Your best/cheapest upgrade?

Just curious to see if anyone has managed to upgrade their PC for a bargain price?

I had:

Athlon 64 X2 4600 @ 2.6Ghz
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
2GB OCZ Gold DDR3200
256MB 7800GT PCIe

Sold for total: £210


Upgraded too:

Intel Q9450 2.66Ghz @ 3.40Ghz
Asus Maximus Formula X38
4GB OCZ PC2-8000 Platinum
768MB 8800GTX OC

Bought for total: £310


For ~£100 it was a pretty huge upgrade :mrgreen:


Only the 4GB ram I purchased was actually new, the other parts were picked up second hand but well worth it though. Anyone else managed to upgrade any components in their PC for next to nothing?

move from 8600GTS to 8800GTX for £70.
but you got one hell of a deal lol my bedroom rig was 260 minus gfx card..

Who on earth bought that old rubbish for £210 :D

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Originally Posted by staffsMike

Who on earth bought that old rubbish for £210 :D

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LOL

Well individually;

X2 4600 939 - £100
A8N-SLI Premium - £50
2Gb OCZ 3200 - £40
256MB 7800GT - £20

Anyone with a dual core socket 939 athlon, NOW is the time to get rid of it over on the bay. They go for absolute silly money :mrgreen:


Q9450 + Maximus Formula - £210 (both used but retail boxed with everything)
Freezer 7 Pro - £12 (new)
4GB OCZ PC2-8000 - £40 (new)
8800GTX OC - £70 (used- retail boxed with everything)

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Originally Posted by vmong

move from 8600GTS to 8800GTX for £70.
but you got one hell of a deal lol my bedroom rig was 260 minus gfx card..

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Have to say the 8800GTX is awesome, it runs all the games I have tried on highest settings at 1920x1200 easily.

just wondering if you guys knew the soloution to the following problem. basically i was playing cod, it got pretty intense. with 4 people playing etc. not i play games on my gaming rig (in my sig) and it was becoming laggy which i have not experienced for a while. what could be the cause?? i was thinking the ram, although at one poing my gpu reached 100 ^C i am using air cooling as well.

or was it the ram??

Going from 2 to 6GB of RAM - £40
Vista Ultimate - £40 (Student Deal)

Best £80 spent tbh.

Though did rely on the other bits of the system I'd bought about a month previous....

Slight cheat as it involved a little selling:

From an Abit NF7-S 2.0 and AMD Barton XP3200 with 2gb of 400mhz DDR1
To a Gigabyte 945 S3, Core2Duo e6300 and 2gb of 533mhz DDR2

For: A profit of £30!

Reason: Ebay. NF7's were going for more than their original retail price, as was the Barton 3200 - DDR1 was at it's premium 2nd user price. Right place, right time :D
And the major cheat really was acquiring the e6300 for nothing! (coincidentally also my current e6600 and q6600 cost nowt too ;) )

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Originally Posted by e36Adz

LOL
NOW is the time to get rid of it over on the bay. They go for absolute silly money :mrgreen:

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word is bond - my plan is to get some ebay stuff going asap with those prices

trying to make a similar upgrade atm but want at least a 4850 gfx card with it

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Originally Posted by synaesthesia

And the major cheat really was acquiring the e6300 for nothing! (coincidentally also my current e6600 and q6600 cost nowt too ;) )

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ooh, do spill...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dave87

....Vista Ultimate - £40 (Student Deal)

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Where did you get that from mate? Good buy, cheapest I've seen it for is around 55 quid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by e36Adz

Just curious to see if anyone has managed to upgrade their PC for a bargain price?

I had:

Athlon 64 X2 4600 @ 2.6Ghz
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
2GB OCZ Gold DDR3200
256MB 7800GT PCIe

Sold for total: £210


Upgraded too:

Intel Q9450 2.66Ghz @ 3.40Ghz
Asus Maximus Formula X38
4GB OCZ PC2-8000 Platinum
768MB 8800GTX OC

Bought for total: £310

For ~£100 it was a pretty huge upgrade :mrgreen:

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Bloody good upgrade, although I've never been tempted to buy second hand, can't seem to get over the risk that I might be sold a dud, like my first car. Where exactly do you get them from for peanuts? Ebay?

