A Smart Upgrading .....

[Looneycooney]

Hey guys !
First of all , i haven't been here for years, since i used to learn so much on these forums ...but i haven't forgotten you guys! ;-)

Now first things first , my pc as it is today :

Antec P182 case
Corsair 520W modular Psu
Asus P5K-E motherboard (wifi-board)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 , 1066Mhz fsb , Socket 775, 2.4 GHz, 65 nm
Corsair Twin2X 2Gb set (2 rams) - DDR2 PC6400 - CL5 - Heatspreaders
XFX GeForce 8800GTS 678M 512Mb DDR3 Alpha Dog Edition
Maxtor 250GB - SATA II 300 - 7200rpm - 16mb
Samsung 2253bw (1680x1050 max res)

All on stock , default bios settings etc , no overclocking, no special cooling etc
Running a Win XP sp3 x32

Ok , i had alot of other stuff here in this post..but i changed it...actually maybe it's better to ask you guys where to go from here?
I want to run the newer games , but i also like to have win7 in the near future....
A mobo/cpu-upgrade or should i just upgrade this system , it's very hard for me to tell ,
since actually the budget can go between 500€-650€ and there is alot that can be done with such an amount...

I'd be happy if you guys could help me in my choices ;-) (i'm making myself go bananas by visiting every single brand-website! haha! )

Wkr ,
Lc

[glc]

All you need to run the newer games is a stronger video card. You could put a faster processor in it, but it's not worth it and actually you could very easily overclock that Q6600. You could also increase the ram.

[Looneycooney]

Thanks GLC ;-)

You put my mind at ease...
I was looking at the new cpu's , but there's indeed not much difference.
And next year i'll be building a new system probably , so...


Then i'd probably go for a small upgrade towards the future aswell as looking into oc'ing again..after all these years
Atleast it's easier now , where are the times i was bolting a freon-cooling to my mx500 card LOL

I'd go for this then :
-Asus Geforce GTX470 (232W max powerconsumption, but great card for oc'ing)
-Corsair Twin2X 4096MB (2 x 2048MB) - DDR2 PC6400 - CL5

the only thing i am concerned about here is the maximum power consumption of that card with the 520W psu.
I'm only running 1 dvd-player , pure for installing and about 4 usb-devices(soundcard, g25, g13 , g110 )
Maybe better opt for a new psu or an ati 5850 card?
What about fe. the Corsair H50 cpu-cooler..is that something worth buying ?!

ps: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...TX_470/28.html
that's where is read about the powerconsumption


Thanks in advance ;-)

[David M]

I would go for the 5850 card over the 470. The drivers are more refined with the 5850. The 470 does not take as much of a hit with the anti-aliasing turned on. The 470 uses more power which may or may not push your existing PSU over its limit. As far as price goes, the 470 on average is only slightly more expensive. The 470 only has a slight performance advantage if you average out the benchmarks.

Your existing PSU would probably be fine although it is close. I would install the new card first and then see if your existing PSU is sufficient by checking the 12 volt rail when the card is under a full load. If there is too much of a voltage drop then get something like an Antec 600 or better yet a Corsair 650 PSU which has a better warranty and more power over the bare minimum necessary.

You only need a larger aftermarket CPU cooler if you plan on overclocking or the stock cooler is making too much noise for your tastes. Given what glc said about the 6600 being very overclockable, I would spend around 50-70 bucks for one of the large and very efficient aftermarket coolers and go ahead and overclock it some. Its nice to be able to overclock the CPU and still have the quietness of the big coolers with the 120mm fans. You won't need to run the fan at 100% for it to cool just fine. Your board is rated for maximum 1066 RAM. Don't buy the RAM with the tall heatsinks and you wont have clearance problems with a large CPU heatsink. Overclocking RAM makes very little difference on overall speed anyways. The 800 RAM would work fine.

[glc]

Even overclocking, DDR2-800 ram is fast enough. The Q6600 is 1066 FSB and I doubt you would be pushing it past 1333.

A Corsair 520 can handle just about anything you can throw at it. Minimum recommended power for most cards assumes a cheap power supply, top end units such as Corsair are underrated in comparison.