In desperate need of an upgrade!

[Allen]

Similar to Wyoming's post, I need to upgrade on a budget, however, since mine is a different budget and a much older system, I thought it would be best to start a new thread instead of hijacking his.

OK, as you can see, my system is pretty damn old. It still runs modern games reasonably well (albeit on low settings) but I am finding my system is just hanging now on every day tasks which annoys the hell out of me, and as gaming is my number one use on the PC, the load times and shameful FPS hurt me on all games.

So, I'm looking to upgrade, mainly the motherboard and CPU, for as little as possible, under £200 preferably. I don't mind which CPU (i.e. I'm not an Intel or AMD fanboy) as long as it's a dual core 64 bit chip, like the AMD Athlon 64 X2's or the Intel Core 2 Duo's.

Now, I read about the following board and wondered what people's thoughts on it are for an upgrade option:

ASRock Motherboard - Product - 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0 - Overview

With this board (around £40) I could get something like a C2D E4500 (around £70) and use my existing RAM and graphics card with the possibility of upgrading both RAM and graphics card in the future since this board can accepts DDR and DDR2 and has AGP and PCI-E expansion slots.

Is this a viable option, or would it be better to just bite the bullet, spend a little more and upgrade everything in one go?

Also, I presume using SATA drives on a board with SATAII connections is OK?

Thanks in advance!

[Wyoming]

Well thanks for not hijacking my thread, nice to know it's not just me doing budget upgrades.

I had a look at that board, it suffers a little in benchmarks because of its versatility and that stopped me buying one.

And as regards the SATA question, yes you can use SATA drives with a SATA2 mobo.

[silentvoice]

I think if you intend on using the system for gaming, a new video card is just as important as a new CPU and memory. Therefore, I would say replacing at least these core components (along with the motherboard) would be more advisable than the ASRock route. Whether this is financially viable now (or in a couple of months) is something I can't answer. It will be more than £200 but I feel saving up for such an investment would be more beneficial.

You could get something along these lines:

Motherboard - Abit IP35-E - ~£60
CPU - Intel E4500 - ~£75
RAM - Crucial DDR2-5300 2GB - ~£30
GFX - XFX 8800GT 256MB - ~£120

Total: £285 inc VAT


Everthing else should be able to move across no problem. Make sure your PSU has adequate connnectors though for supplying power to the video card and motherboard.


One potential issue! I don't know what interface your HDD's supoort but the Abit motherboard can only support TWO IDE devices. That means an optical device and / or HDD may need to be left out. An SATA DVD Writer can be picked up for ~£15 though so that would make the total £300.

[staffsMike]

I don't know much about these motherboards. I'm sure others will have opinions. If you want to do a thorough upgrade though it can be done.

So here it is

Intel E2140
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for an extra £10 you could get the E2180 which is 2.0Ghz to start with.

RAM
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC)
something like that but most DDR2 can be had for this price or lower.
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

Motherboard
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
highly recommended by custompc this month but I would also be tempted by this,

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it's only uATX but it's feature packed.

Graphics
OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

I think it's slightly over budget but close to £200 and it will be good for a while as long as you are willing to overclock the CPU a bit.

[Blitzen]

Sapphire ATi Radeon HD 3850 256MB PCI-E - Aria Technology

This is a decent little upgrade for under £100 and it also saves you spoending cash at the 'shop that shouldnt be mentioned'.
You can also get a £5 discount through Google Checkout.

[this_is_gav]

Even without the overclocking staffsMike's spec will be an excellent upgrade. Personally I'd be replacing that PSU as soon as I could afterwards though - chances are it won't have the necessary connectors (though you can generally get around things like the 20+4pin sockets) and I doubt the +12v rail will be up to much.

[Thorsson]

Re staffMike's mobo suggestions. The first one has mixed memory modules. I can't see the benefit of these as I have stated before. By the time you think of changing DDR2 to DDR3 you are better off getting a new mobo. IMO of course.

The second mobo is not only microATX but has onboard VGA. It's an NForce chipset, which is somewhat slower than the P35. It also has only 2 memory slots and 3 SATA ports. Based on the OP's current system, and presuming that the new system will be added to over time before a major upgrade, these could be problematic limitations.

Also IMO too cheap mobos don't tend to last as well and don't get their BIOSes upgraded. I'd go with the Abit IP35 suggested by silentvoice, but if you need to keep all the IDE drives for now this one might do better Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
It's not quite as fast as the P35 mobos, but the IDE support might make it worthwhile for you.

