What would you upgrade??

Negative Decibel

Negative Decibel

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 13, 2005
Messages
3,588
Just looking for some advice on what to upgrade next. I appreciate any and all comments. my budget is $800 max. and I don't have a set time (sometime this summer)
My rig is mostly used for gaming and school work.
Here is my specs:

CPU: E6600 stepping 6 revision B2 (@ 2.7GHz)
HSF: Zalman 9500
MB: EVGA 680i (122-CK-NF68 rev. A2)
RAM: Corsair 6GB (2x2048-6400C5DHX
2x1024-6400C4D)
GPU: EVGA 260GTX 216
PSU: Corsair 620HX
Case: Antec 1200
LCD: Asus VK246H
Speakers: 2x(yeah i'm running 10 speakers + 2 subs, gets loud though!) cheep Logitec 5.1
mouse: logitech mx518 (best mouse ever!)
keybord: saitek Cyborg (not as good as my old Eclipse II)
mouse pad: Ratpadz XT (Awesome!)
HDs, 3 sata: 640GB, 750GB, 250GB
sata dvdrw

I think that's everything. Just looking for input on what I should do with it.
 
Get a cheap quad chip, and call it good for another 1 - 2 years.
 
It would help if you told us the following:
- What exactly do you want to accomplish with this upgrade?

But as it stands now, I don't see anything that needs to be upgraded. The E6600 is more than enough for games and school work while the GTX260 is enough for that 24" monitor. You're pretty much set on RAM and the 640GB HDD is one of the fastest consumer grade 7200PRM drive out.
 
Yeah, I don't see your E6600 at 2.7ghz being much if any a bottleneck to your GTX 260 (216) video card. But, maybe you can upgrade your heatsink to a Xigmatek 120mm and increase your o/c. The Xigmatek will perform better than your Zalman 9500 cooler.
 
I'd would have recommended a Qxxxx processor if you hadn't said gaming and school work.

You have a good 24" display.
Good GPU.
Good case.
E6600 is decent.
Good everything except:

Speakers.
HSF.

Upgrading depends on if you can handle waiting. Lynnfield is set to come out sometime before September-ish (Q3 2009) so the release might drop the price of all current LGA 775 products. Also take into consideration AMD will have their next AM3 offerings on the table sometime next year, roughly.

GT260 core 216 is a good GPU, but you can't really crank up games like STALKER: Clear Sky, GTA IV, and the like. Both ATI and Nvidia are gearing up to release their next generation cards (ATI has been doing the HD4770 experiment with GPU dies on a 40nm process) and Nvidia is ready to tweak and rebadge the next 8800 (joke) or maybe release a slightly new GPU die-shrunk.

It merely depends on if you can wait. ;)
 
I would upgrade to better speakers. The difference will amaze you.
 
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Jospeh said:
I would upgrade to better speakers.
Click to expand...

Yeah. If you don't live in apartment or with/next to whiny bitches who complain about noise, even an old solid state 80s receiver and some KLH bookshelves will outperform any Logicrap PC speaker. Hell, you could get them at Goodwill for the same price or cheaper. But they're loud. :D

Powered monitors are good, too.

But it depends if your current speakers are "good enough" to you. Don't let us pressure you into buying anything. :p
 
Danny Bui said:
It would help if you told us the following:
- What exactly do you want to accomplish with this upgrade?
Click to expand...

To be honest, I'm not sure. as everyone has posted so far, It's a fairly decent gaming rig right now. I guess I just want to kick something up a notch. I don't really plan on spending all $800 on upgrades. (To do so, would be IMHO a WTF?!?; i'd be better off saving it for an i7 setup with new ram and mobo...)

I've been considering some better speakers, and probably a good sound card too. and I have been thinking about getting a quad core cpu (q9400 perhaps??).

overall, I am quite happy with my rig. other than upgrading from a 9800gt to the gtx260 a few months ago, I havn't really done much tinkering, and I have this "itch" to mess with my hardware a little. It's hard to explain.

Thanks for all of the suggestions so far!
 
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n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
i'd be better off saving it for an i7 setup with new ram and mobo...
Click to expand...

