Upgrading system - advice please

[wither2000]

I'm thinking of upgrading my 1.7Ghz AMD based system - basically keeping the case and PSU (Antec Sonata) and screen ( samsung syncmaster 913n) and other stuff (200 gig IDE harddrive and CD, DVD writer etc) and getting the following:

1 LN19274 Intel Core 2 Duo E6550, S775, 2.33 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail £103.39

1 LN17508 320MB XFX 8800GTS, PCI-E (x16), Mem 1600MHz, GPU 500MHz, 96 Streams, 2x Dual Link/DVI HDTV £170.38

1 LN15028 Asus P5B i965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £61.09

4GB (4x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-12 £116.65

TOTAL inc vat and carriage £458.54

Plus an OEM copy of Vista would take me just over my 500 pound budget.
I want to be able to run some of the latest games in reasonable detail - at the moment the best I can run is Far Cry with most things turned to medium or low. Would this be a good compromise between price and speed or with few bottlenecks? any comments welcome.

[staffsMike]

I'd go with p35 chipset board as you're going with the 1333mhz C2D they were designed for it afterall.

I'd perhaps go with the e6750, its only a few quid more.

[Sema4]

It's possible you will require a more powerful PSU in order to power the hardware your thinking about, depends what you have now... What is the wattage of your current PSU ?

[CooperXS]

First thing you simply must do is to change the power supply. The 380W one simply can't handle the load of all that hardware you looking to get. Get something decent in 500W+ range. It will add another £70+ to total costs but is the must have thing if you care about your hardware.

And Asus P5K would be a better choise for additional 10 quid.

[wither2000]

I was thinking that the PSU might be underpowered - thanks for the confirmation.
Unfortunately these upgrading costs soon add up, but - those extras take me up to 600 pounds - is there anything I can save a bit on? Would 3 gb of ram rather than 4 make much difference? Or should I save up a bit more. I don't want to drop to the 8600 graphics cards, but could drop to a slower chip? Or would this hit performance too hard.

[staffsMike]

2GB of ram would be fine. I'd only get 4gb if you were doing something seriously RAM intensive. Games dont need more than 2GB.

You could get a lesser CPU such as the E4400 and overclock it to around 3.0ghz.

[wither2000]

New improved shopping list - all comments welcome

1 LN19275 Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, S775, 2.66 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache, Retail £116.31

4GB (4x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-12 £116.65

1 LN18699 Asus P5K, iP35, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 667/800/1066*, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £62.95 £73.97

1 LN17508 320MB XFX 8800GTS, PCI-E (x16), Mem 1600MHz, GPU 500MHz, 96 Streams, 2x Dual Link/DVI HDTV £170.38

1 LN13701 750W Xclio X12S4P4 Modular SLi U-Quiet 14cm Fan 87%+ Efficiency Quad+12v EPS 4SATA 4 PCI-E £70.49

1 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) £65.65

TOTAL £625.11

[staffsMike]

Change the PSU to the corsair 520w HX whisper and you're onto a winner. Theres no need for 750w and the corsair will be silent..literally silent

[Mossy]

Change the PSU to the corsair 520w HX whisper and you're onto a winner. Theres no need for 750w and the corsair will be silent..literally silent

seconded

[wither2000]

corsair 520w HX whisper it is.

[Biscuit]

Personally i would ge for the BFG graphics card aswell as they come with 10 year back to manufacturer warranty. Avoids any issues with awkward sellers (even though scan is certainly not one of these) Have read a few people who have had issues with XFX cards.

[Blitzen]

It's possible you will require a more powerful PSU in order to power the hardware your thinking about, depends what you have now... What is the wattage of your current PSU ?

How can you say he may need a more powerful PSU then in the next breath ask what he has????

First thing you simply must do is to change the power supply. The 380W one simply can't handle the load of all that hardware you looking to get. Get something decent in 500W+ range. It will add another £70+ to total costs but is the must have thing if you care about your hardware.

And Asus P5K would be a better choise for additional 10 quid.

What exactly makes you think the Antec PSU in the Sonata wouldnt handle that rig (and please dont quote PSU calculator stuff).

[Biscuit]

Agreed PSU calculator stuff is vastly overrated however that is a lot of stuff to put on a 380w PSU. It does have dual 12V rails so it probably would be able to handle it HOWEVER a new 520w corsair power supply wouldnt be a bad purchase and would ensure everything will work.

[Mossy]

and leave room for future upgrades the 520w Corsair is a good move no doubt.

[wither2000]

Is there any genuine way to tell if your system is overloading the PSU?

[Tetras]

Test the rails with software (or preferably a multimeter) under load and at idle and it'll most likely randomly shut down and restart (i.e. cut out).