Thanks.

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Originally Posted by UseItNow

Bloody good upgrade, although I've never been tempted to buy second hand, can't seem to get over the risk that I might be sold a dud, like my first car. Where exactly do you get them from for peanuts? Ebay?

Thanks.

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I can safely say I haven't had any problems with any second hand PC parts I've bought over the years, I always try and make sure I buy from someone with good feedback history.

Register on a few PC hardware sites and most of them have a 'For Sale' section, I never buy PC parts off ebay, just sell them there :)

I was very lucky in this instance though, I advertised on a site that I was after a Intel Q6600 and a motherboard and some guy offered me his Q9450 and Maximus Formula, he was about an hours drive away from me and had very good feedback history, went down and got both items for £210 which was a steal as these CPU's alone fetch ~£170+ all day long on ebay.

Going from a 9500pro to a 6800LE for around 70 to 80 quid on my old Athlon XP system!! The 6800LE was unlocked to 16 pipelines and was a decent overclocker!! It was nearly as fast as a 6800GT when a VF900 was added!! :)

Also got Vista for free from MSDNAA!! :)

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Originally Posted by e36Adz

I can safely say I haven't had any problems with any second hand PC parts I've bought over the years, I always try and make sure I buy from someone with good feedback history.

Register on a few PC hardware sites and most of them have a 'For Sale' section, I never buy PC parts off ebay, just sell them there :)

I was very lucky in this instance though, I advertised on a site that I was after a Intel Q6600 and a motherboard and some guy offered me his Q9450 and Maximus Formula, he was about an hours drive away from me and had very good feedback history, went down and got both items for £210 which was a steal as these CPU's alone fetch ~£170+ all day long on ebay.

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I agree. I have had an issue once or twice but most items have been OK!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UseItNow

Where did you get that from mate? Good buy, cheapest I've seen it for is around 55 quid.

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theultimatesteal.co.uk - you do need a .ac.uk email address however :)

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Originally Posted by PeterStoba

ooh, do spill...

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Box full of them come in at a place I used to work at, all due to be scrapped. So I made a good home for it, obviously ;)

ok small update just sold my BFG 8800 GTS OC for £75 on the bay - not a bad result at all

made a nice dent in my upgrade cost to a q6600 setup and still got mobo, ram and s939 4600 to sell

Celeron 300A.

Don't really need to add much more really. Those who know, know.... ;)

Just did it again, sold my 8800GTX OC on ebay for, £120 & £10 p&p, after fees and everything and taking into account how much it cost me to post the card out, I got £115 for it.

Purchased a GTX 260 for £145 delivered, which should be arriving on monday :mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by e36Adz

Just did it again, sold my 8800GTX OC on ebay for, £120 & £10 p&p, after fees and everything and taking into account how much it cost me to post the card out, I got £115 for it.

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:surprised: Genius

The 8800gtx is worth no more then £75 max.

A couple of years back

Athlon xp 2400+
epox (nforce2?) motherboard
1.5gb ddr
6800le agp
ide hd and dvd rom

went to a
ASRock 4coredual-VSTA motherboard =£30
pentium D (925) 3.0ghz = £65
the rest unchanged
total £95
Instant performance boost and let me slowly upgrade the rest of my pc bit by bit over the next year and a half. :) one of the best buys I ever made and later sold both for £45

Other things that cames close.
replaceing my 19"CRT with a 17"lcd, slightly smaller screen, but the same res and a good deal less weight and desk space.
replaceing the 6800le 128mb agp with a 7900gs 256mb overclocked for £75
replaceing the 7900gs with a 9800gtx for £90 ok not a major boost, went from card struggling slightly sometimes to card never breaking a sweat at 1280x1024 but was ready for . . .
replaceing 17" lcd with 22" widescreen lcd for £100, minus an additional £41 which I've sold the 17" for so £60 :D

gah that thanks was not meant to be clicked . . got an odd occasional fault with my touchpad. Has its own mind sometimes :censored:

Today i bought an ATi 3870 for £40. I have an x1950 XTX to sell. I'm expecting to pretty much break even ;)