Cheap PC Update advice needed

[therealjohnpeat]

CPU is cheaper again at Aria but I'd sooner set my hair on fire than deal with those crooks

RE: Biostar board, have to admit I have no experience at all with Biostar - my impression is of cheap and cheery kit but that looks quite nicely specced (the Asrock board also has VRM cooling I believe - tho all that stuff is often hard to find-out!?)

[therealjohnpeat]

I'd agree with an fx6300 if you want new only, if you're willing to go 2nd hand then a phenom II x4 or x6 is still a solid cpu

I'm very skeptical of owned parts these days because values move so slowly that they're often not much cheaper (but obviously carry significant risk in many cases)

The days when you got a decent GPU or CPU for half-the-price are long gone - there are people trying to sell unwarrranted stuff on eBay for 90% of it's new price - and places like CEX just take the mickey (new is often CHEAPER than they are!!)

[therealjohnpeat]

p.s. on the RAM pricing, I was working on some I've been offered directly - I hadn't actually noticed that prices had spiked-up (there was 2x4Gb 1600 DDR3 on Amazon for £33 a few weeks ago I'm sure!?!?)

I hope the guy passing this on to me hasn't noticed either!

[therealjohnpeat]

Aha - all this talk of £33 RAM probably comes from this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-lis...=hotukdeals-21

OOS and has been for a while but it keeps cropping-up on things like PCPartPicker and it's probably that which set the price in my mind...

Thanks for all the help thusfar - I've NO idea how you 'thank' people on here specifically tho?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

CPU is cheaper again at Aria but I'd sooner set my hair on fire than deal with those crooks

RE: Biostar board, have to admit I have no experience at all with Biostar - my impression is of cheap and cheery kit but that looks quite nicely specced (the Asrock board also has VRM cooling I believe - tho all that stuff is often hard to find-out!?)

Biostar AMD motherboards tend to be gaudy in colour and relatively frill free. OTH,their AMD motherboards seem relatively solid though even going back to the 700 series motherboards. I have known a few people who have used the TA970 and it seems fine as a motherboard.

The ASRock looks OK too,apart from its non native support of 1600MHZ DDR3 which is weird.