Hey Guys
I'm looking to upgrade my old PC (athlon x2, 1gb ddr ram...) to turn it into something that'll run games and cubase a bit more efficiently. Currently it's got a fairly ok Graphics card (8800GT) and the hard drives and stuff are all fine, as is the PSU (Xclio 650w). But I'm gonna need to gut it and replace the processor/ram/motherboard. My budget is around £200, and I've had a good look on scan.co.uk to build what I can; this is what I've come up with:
[unfortunately I can't post links...]
LN34297 MSI G41M-E43 Intel G41 775 Motherboard £42.49
LN27181 Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66ghz £118.74
LN27738 Corsair Memory XMS3 Classic 4GB DDR3 1333 Mhz £38.54
That comes to £210 - within acceptable range of my budget. I also was thinking whether it'd be worth going for this pre-overclocked bundle from scan:
"SMART Core i3 BUNDLE - Overclocked at 4.2 Ghz"
Intel Core i3 540 - Dual Core CPU (Overclocked to 4.2ghz)
4Gb Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600Mhz
ASUS P7H55-M
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Priced at £240.
The main key decision I'm having a hard time making is which would be better; quad core q8400 @ 2.66ghz or the dual core i3 @ 4.2ghz. I've heard that dd3 1066 vs dd3 1600 makes no practical difference, and the features of the motherboards don't really make a difference to me (I'm planning on buying a monster machine in ~6 months time with all the shinies - this is just a stop gap so I can run Rift: Planes of Telara when it comes out!).
What do you guys think? slower, older quad core, or faster, newer dual core?
Or maybe you can think of a much better build for £200? That'd be fantastic!
Thanks for your time and help!