Pondering the (evil) upgrade

Elcs

Diamond Member
Apr 27, 2002
6,278
6
81
UK Post

Cleaning out my system the other day really gave me the hankering to upgrade. Taking each individual part out of my PC, dusting it off, re-applying TIM as necessary, moving a fan around to increase effectiveness and shifting my elastic-suspended HDD's around to accommodate really gave me that burning desire to... purchase new equipment so I can take it all apart again and marvel in the construction of a PC.

Now I am currently running:

AMD X2 AM2 6000+ (3ghz DC, Brisbane I think it is) with a nice Thermalright Ultima-90
MSI K9N Neo V3 NForce 560 chipset (Not my best purchase ever)
4 x 1 Gb Corsair DDR2-800 (Ordered 2 x 1Gb then another 2 x 1 Gb a week later when I realised 4 Gb was a sweet spot)
512mb HD4870 with a Thermalright HR-02 GT?

I game generally RPG/FPS/MMO/RTS @ 1920x1080 on a 47" HDTV which I am happy with :)

My HDD's may be providing me with a bit of sluggishness, 2 x 500gb Western Digital Green Power drives. Perfect for silence and storage but not known to be precisely the nippiest, great for me nevertheless as I am a silence fanatic.

The motherboard is pretty much a PoS so for an upgrade it really needs to be a new CPU/Mobo/RAM combo. As an early adopter (the day they were released) of the HD4870, I have rather been burned by the 512mb only version I feel but judging by the brief overview of the latest Anandtech reviews it is still a reasonable mid-range card and should still be suitable.

Looking at a basic check:

Intel i5 750 - £140 or Phenom X3 965 BE - £145
3 x 2 Gb DDR3-1333 - £100-110
New Mobo - £100?

or

ATI HD5850 - £210ish

or perhaps

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=14&subcat=910 - Looks like the same Kingston SSD that Anandtech just reviewed, only bigger? If so, that looks darn sweet!

As mentioned I am an advocate of quiet PC operation and as such would like to continue in that way.. My Scythe Slipstream fans are usually running as slow as they can possibly go and that tends to keep my CPU below 55C and GPU below 80C during a gaming session.

I have been completely out of the loop for .... yeah, that long I don't remember and I am not entirely sure I want to drop cash on my PC at the moment but the call is tempting.

Some games are chugging at high settings and these days I am not one for fiddling around with every little setting to maximise the playability to droolability ratio.

I am not sure Quad Core is necessary, in fact I am sure that it isnt but with them being much cheaper and closer to mainstream I get the feeling "why not?".

Thanks for any suggestions you guys and girls of Anandtech work out.
 
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Elcs

Diamond Member
Apr 27, 2002
6,278
6
81
Do you consider Intel based products to be "evil"?

Although I have never owned an Intel product, I do not consider them to be "evil".

I consider the compulsion and addiction to PC's, the building of, to be evil. It's one of those things that I often give into and it costs me much money but gives me a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction.

That sudden desire to build a new PC, is evil :)