My budget upgrade.

[w2kgamer]

Haven't upgraded in a while. I currently have an Abit IC7-G, 2GB of Corsair XMS memory, ATI Radeon 9800Pro video card with 256MB's ram, and an old Pentium 4 3Ghz cpu not overclocked. Of course I have some WD SATA drives. I think they are both 200GB and I am running them Raid 0 right now. I have the coolermaster wave case and an antec true power 480 PSU with blue led's. I use onboard sound when I am not using my usb headphones/mic for teamspeak etc.. My monitor is the dell 2005fpw which I am happy with right now. I also have the NEC dual layer 16X dvd burner.

My two most recent upgrades are the dvd burner and the monitor. Third was the video card.

Now for the most part this system is plenty fast for me but this weekend I was checking out some demos etc and see how far I have fallen behind. So I decided to set myself up the budget and see if I can put together a list of upgrades.

I am going for
1. A cool running system that will not engage in 1v1 battles against my air conditioning.
2. A silent running system that I can barely hear if at all.
3. A powerful system capable of running the latest games and be respectable for a few more years.


Here is what I have so far.

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131025
Cheapest price @ monarch computers 254.97 to my door

CPU
http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop...10030005010_BK12401P.shtml&ORDER_ID=102829078
@ shopblt 253.20

Video Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121554
Cheapest price @ newegg.com 407.35 to my door
Edit: Considering this card instead http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=190600&AFFIL=pg&NR=1
Cheapest price I could find was at monarch. 493.69

Memory:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145033
Cheapest price @ zipzoomfly 461.15 to my door
edit:Now considering http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=85025-5&prodlist=pricegrabber which is 213.25 to my door.

Case: would keep my same case but it SUCKS and is LOUD! and doesn't cool very well.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112099
Cheapest price @ directron 111.62 to my door

CPU fan:
http://jab-tech.com/Scythe-Ninja-Plus-6-Heatpipe-CPU-Cooler-pr-3281.html
cpu cooler 50.00 w/ artic silver 5 compound.

Powersupply:
http://www.directron.com/phantom500.html
154.00 TO MY DOOR

Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...7521/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0900164-9895256?ie=UTF8

Keyboard
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=AA49530

Ended up just under 2k for these items. I think my total to my door (tax/shipping inc) is 1927.58

 

[-=Antimatter=-]

$450 for RAM is overkill considering you can do a decent overclock on $200 with the cheaper Corsair XMS2. That's money better spent on a higher-wattage PSU for future expansion.

My advice is to wait for a few months. DDR2 prices will fall, the release of R600 will drop X1900XT prices, Core 2 Duo prices will stabilize, and motherboards for said Core 2 will not cost $260 anymore.

Oh, and your system will be far from silent with an x1900 series card in it if you keep stock cooling.

 

[belmicah]

Save lots of money on RAM. You don't really need 1066. You should get a good set of 800 and OC it to 1066 if you can. There are budget sticks of ddr2 800 that can do 1000 MHz. $400 is absurd. Spend that elswhere

edit: DAMN! Somebody beat me to good advice!

 

[w2kgamer]

$450 for RAM is overkill considering you can do a decent overclock on $200 with the cheaper Corsair XMS2. That's money better spent on a higher-wattage PSU for future expansion.

My advice is to wait for a few months. DDR2 prices will fall, the release of R600 will drop X1900XT prices, Core 2 Duo prices will stabilize, and motherboards for said Core 2 will not cost $260 anymore.

Oh, and your system will be far from silent with an x1900 series card in it if you keep stock cooling.

Hey, I am all about saving money if I can. However, buying ram with the intent of overclocking it makes me cringe a bit. I'd rather spend the extra money on ram and then never have to give it a second thought. The corsair xms2 800's for 200.00 just don't look like I would want to risk it. The ram that looks like it may be ok is close to 350.00 so yes, it is overkill but Ram is one of those things I don't like to nickle and dime on. I'll pinch the penny elsewhere if needed.

I also realized after I posted and went back over my selections that the video card was hot and noisey. So after doing some more research I found another solution. Check out the update above.

 

[w2kgamer]

Save lots of money on RAM. You don't really need 1066. You should get a good set of 800 and OC it to 1066 if you can. There are budget sticks of ddr2 800 that can do 1000 MHz. $400 is absurd. Spend that elswhere

edit: DAMN! Somebody beat me to good advice!

The part about "if you can" is what worries me. Maybe it'll work out great to save the money and oc the memory. But it is just makes me a bit nervous. I'd rather spend the extra money and not have to worry about it.

 

[-=Antimatter=-]

Hey, I am all about saving money if I can. However, buying ram with the intent of overclocking it makes me cringe a bit. I'd rather spend the extra money on ram and then never have to give it a second thought. The corsair xms2 800's for 200.00 just don't look like I would want to risk it. The ram that looks like it may be ok is close to 350.00 so yes, it is overkill but Ram is one of those things I don't like to nickle and dime on. I'll pinch the penny elsewhere if needed.

I also realized after I posted and went back over my selections that the video card was hot and noisey. So after doing some more research I found another solution. Check out the update above.

I understand your dilemma, my problem solving method often boils down to throwing money at the problem before it becomes a big hassle. Nobody's forcing you to overclock your ram, you could buy DDR2-533 value ram and OC your CPU and you would still have too much memory bandwidth for your CPU to handle. You'll regret blowing $450 on 2GB of DDR2 when prices fall and you can get the same kit for $200 six months from now.

As for the GPU, you could just slap a Zalman or Arctic Cooler on that x1900xt you posted earlier....they run about $30.

For vendors, I would use ZipZoomFly before Monarch or Newegg, due to the free shipping.

 

[w2kgamer]

I understand your dilemma, my problem solving method often boils down to throwing money at the problem before it becomes a big hassle. Nobody's forcing you to overclock your ram, you could buy DDR2-533 value ram and OC your CPU and you would still have too much memory bandwidth for your CPU to handle. You'll regret blowing $450 on 2GB of DDR2 when prices fall and you can get the same kit for $200 six months from now.

As for the GPU, you could just slap a Zalman or Arctic Cooler on that x1900xt you posted earlier....they run about $30.

For vendors, I would use ZipZoomFly before Monarch or Newegg, due to the free shipping.

I am starting to see the light here. Check out the update to the memory above. Thanks for the help!

 

[belmicah]

Perrrrfekt!

 

[w2kgamer]

Have most of this stuff on order. Also decided to go ahead and upgrade my mouse to the logitech mx518 and my keyboard to the ms 4000 ergo.

Now every day is like Christmas as the UPS or Fedex driver shows up with a box for me.

Got the E6600 CPU from BLT. Due to ship August 4th.