I was going to suggest an i7 upgrade perhaps, but if you want to you'd have to jump in soon. They're discontinuing the lower i7's (920, 940, but keeping 965,975) for the new processors. Then again, you should probably just wait for the new processors. They're similar but way cheaper.

Lynnfield - I think it's a 4 core HT processor like the i7, but $100 less, coming out second half of this year (sep-oct i think). You should wait for that since you're pretty set for right now.

Or, you could wait until 6/8 core processors come out. It'll probably be some time next year, and you can get a total system 'makeover'. Get an 8 core processor & mobo, and a Direct x 11 capable video card. Should last quite a while longer.
 
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Sansari said:
I was going to suggest an i7 upgrade perhaps, but if you want to you'd have to jump in soon. They're discontinuing the lower i7's (920, 940, but keeping 965,975) for the new processors. Then again, you should probably just wait for the new processors. They're similar but way cheaper.

Lynnfield - I think it's a 4 core HT processor like the i7, but $100 less, coming out second half of this year (sep-oct i think). You should wait for that since you're pretty set for right now.
Click to expand...

I thought about that too. I'd like to keep this rig for a while, and probably skip the i7 generation completely, and wait for the next big thing.
 
n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
What about this??
http://www.amazon.com/Technics-SAEX140-Audio-Video-Receiver/dp/B00005NWQE

I've had it laying around for several years.
Click to expand...

Yeah, 100W per channel, it probably equates to 50W per speaker or something. e.g: loud as tits. :D

All you need now is speakers and a 1\8" to stereo RCA and you should be able to connect your line out to the receiver and play some funky music. If it has 5.1 then great, if not, oh well. I'm not a fan of 5.1 anyway (I rarely watch movies). If you have 5.1 you'll need multiple cables to PC ---> receiver (and speakers), unless you want to run it in 2.0 mode.

Ever think about pushing your E6600 a bit higher? Stock E8400 clock is 3.0Ghz (333x9)
But I'd recommend a new HSF. I'm under the impression that Zalman stuff is the thing of yesteryear. Real P4 stuff, there.

If you really want to splurge maybe a second monitor? Does the sound of your rig bother you? Maybe take a venture into water cooling.
 
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n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
I thought about that too. I'd like to keep this rig for a while, and probably skip the i7 generation completely, and wait for the next big thing.
Click to expand...

Good idea. I'm not all too impressed with i7 anyway. Sure it's amazing but what games are there out there that are interesting that warrant a $300 processor? None, in my opinion. I don't encode videos or anything like that. So I'm just waiting for the next big thing, too. :)
 
Yossarian22 said:
Yeah, 100W per channel, it probably equates to 50W per speaker or something. e.g: loud as tits. :D

All you need now is speakers and a 1\8" to stereo RCA and you should be able to connect your line out to the receiver and play some funky music. If it has 5.1 then great, if not, oh well. I'm not a fan of 5.1 anyway (I rarely watch movies). If you have 5.1 you'll need multiple cables to PC ---> receiver (and speakers), unless you want to run it in 2.0 mode.

Ever think about pushing your E6600 a bit higher? Stock E8400 clock is 3.0Ghz (333x9)
But I'd recommend a new HSF. I'm under the impression that Zalman stuff is the thing of yesteryear. Real P4 stuff, there.

If you really want to splurge maybe a second monitor? Does the sound of your rig bother you? Maybe take a venture into water cooling.
Click to expand...

well, for gaming, 5.1 is kind of ok, but 2.1 works just fine really. I'm about to be moving my desk to the other side of the house, and am not really going to have anywhere to put the rear chanels, so that might be the way to go. I just need to get some decent speakers.
I've tried OCing past 3GHz, but I hit a wall where I cant even boot if I put the FSBpast a certain point. I might play around with it some more, as I am fairly a noob to overclocking.
At the time, the Zalman was the shit. I actually have a xigmatek HDT-S1283 sitting in a box. However, it wouldn't clear my northbridge fan enough. I guess I could take it off, but I'm woried about the temps on the NB. ...

lol and sound does not bother me at all. back in the day I remember having more fans than my huge beige case could handle, and even had a huge box fan in place of a side panel. (ahh. those were the days) watercooling sounds like fun and all, but I can't justify the expense over the benifits atm.
 
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