Looking to upgrade

KoolDrew

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
10,226
7
81
This is my current setup:

AMD Sempron 64 2800+ @ 2752MHz
Biostar TForce 6100-754
Corsair Value Select 1GB
nVIDIA GeForce 7900GS
Western Digital Caviar 80GB
Seagate 7200.10 320GB
Antec Earthwatts 380w
NEC 3550A
Antec Super Lanboy
Thermaltake Big Water Cooling kit
Lotiech X230

The water cooling kit absolutely sucks (i got better temps with my Freezer 64 Pro), but it was more for the experience than anything else. I'm not sure if I want to do water cooling again. Anyway, eventually I do want to upgrade most of the computer as most of it just doesn't cut it anymore, but I think I'll start with just the motherboard, CPU, and RAM.

I am expecting to pay anywhere from $250 to maybe around $350 for the upgrade. I figure I'd get a decent motherboard that overclocks well, a CPU with a lot of head room for overclocking, and since RAM is so cheap perhaps 4GB of RAM. Hopefully I can fit it in my price range. If not, oh well.

Any recommendations?
 

DSF

Diamond Member
Oct 6, 2007
4,902
0
71
There's a combo deal at Newegg on the ASUS P5Q Pro motherboard and Intel E8400 processor for $250ish I think.

Throw in 4GB of the RAM of your choice for <= $50 and you're good to go. You should even have room in your $350 budget for a good quality aftermarket heatsink. You could get an E7200 or E7300, but that would only save you $10 or so since you don't get the combo deal. (There may be other combo deals on those, I'm not sure.)
 

KoolDrew

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
10,226
7
81
How's this sound?

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - $159.99
ASUS P5Q Pro - $114.99 ($99.99 after MIR)

Combo Price = $244.98 ($229.98 after MIR)

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 - $59.99
SAPPHIRE 100245L Radeon HD 4850 - $149.99 ($129.99 after MIR)

Total - $454.96 ($419.96 after MIR)

It's over the budget I was looking for, but I decided I might as well upgrade the video card at the same time.