Hey all. I'm putting together my first major system upgrade since 2002 soon and am looking to order this weekend. I was going to hold off a little longer, but I started by buying a Dell 2407wfp (which I love) and now I need the system to back it up 🙂
My current rig is an Athlon XP 2600+, ASUS A7N8x Deluxe, Radeon 9700 Pro, 1Gb DDR, etc. I use it for encoding movies/music, playing games, photoshop, and CAD.
I'm looking to put together:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (but I may have to get an OEM E6300 and overclock the crap out of it, since the E6600 isn't really available for a reasonable price. In that case, can you recommend a heatsink as well?)
Motherboard: What are my options here? I'm hoping to spend <$200. I'd like a couple of ATA connectors for legacy drives, and ideally firewire. What has the best price/performance?
Video: As I stated, I have a Dell 24" LCD which I'm running at native resolution. I know there are those new Crossfires coming out... I'm hoping to only spend about $300-350 though (which rules out an Nvidia GX2.)
Ram: 2Gb DDR2. There are a ton on ZipZoomFly & NewEgg that fall into the $120-$180 price range...I have no idea really what is the best deal or best performance-wise. What would you choose?
Power Supply: I'm reusing my tried and true old tower case, but I figure that I need to replace my power supply considering a) it is only 300W and b) it has over 60,000 hours on it at this point 😛 What can you recommend? In addition to the above Ram, CPU, and video, the box will have 4 hard drives, an optical drive, a sound card, plus a couple of fans. Up to $100 budget, less preferred. Quiet a bonus.
My current rig is an Athlon XP 2600+, ASUS A7N8x Deluxe, Radeon 9700 Pro, 1Gb DDR, etc. I use it for encoding movies/music, playing games, photoshop, and CAD.
I'm looking to put together:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (but I may have to get an OEM E6300 and overclock the crap out of it, since the E6600 isn't really available for a reasonable price. In that case, can you recommend a heatsink as well?)
Motherboard: What are my options here? I'm hoping to spend <$200. I'd like a couple of ATA connectors for legacy drives, and ideally firewire. What has the best price/performance?
Video: As I stated, I have a Dell 24" LCD which I'm running at native resolution. I know there are those new Crossfires coming out... I'm hoping to only spend about $300-350 though (which rules out an Nvidia GX2.)
Ram: 2Gb DDR2. There are a ton on ZipZoomFly & NewEgg that fall into the $120-$180 price range...I have no idea really what is the best deal or best performance-wise. What would you choose?
Power Supply: I'm reusing my tried and true old tower case, but I figure that I need to replace my power supply considering a) it is only 300W and b) it has over 60,000 hours on it at this point 😛 What can you recommend? In addition to the above Ram, CPU, and video, the box will have 4 hard drives, an optical drive, a sound card, plus a couple of fans. Up to $100 budget, less preferred. Quiet a bonus.
