Partial Upgrade

[Elcs]

Hello guys and girls,

Its been a long while since I posted here or delved into the world of PC's and now, I am rather at a loss.

Following Blain's very neat build request post structure, here it goes:

1) My system will be mainly used for games, web browsing, general office work and movie viewing. It is hooked up to my 42" Plasma HDTV.

2) I am setting myself a budget of probably £300 but I do have concerns which I will address below.

3) I am from the UK and will be buying my parts from online UK stores.

4) I prefer brands that are in the ascendancy and fit my price/performance budget. I have no preference as to what brands I buy. I have never touched Intel for the sole reason that they have not been a financially viable option at the time of my upgrades.

5) I intend to use as much as possible from my current build, namely my case, HDD's DVD ROM, Seasonic 600W PSU. I believe my PC3200 DDR will probably be out of date now and useless as far as most upgrade paths would go. I bought an AGP Nvidia 7600GT in April which I am loathed to get rid of, however I will reconsider my budget if PCI-E is such an issue.

6) I have not read any similar threads as yet. I have browsed prices and things look interesting and I could do with getting rid of this 1700+.

7) I plan to run at default speeds. Overclocking is behind me.

I am very touchy about sound, my case has a seasonic psu, acoustipack sound dampening foam, panaflo's at 7v and below and pre-7600gt.. i had a VF700-Cu on my Radeon 9800P. A good heatsink/fan combo is essential.

I would prefer a multi-core system from which I can build off for the future. As time goes by, new games are becoming less interesting but my system is struggling to even play a title such as Stalker. Onboard sound is very acceptable.

If a graphics card upgrade is "required", then a card with an HDMI port would be a bonus.

I look forward to some positive responses and when I return from work, I will be browsing Anandtech for info.

 

[Elcs]

Bump?

 

[jkresh]

I don't know what prices are like in most UK stores, but I will make a few comments.

First, AGP is dead, buying a new system with agp is difficult and leaves you severely limited in terms of upgrades (the 7600gt is already 1 generation behind and it was low/mid for that generation, I doubt it will be particularly usable in games like crysis). So what you are looking at is a new cpu/motherboard/ram and gpu. Probably would make sense to go with a p35 board and a cheap core 2 duo (this would let you upgrade to a quad core later, and be a major upgrade over your 1700+), amd can't compete with intel on the high end right now, but on the low end they have some competition so you could look at an am2+ board and a cheap x2. Either way you will be going ddr2 (go for 2gigs (should be fairly cheap)). Basically you should speck those components out at some stores you are comfortable with (or list retailers websites here and we can), then you can figure out what budget you have left and what games you care about and a gpu can be recommended.

 

[0roo0roo]

p182+seasonic for sound i guess
silentpcreview is a decent site for that kinda stuff. engineered for quiet in the first place beats foam in a lousy case from my experience.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
p182+seasonic for sound i guess
silentpcreview is a decent site for that kinda stuff. engineered for quiet in the first place beats foam in a lousy case from my experience.

Thanks for that comment. In my initial post, I mentioned that my setup was already quiet and mentioned what I already had.

Thermalright SLK900A, Panaflo L1A's on a Sunbeam Rheobus 0-12v, Zalman VF700Cu, Seasonic S12 600W PSU, Samsung Spinpoint hard drives and one of the best foam packages on the market which SPCR actually reviewed and gave good feedback on.

Jkresh - Thank you. The hardest thing is the graphics card in this scenario. Most new games are quite frankly looking extremely bland an uninteresting. Stalker is the most modern game in my collection and its taken me 4-6 months to pick it off the shelf?

Im never at the bleeding edge, mainly due to the fact that its not an interesting place to be and secondly it involves burning notes like no tomorrow.

Dabs.com
OcUK
Kustom PCs
Overclock
Tekheads
MicroDirect
Misco

A couple of sites that I remember off the top of my head. I may still have a backup of my old IE Bookmarks which contained a list of around 50 different UK computery type stores.

I will take a look based upon your recommendations (recommended motherboards would be a bonus, hopefully they still have PATA connectors) and compare them with anything you guys can figure out.

Look forward to hearing back.

EDIT: Just looked at Microdirect. Basic Core 2 Duo (800mhz fsb), matching 2Gb DDR2 and reasonably mid-range priced board comes to £175. Things are looking up!

Games-wise, Im usually into RPG's and RTSes which dont require that extra mile to play. The only FPS Im going to be really interested in over the next 12 months that I am aware of is Hellgate London. Bearing in mind that as long as I have a minimum FPS of roughly 23, any FPS is playable, a resolution of 1024*768 or 1366*768 is used and graphics arent my priority in games... just to provide you with some background on how to pick out an appropriate card.