Upgrade...at last

atm i have this planned

q6600 - are some better than others stepping wise?
620w Corsair Modular - is there anything better for around the same money or (hopefully) less
2x2gb Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800) - presume this is fine

firstly can somebody answer me the following :
A) the cpu/psu/ram questions
B) what mobo is best for oc'ing quad core
C) what gfx card i'm better off going with.

the gfx and mobo question are interlinked i guess.


i dont have a fortune to spend, around £700


i'm guilty of not paying much attention to technology. i kinda drift in and out around upgrade time i guess, so help would be appreciated.

A)Q6600 - you want a GO not a B3
The Corsair is excellent
should be

B) something P35 chipset based - you'll want excellent cooling too

Q6600 G0 is what you are after - better OC'ing capabilites at lower temps.
RAM - dunno - just ordered the same from Scan, so I'll know on Tuesday.
PSU - highly rated here, so looks like a safe choice.

b) ASUS P5K is a popular choice (or another Intel P35 based board).
c) 8800 GTX (probably not worth getting an Ultra), although the Radeon 2900 is getting some favourable reviews these days.

Don't forget a decent cooler - the Intel stock is not that great.

ram if possible ballistix

a 2900 pro is supposedly very easily flashed to XT or if you cba with that just go 8800GTS < GTX depends on spend really, a standard no brand gtx off scn is about 285

the P5K or the Abit offering are both good

Only trouble I found justifying even the HD2900 Pro when I was planning my build is that even turned into an HD2900 XT, the card still isn't that great and the 320MB 8800GTS was beating it in places.

Your wasting money that you don't need to especially when your budget is low.

G0 stepping quad is good.

2x2GB modules are a waste of money and have slacker timings than 1gb modules.

for example
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-058-GL
&#163;80 for 4GB and its great RAM.

The Abit IP-35pro is a great board for overclocking, the standard IP-35 is good too though :)

The corsair 520w version of the PSU you want is perfect (still too much power) for the system you're building. It saves a good &#163;25 that you dont need to spend.

If your willing to wait a week or two the new 8800GT will apparently be released which looks to be a great card on a budget.
If not the 8800GTS 320mb is a very good card.

cheers guys.

mike - i thought (i appologise if im being stupid) that its best to use 2 ram slots rather than 4.

it's not stupid if you plan on running 6 or 8gb later on..but I can't for the life of me seeing you need that. Also we already have ddr3 ram, pci 2.0 round the corner and the processors that change seemingly every month.. so your next upgrade probably won't be with ddr2.

The 4x1gb should run faster than the 2x2gb, the motherboard has to work slightly harder as all the memory slots are utilised but you wouldn't notice the difference in temperatures etc..

ah i see, cheers chap.