[Rev_pizzaguy]

I would go for a Seagate 7200.11 drive instead of the Samsung.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148288

[not important]

You will have to change the MOBO--RAM--and CPU when you go to i7.
I would also go with a Seagate HDD--Corsair PC6400 RAM--LG or Lite-On DVDRW.

[windsleeper]

Seems like an odd way to go. If I was looking to upgrade, I'd get the right motherboard and the lowest end CPU and graphics card.

With the switch to i7, you need to change pretty much everything, which isn't really an upgrade - it's a whole new PC (just about). You'd be tossing about 2/3rds of the cost of the setup.

The X58 motherboard and corei7 will up the price by about US$300 (roughly). You could downgrade the video card to a 4830 to save $100, meaning the whole system would be $950 instead of $750.

That would be a much better platform for an eventual upgrade in video card next year, and processor as new better CPUs are released down the road.

Just my thoughts - I understand it might not be practical from a cost perspective, but when money is tight, it seems a shame to waste $400 of it.

[Rev_pizzaguy]

That is very true. A setup with an e7300 (overclock the proc to 3.6 or 3.8) will be plenty power for a good while to come, but if you are dead set on upgrading to a corei7 build, it is a shame to waste a perfectly good build now.

[Jolyonekenobi]

I totally understand why everyone is a bit freaked out by my choice of upgrade / system route!

My thoughts are this:

1) Buy the PSU, Graphics Card (there will eventually be two 4870s in there but that's for another dreamy day...), hard drives (ultimately two again) that I want in my setup.

2) I only have about £500/$750 to spend now

3) In six months to a year the Core i7 kit should be a lot cheaper and I will have more cash

4) I have precisely zero upgrade options from where I am - I can't re-use any of my gear, including unfortunately, my monitor.

5) I'd actually be happy to go cheaper on the mobo and the CPU, as long as I could play the latest games for about the next 6 months...

Why is everyone so keen on Seagate HDs? From what I have read the Samsung Spinpoint F1s are some of the best HDs out there. Is that no the case?

In terms of memory can anyone help me out with some specific suggestions?

Thanks for all the help!

[not important]

Seagates are proven quality drives so they are suggested.
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145590
Th PC in your sig looks like it would be fine until you have the money for the i7 build.
If you save the $500 or so you have now it would put a good dent in the price of the i7 build.