Hey guys, been lurking here a little while as I'm thinking of making some minor upgrades to my machine. I built it about three years ago and haven't really touched anything since then. Recently I installed Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit on a new drive, and have been bitten by the bug again. I'd love to go the whole hog and grab an i7, X58 etc but I just don't have the funds or necessity right now. I currently have a Q6600@3.2, Asus P5K P35 Premium mobo, 2x1GB Ballistix tracer 1066MHz RAM and a 4870 1GB. Running at 1920x1200. I'm wanting to get more RAM and maybe a 64GB SSD. Couple of Questions:- 1. Can I go ahead and stick a further 4GB of another brand of 1066MHz RAM in the two free slots on the board (2x2GB) and still benefit from dual-channel. Or would I need more tracer RAM? Wonder if I'm better off just selling the tracers, but then 6GB would be nice with my new OS. 2. Will the SSD be fine on my mobo, not sure if the latest SSDs would be compatible with my aging mobo, I believe its only SATA 1, and where would I mount the 2.5" drive in my 3.5" bay? Would I need some kind of bracket to mount it? 3. If I was to install Win7, apps etc on the SSD, can I still run games off my usual SATA drives? Anything I have to copy over first in order for this to work etc? Thanks so much for your attention, I'm sorry I'm asking questions on my first post
I saw noone had replied to this, so i thought I would. 1. This is the same position that I was in 6 months ago. I've always kept with the rule that you should use RAM of not only the same speed and clocks but of the same series too. A little googling later turns up these, at £77 it's not cheap, but that the pain with DDR2 now, prices are climbing again. I added 4GB to my 2GB and it's made everything much smoother, so give it a pop. 2. I also contemplated this too. I came to the conclusion that the only ones to go for are the Crucial C300 series with a Highpoint Rocket 620 card. This requires a PCI-E 2.0 slot to work (also needs to be x4) so it should work in work second PCI-E x16 slot as this runs at x4 anyway. The Asus website doesn't state if this is a v2.0 slot though. Now the 64GB C300 is about £88 on Ebuyer and the Highpoint Rocket is about £30, so thats £120 odd there. For me its too much cash for too little space. I'm living with 1.8TB these days, so 60GB is nothing to me. I'm keeping an eye on the 128GB+ drives as this provides a 'usable' amount of space. The drive I'm really looking at is the OCZ Ibis as it's more expensive, but makes standard SSD's looks like HDD's... 3. If you got a SSd wouldn't you want the games to be on it. As they're the things that need a speed boost... You may also want to think about a new GPU, as your one is, although still very good, becoming limiting as the resolution you game at... (Assuming you game that is) Pete
Hey man, Welcome to Bit-Tech 1. Your best off to sell your ram and buy a 4gig kit, it can be very difficult to find the same ram again, aswell if the ram isn't the same it will revert to 800mhz i think. Filling up all slots would also hinder overclocking. So use the KISS method 2 RE SSD: An SSD will be fine but will be bottle necked by sataII. You can buy a special bracket which goes into your 3.5 bays and gives you a 2.5 bay http://www.scan.co.uk/products/ocz-...bracket-2-for-35-dock-bays-for-25-and-35-ssds or http://www.scan.co.uk/products/akas...s-35-hdd-or-25-notebook-drive-into-525-pc-bay You will need to add a Rocket 620 card but the x8 slot in the p5k will still be holding it back, especially with the SSD's like the C300.
