[phoeniximportersuk]

Hi guys

I play eve online, watch movies, run dreamweaver, photoshop and anything i can on my PC. Not at once mind u.

Its time for an upgrade and this is my choice, i wanna know what u think:
motherboard , cpu , ram , http://cgi.ebay.ie/NVidia-GeForce-88...QQcmdZViewItem , PSU
and im using my current hard drives, seagate 250Gb sata x2 hehe.

My current system i also built myself, bout 3 years back, 1 problem i did have was. After buying everything, i assemlbed the whole thing, and then it wouldnt work, main prob was the board or whatever, didnt pick up my HD with OS(xp sp2), sata drives that is. I had to take it in to a pc repair shop and they charged me 2 much i think.

Have the new m/boards evolved beyond that point and when i do assemble this new one it will work/pick up my Hd 1st try??

If you have suggestions regarding this setup, please link what u think is better, i aint got 2 much mony 2 spend on this so keep that in mind.

cheers

[link590o]

i mainly have a beef with your choice of power supply and processor. the E8200 is somewhat inferior and the difference in price between it and the E8400 is negligible. if i were you i'd switch those out for the performance/quality boost.

second, you fell for the classic trap with the power supply. about 40 dollars for 650 watts? are you freakin kidding me? doesn't that scream..."i'm s**tty quality and i'll explode when you plug me in and flip the switch" at all to you??

the very least you should be paying for that kind of a wattage is triple that price. and if you don't, you'll lose your psu and possibly some other parts when it fries itself and then you're out more money then you spent in the first place.

for a power supply i would STRONGLY suggest buying an Antec product, or a thermaltake product, or an enermax liberty model. yes they're expensive as hell, but rule number one of computer building is to never skimp on the psu.

to balance out the huge price difference, you might consider lowering your standards from the 8800gt to maybe a 9600gt. it's a good bit cheaper and will provide very similar performance.

1066 ram might even be slight overkill for this kind of a system some simple ddr2 800mhz ram will do the trick just fine. 1066 doesn't seem to offer that much of a performance boost over 800 unless you're talking ddr3.

your choices for motherboard and video card were pretty damn good, though for the price tag it's looking like you're aiming for, an 8800 was a bit ambitious now that you have a PSU problem. but the p35 is a fantastic chipset, and it will no doubt recognize your hard drive no problem if it is SATA. sometimes it can depend on the brand of the hard drive or how the drive was formatted. but i doubt you'll have any problems.


so looking over it all again, my recommendations are downgrade to a 9600gt, downgrade to 800mhz ram, and upgrade to an E8400 and a better PSU. from the money you save off the RAM and video card you could probably easily afford these changes.

[phoeniximportersuk]

Ok ive made some changes, according to advice i got from several forums.
Tll me what you think man:

MoBo
CPU
RAM
FX
PSU

Hows that??

[link590o]

plain and simple, you're good to go :)

the 8600gt is ok. it's not as powerful as some of the other cards out there, but it's good enough to play crysis and low or medium detail. and that's what counts. and graphics are always easily replaced i guess. whenever you have the money, you should definitely upgrade that at some point btw.

everything else couldn't be better. power supply is amazing. toughpower is a great brand. mobo is awesome, and the E8400 will serve you MUCH better than the E8200 you wanted. excellent.

as a side note: unless you have it already, you may want to throw some Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound onto that list. it's a 5 dollar item.

some processor heatsinks/fans do not come with thermal compound pre-applied. so you may want to have that on hand for when you put it together. without it, your processor will fry itself in 15 seconds. no joke. so be careful

[Carbon]

Would recommend this over your current card. Otherwise, looks fine.

[phoeniximportersuk]

and what about this one??
im still learning the ropes bout pcs and stuff, but to m this looks bettr, your advice??

[Carbon]

Well, that one's a lot more expensive for nothing but a 15mhz jump in clock speed, eh?

[phoeniximportersuk]

Carbon what would u suggest man??

Do you think i should go for the fx card i chos originally?
Like i want high detail man..............

[Carbon]

If you're going with the 8800GT I wouldn't recommend buying it off eBay. That one you listed has a very low clock speed compared to that 9600GT.

Now, if you're comparing a 8800GT and a 9600GT from a good retailer..if they're similar in price grab the 8800GT, but in most benchmarks they're exactly the same so just get whatever's cheaper.

My sugg is to just get the 9600GT. If you want _really_ good performance you could SLI two 9600GTs, but that would necessitate a change of motherboard. I think your setup with the 9600GT I picked out will be sufficient.

[link590o]

yeah i felt like the 9600 was the best choice here. i tried to recommend it earlier but he took the 8600 instead and i assumed the 9600 was too pricey so i backed off.

if you''ve got the cash for it phoenix, i'll recommend my original opinion, and second carbon's.