Major Upgrade. Can I do better?

[Free Thinker]

OK Guys,

I've got a £300 budget with which to upgrade my PC. I've been looking around a bit, and I've come up with the following; (all from scan with a couple on todayonly)

£55.21 - 1GB (2X512MB) Corsair Value Select, DDR PC3200 (400), 184 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 2.5
£75.14 - AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket939 Venice Core, 2.0GHz, 512KB Cache, OEM
£40.17 - Asrock AR-939DUAL-SATA2 ULi M1695, S939, AGP / PCI-Express, DDR 400, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX
£41.11 - Coolermaster Centurion RC-532 Black+Silver Trim Case w/o PSU
£16.39 - Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro - S754/939/940
£59.93 - 580W HiperPower Type-R Modular Black PSU Quiet Dbl Fan aPFC ATX2.2 20/24 Pin

All this adds up to £299.71 after delivery is added (I don't seem to qualify for free shipping, I guess I don't post often enough)

I intend to re-use my Nvidia Geforce 6800 le graphics card, Maxtor 160Gb ATA-100 7200rpm 8MB cache hard disk, Creative Audigy LS 5.1 sound card and NEC 16x DVD writer. I'll upgrade the my graphics card in a few months once my funds have topped up again.

Could I do better? Should I save a bit longer so I can get a better CPU or motherboard? Should I hold on until I can afford a new graphics card so I don't need a "dual" motherboard?

[herulach]

The boards pretty good, but if it were me id hold off until you can afford teh whole lot of it, the wow factor will be much better, and with any luck AM2 will be out, which should push the prices of s939 down a bit

[TiMeZeRo]

if thats from scan apply for free shipping tomoro as post count thing updates every night .. looks like a nice setup btw i have that psu its ROCKS and that cpu fan

[pands@scan]

^^ yea what zero says, give it another try possibly after the weekend, with any luck by then you will be accepted

[mcmiller]

ah cool i see your getting the asrock mobo let me know how good it is cos i wanna get one of them

[Free Thinker]

I'll give the free shipping thing another go over the weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to get it to work before the memory and CPU come off todayonly.

[MantisCSS]

i would say thats a gd setup m8, i also have the PSU and the CPU cooler, and did have the CPU aswell, all 3 very good

[johnny02004976]

ah cool i see your getting the asrock mobo let me know how good it is cos i wanna get one of them

mate im running the ASRock board with my 146 at the moment, its a good board to use especially for the price. The last 4 upgrades ive done for peeps at work have had this board

[teachmech]

Let us know how that works out I've been thinking of upgrading from s754 but have never quite made it.

[arthurleung]

IMO you could do with a cheaper PSU (i.e. 480W)

580W is definitely overkill (I have the Hiper 480W dragging 9 hdds along happily)

[MantisCSS]

its a gd point, but the price difference isnt massive.

[Free Thinker]

Thanks for all the input guys.

I did think the PSU might be a bit hefty. But as an old friend of mine once said. "Better looking at it than looking for it." He was talking about network cable lengths, but I think it applies to lots of other things as well.

I might order this lot a bit later, and I'll let you know how I get on.

[MantisCSS]

sounds gd m8, let us know how it all goes! good luck!

[Free Thinker]

Here's a quick update on this.

I placed an order for the all this kit on Saturday. The PSU and case were out of stock, but both said only 1-2 days lead time. Since the items were still not ready for delivery yesterday I raised a query with scan. Sure enough the case is still out of stock with no ETA. I'm a bit annoyed I had to raise a query before they actually told me this, but that's another story.

The choice I have now is cancel the whole order (I don't want the rest of the order with no case to put it in) or find an alternative case.

What do you guys think, what would be the best alternative for the 532 at around te same price?

[Free Thinker]

Hi guys,

You wanted to know how I got on, so here we go.

All the above parts (except the case) arrived from scan on Wednesday. I purchased the case from ebuyer and that arrived on Friday.

Put it all together with my exisiting hard disks, DVD writer, graphics cars and sound card.

Powered on.... Nothing..

Just a high pitched squeal from the PSU.

Put back and connected my old PSU and all is well.

Looks like I might be returning the PSU, but I've raised a support query with scan to see if they have any ideas.

Has anyone else had this sort of problem before?

Anyway, since it's only the PSU that's giving me grief, at least I can benefit from the other components. Sure is a lot faster and quieter.