£570 to upgrade, suggestions please. :)

[Ciber]

OK, well I think this is a great place to get help and good advice so here goes. It's high time I upgraded from single core I think, plus my motherboard I suspect has a fault. So far I have about £570 saved up for just that. I'm looking for upgrade suggestions and advice please! I have my own ideas about what I think would be best, but I'm leaving the slate blank at the start.


Currently I have:
Athlon 64 4000+ @ 2.7, 2gb PC4000, Asus A8N SLI Premium
600gb (2x320gb SATA)
XFX GTX260 XXX
Seasonic X900 PSU
Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case
Samsung 275T LCD
Windows XP
X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Soundcard


Answers to possible questions, my requirements:

Needs to be particlarly good for games with plenty of overhead for future games, as my history tells me that it will be more than a year before I buy a new motherboard or CPU. I will be doing some multitasking/multimedia/video editing stuff as well, but not a great deal.

Yes I want to overclock, but not necessarily run OC'ed all the time. I will want to know I can squeese more out of it later down the line like I have done with my A4000. I may want to run undervolted to save electricity and run quieter as well.

I have no interest in SLI or crossfire. Too noisy/ hot/ waste of electricity.

No need for IDE or floppy.

Nice and quiet please!

I'm thinking about modding my Tsunami case to add an exit fan in the top, as when I open it up it feels warm in the upper area near the PSU and it looks to me like the air in that part won't move much as it is (unmodified). Any advice on that?


Hopefully you'll find it interesting to come up with some thoughts and suggestions.

[staffsMike]

Sounds like a nice system already..

If you want to upgrade though I would get an nice 780G or 790GX AMD board, pair it to a phenom II 940 and stick 4GB of crucial ballistix (£40 at ebuyer).

Black edition has unlocked multi so simple overclocking and AMD are offering a good upgrade path right now

Could just get a new case, if you got a uATX 780G you could get the P180 mini for £60.. lovely case

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I agree with the previous suggestion!! It should not cost you more than £350 for a Phenom II 940,Asus 790GX motherboard and 4gb of Crucial Ballistix memory. There is also the AM3 Phenom II coming out soon but it is uncertain how much of a perofrmance gain DDR3 will bring to the Phenom II. The estimates are between 5% to 15% improvement. However the cost of the DDR3 and motherboard probably will drive the total purchase price up!

[Sputnik]

Is crucial ballistix ok now? When I looked at it a while back there was reports of lots of faulty sticks.

[Time Bandit]

Black edition has unlocked multi . . .

Can anyone confirm the existence of PII 940's that aren't unlocked?

I gather the 920's are all locked and have read threads in other forums where the issue of unlocked 940's appears unresolved.

More confusion:
AMD's website only mentions 940 Black edition in a footnote.
Scan has a BE box and sells it as one.
Ebuyer shows a grey/black box for the 940 and doesn't mention BE but a reviewer says he does indeed have an unlocked version.

Clarification and a paracetamol required.

BTW, OP might want to invest in 64 bit vista to make the most of that 4GB.

[C-Bag7]

Glad to see people are recommending AMD, I too am planning a 940, am2+ build but really want to know when AM3 will be available. If its within the next few months then I'll wait.

As for crucial ballistix, I haven't heard of lots of failures and I have been using mine for 18 months running at 80mhz overclock with no problems, my mother and mo in laws builds also contain ballistix with no problems.

My friends on the Amd forums can confirm that the 940BE is unlocked and to my knowledge there isn't a locked version.

[dagwoood]

.....but really want to know when AM3 will be available. If its within the next few months then I'll wait..

I assume you mean AM3 motherboards, yes? If so, they are starting to appear on pre-order on a couple of etailer sites, so a "hard" release should be imminent.

[staffsMike]

I've got a set of ballistix in my phenom build and it's been faultless so far

[tonpal]

but really want to know when AM3 will be available.

The scheduled release of AM3 Phenom II is February. To my knowledge AMD have yet to state a date but as AM3 motherboards and a few "advanced" benchmarks are starting to appear it shouldn't be too far away.

[C-Bag7]

I assume you mean AM3 motherboards, yes? If so, they are starting to appear on pre-order on a couple of etailer sites, so a "hard" release should be imminent.

Yes I was refering to boards more so as I plan to get the 940BE but want AM3 to give me the option of upgradin at a later date.

I would of course prefer to go straight to an AM3 cpu but I'm not how they will perform yet or how much they are going to be.

[rufeo]

I've got 4 sticks of ballistixs in my rig, been running at an 200mhz overclock for about a year and a half with no problems whatsoever.

if there are any problems though, crucial offer a lifetime warranty.

[Sputnik]

It was a good while back when they had problems. Shortly after they launched the Ballistix range.

I just remember all the posts about it on forum's and thinking I was glad to have bought Corsair instead.

It looks great value for money at ebuyer.

[Ciber]

Hmm interesting, thanks. I was thinking i7, but the phenom II 940 black edition does look good. It seems to be a mixed bag, in some gaming tests it does very well and others not so good. Custom PC didn't really rate or reccomend Phenom II over the Q6600, but lots of other reviewers do.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You could probably fit in a Core i7 920, a cheaper x58 motherboard and 6gb of cheaper DDR3 RAM with your budget.
It depends if you really need the processing power or not?! Also is saving between £200 to £250 important to you?

[AdamAnubis]

You could probably fit in a Core i7 920, a cheaper x58 motherboard and 6gb of cheaper DDR3 RAM with your budget.
It depends if you really need the processing power or not?! Also is saving between £200 to £250 important to you?

He could, but nothing else:


What about something like this?

[PwnDirect]

You could probably fit in a Core i7 920, a cheaper x58 motherboard and 6gb of cheaper DDR3 RAM with your budget.
?

This for performance or a phenom II for back for buck