[this_is_gav]

Re staffMike's mobo suggestions. The first one has mixed memory modules. I can't see the benefit of these as I have stated before. By the time you think of changing DDR2 to DDR3 you are better off getting a new mobo. IMO of course.

You'll only be using 1 memory type at any given time though. I don't see the problem? OK, so you can't upgrade to 4gb without replacing the original modules, but that's a fairly minor issue. It's a great budget board.

[Lucio]

Well, a friend of mine had a similar budget a couple of months back

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK - £50
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK - £60
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK - £30

KustomPCs.co.uk - A+Case Blockbuster BAW MicroATX - £40 (only if you're current one can't take an mATX board)

OR KustomPCs.co.uk - A+Case Blockbuster Storm (22cm Fan) MicroATX - £50 (has a large fan on top to help with the cooling)

It doesn't *need* a graphics card in there if you're not trying to run the latest games, my friend gets a fairly solid 45-60fps out of World of Warcraft on high settings. If you find you need a card later on, it'll still fit quite happily.

[staffsMike]

I didn't think that motherboard took DDR2 and DDR3. It states an issue with filling all the memory slots but not for that reason. 2x2GB module are as cheap as 4x1gb now anyway, plus 2GB will be fine for a long time.

The reasons for suggestion the uATX gigabyte is, uATX is a cheap way to got most if not all of the features you want. There's nothing wrong with having onboard graphics. You don't have to use it and if your graphics card ever blows you have a back-up.
It also offers unlinked overclocking like all nvidia chipsets so if you ever did you to try some (light) overclocking it would be very easy as the CPU and RAM have independent FSB's.
I don't think there is much difference in chipset performance between this and any other board.. it's not something you will really notice day to day anyway.

The reviews are quite complementary towards teh 630i boards and gigabyte is very well priced for it's features.

[Allen]

Thanks for all the replies so far.

No-one has so far suggested to use the Asrock board I linked, so that must be saying something! I guess I should therefore just go ahead and upgrade my mobo, CPU, RAM and graphics card in one go then...

There's a lot of suggestions here so I will look through them all.

Is the only difference between a Pentium Dual Core (like the E2180) and the Core 2 Duo (like the E4500) the amount of cache? The Dual Core having 1MB and the Core 2 Duo having 2MB? How much of a difference would that make?

I didn't realise how cheap memory was, 2GB of Corsair goodness for £26? That's a blooming deal! Although I may be tempted to go for the 800MHz stuff for a few extra quid, coz the processor will also be 800MHz.

Also, a couple of people have mentioned IDE slots, 2 is fine, my HDD's are all SATA and only my optical drives are IDE (1 DVD and 1 DVD-RW).

[Lucio]

I didn't realise how cheap memory was, 2GB of Corsair goodness for £26? That's a blooming deal! Although I may be tempted to go for the 800MHz stuff for a few extra quid, coz the processor will also be 800MHz.

Ummm, not quite

Processors are rated based off an FSB speed, muliplied by a number that varies based on the processor.

RAM is rated off the FSB speed, but the newer technology, DDR2, means it doubles that FSB score.

However, to confuse things, Intel rates their FSB speeds, quad pumped, because it can pass 4 instructions per cycle, so that FSB speed is really 200Mhz on the E2160, so RAM has to be at 400Mhz or better.

[staffsMike]

The RAM and cpu FSB's don't actually work like that.

Quick explanation is that CPU's actual FSB is multiplied by 4 and DDR2 RAM's is multiplied by 2

so the FSB of the pentium dual core and E4500 are 200MHz and the RAM (PC5300) is 333Mhz. So if you are not overclocking it will make little difference getting PC5300 over PC6400.

The only difference is the cache yes and for gaming it really won't make much difference at all.


EDIT: beat me to it lol

[Allen]

Ahh, cheers for that! Getting PC5300 will be cheaper then, and as it runs at 333MHz and the CPU at 200MHz, there's still room for overclocking the CPU, right?

If the size of the cache won't make too much of a difference for gaming, then I'll be OK with getting the much cheaper E2180.

This is looking pretty good now, at Aria prices the E2180 is £51 and the RAM is £31. Now, if I get a graphics card like the https://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...29418&context= for £83 that leaves me with £35 from my budget for a new motherboard, I'm sure I can spend a little more for one that can handle the above nicely.

[Lucio]

That's £83 ex VAT unfortunately, so in fact it's £100.

Still, if you can afford it, the motherboard Staffsmike mentioned will do the job for only £45, since you've not running a 1333FSB CPU or planning on using more than 2 RAM chips.

(Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK)

[iranu]

Some very good prices on 8800GT in the bargains section. http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...0gt-stock.html

£116 for 512mb version