£200 to spend for upgrade

[mcc28x]

Hi,

This is my first post and I'm hoping for some good recommendations to upgrade my system. I only have £200 to spend (my laptop is my main PC), but will only be using the upgraded machine for Internet / Office and probably CM07/08.

I've read some of the posts about budget systems already on here, but I last upgraded my machine about 3 or 4 years ago and have lost touch with the various paths to follow.

My current system which was a self build consists of:

Motherboard - ASUS A7N8X 2.0
Processor - AMD Athlon XP @1800MHz
Memory - 2 X 512MB OCZ DDR-SDRAM PC3200 OCZ400512EL
Graphics Card Radeon 9600 XT (V350)

The power supply came with the case: Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case - 380W TruePower Silent PSU.

I'm interested in a reliable system and am unlikely to overclock. I would be looking to upgrade the MB/CPU/Graphics and imagine this means that I would also need to get compatible memory / power supply.

You help would be greatly appreciated.

mcc28x

[staffsMike]

£200 is seriously tight for the grpahics card as well.

Intel Pentium core 2 duo 1.6 OEM - £30 (i would get the motherboard below and overclock this to the board native FSB which will give around 2.6Ghz)

Abit IP-35E - £60 (there will be cheaper boards if you don't want to overclock but none i can recommend as I dont have any experience with them)

2gb DDR2 ( PC6400 RAM ~£40 for a lot of good brands)

Leaves £70 for the graphics card.

DX9
Ati X1950pro or nvidia geforce 7900gs

DX10
Geforce 8600GT

[Webby]

I would probably go for something like this,

Motherboard - Abit AN-M2
CPU - AMD AM2 Athlon 64 4200+ Dual Core 2.2GHz
Memory - 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800)
Graphics - 256MB MSI 8600GT Overclocked or 256MB Gigabyte HD 2600 XT

Comes in at ~£200

and should easily run everything you mentioned

Hope this helps

[Bleek]

In that price range definately stick with AMD, a little overclocking and you'll see a good gain out of any of the AM2 chips.

[staffsMike]

tbh i'd probably go AMD to (and am for a budget system next week) but if you think you'll want to upgrade again in the near future you have a lot more upgrade potential with intel at this time.

[Koolpc]

I would go AMD AM2 also.

[MadduckUK]

AMD Phenom's will work on AM2 socket mobo's

[staffsMike]

Indeed, Thats the way I see it by going AMD, but I do have that nagging feeling of safety with Intel lol

[mcc28x]

I would probably go for something like this,

Motherboard - Abit AN-M2
CPU - AMD AM2 Athlon 64 4200+ Dual Core 2.2GHz
Memory - 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800)
Graphics - 256MB MSI 8600GT Overclocked or 256MB Gigabyte HD 2600 XT

Comes in at ~£200

and should easily run everything you mentioned

Hope this helps

Hi,

This spec looks interesting. Will I need to change my power supply? I'm currently using Antec 380W TruePower and if so what do you recommend as a reasonable choice?

cheers

[staffsMike]

It's a solid Powersupply, i'd imagine it will do just fine. the graphics card would be the main concern but I believe it doesn't use a dedicated PCIe power cable so it shouldn't draw very much power.

[MadduckUK]

if you really are only using it for champ/internet/office then:

Foxconn MCP61SM2MA-ERS2H Socket AM2 NF430 onboard VGA DDR2 mATX
Kingston 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory
Innovision GeForce 7300GT 256MB DDR2 128Bit PCI-E
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz) Socket AM2 2MB L2 Cache (2x1MB) Retail Boxed Processor

comes to 198.05 from ebuyer

[Webby]

Personally I wouldnt go for that Foxconn board, it has a max of 4GB of ram (1GB per slot) so while not important now limits later upgrades, the PCIe slot is only 8x not 16x, also a single IDE and 2 SATA doesn't leave much upgrade in terms of hard drives and cd/dvd.

In addition to that I know that the 4200+ is an energy efficient model requiring 65W while the 5600+ is going to be 90 or 120w with only a 380w PSU the lower clocked processor would make more sense. In fact you can go up to a 4800+ at 65w or Athlon X2 BE-2350 (2.1GHz) is only 45w if slightly slower and more expensive.

[moogle]

yea, tight budget upgrades dont last very long and leave small further upgradeability.

[MadduckUK]

if the slot was only 8x you wouldnt be able to plug a x16 card into it... thats not actually correct then is it?

[Webby]

if the slot was only 8x you wouldnt be able to plug a x16 card into it... thats not actually correct then is it?

Well actually yes it is!

If you check Foxconns specs page for this mother board here you will see that while its a PCIe x16 slot it only signals at x8 so while you can plug a PCIe x16 card into it you will not achieve its full potential.

[mcc28x]

Will I have any problems fitting the micro ATX form factor into my ATX Sonata case?