System Upgrade - Advice Before Buying
Right ho, I be wanting a new system, and have come up with the cash to pay for it. I have a fair idea of what I want, but still some outstanding questions in some areas.
I want to spend as little as possible, but probably around £600. I have a TFT, monitor, keyboard and speakers, so this is just for the base unit. Also, I will be using a 120GB HD, a soundcard and perhaps some RAM from my old system in the new one.
I am buying the system mainly for gaming, and a bit of video/audio encoding. I am looking to OC, not to liquid nitrogen levels but a decent boost.
Anyway, on with the components.
Case - Xclio Supertower - £36. Has 2x120 and 1x80mm fans, so should keep everything cool enough. Door means I won't have to keep noticing the fact my DVDRW is beige and my CDRW is black.
Fans - Rear 120mm , Front 120mm, Side 80mm. - £20 approx. Want decent airflow, but not too loud.
Hard Drive - T7K250 250GB - £67
PSU - Tagan 480W Easycon - £55
Cooler - Akasa AK-859 - £18
CPU - Opteron 144 OEM - £80.
Motherboard - Asus A8N-SLi - £70.
GFX - 7800GT - £171. Gigabyte 7800GT in Sale
Memory - I currently have 1GB in 2x256 and 1x512, of which at least 512 will have to go to the 2nd PC I'm building from the remnants of the current one.
2x1GB Corsair VS - £103
So, there you go. The price works out about £620 + delivery. I'll be getting a new graphics card in early 2007 (don't ask), so I'm not considering spending over £200 on one now, gaming rig or otherwise. (Unless of course anyone can get me an X1900XTX for £201? :P)
My final question is perhaps impossible to answer: now or later? I know things are impossbile to predict, but you can make some educated judgements. For example, is the X1900 launch likely to change anything other than an extra couple of £300+ cards? I had originally thought of waiting for Socket M2, but it appears to be little more than adding DDR2 compatability so I don't think its worth it.
Thanks for any/all input.
Synergy6