Hi folks, first time poster at Bit Tech... So a bit about me, I work in an IT Dept and know my way around PC's and laptops having built a few machines for friends in the past. With things as they are at the minute I have not been able to upgrade my ageing system in a lot of years. (It was a single core AMD 478) with a young family to look after and only 1 wage, and a fiancée who has a date booked in for our wedding my budget was almost none existent. After a lot of digging I went down the AMD route and currently have the following spec: AMD Phenom XII 555 CPU Stock cooler (ugh) Asus M4A77T/USB3 MotherBoard Corsair Memory Value Select 2GB DDR3 PC3-10600 (1 x 2gb stick) ATI Radeon X800 (Donated from old system) 250gb Seagate SATA drive donated (Died after install) so... 250gb Seagate IDE HDD (Donated from old system) DVDrw IDE (Donated from old system) Hiper HPU3S525 PSU (Donated from old system) What I need to figure out is what route to take to most effectively boost system performance, I would like to think that upgrading the HDD and optical drives to SATA will make a big improvement, then with Xmas coming a GPU upgrade may be on the cards, I know an additional 2gb of memory will help a lot and the system could utilise dual channel mode. I have unlocked 1 core of the CPU with the Asus built in tool. I know that there is no guarantee about unlocking the 4th core, I may try again, after I have a better cooler. I realise that the low budget here is not really up to the standard of everyone else's machine, my total spend is lower than most GPU cards, I really want to get all the power I can for my budget, then after the wedding in 18 months I can hopefully go for a much better spec. Oh I would like to use the machine for some gaming(not high spec high end obviously) video encoding/editing, browsing, home office, training software (when work train me sometime next year)
Being as optical drives dont get used a huge amount I cant see that upgrading them will see much benefit. I am still using 2 IDE DVD drives. Although they are relatively cheap I cant see the point in replacing them. I am feeling your pain, my wedding is just under a year away and its taken me 6 months to stash enough cash away for a graphics card. At around £30 for each of the memory and HDD I would go for the memory then the HDD and stick the GPU on that christmas list.
I would say that getting a 2nd stick of memroy for 4gb and a cpu cooler is the first thing to do, maybe the freezer 64 pro about £15. Should let you over clock the cpu a fair bit. I'm not so sure on the HD, replacing it will gian you some speed, but I'm not sure how much, also it depends on if loading a game level, documents or starting windows up a few seconds faster is really that important to you (the pagfile will be used less with 4gb of ram). You could also get a hard drive benchmark tool like hdtune and see what speeds it gets and it will also show you what ide speed its running at. As for Ide dvd drive's I actulally prefer my two old ide ones but the cable length and width meant that I couldn't run it neatly and it was blocking airflow to my heatsink (why is the ide connector so low down on motherboards now ).
I think upgrading the drives should be the last of your worries right now. If you want to do any gaming at all, you need to junk that graphics card. You can pick up things like a 8800 GT on the Marketplace or eBay for £40 or £50.
You've got a decent CPU so in order I would say: 1) Cooler then over clock 2) Decent GPU for gaming.3)More Ram These will give you the most gains , then maybe think about a SSD H/D.
A 8800GT will make all the difference in there. I'm not going to try and force a decent power supply down your throat but i'll let you know that the Hiper could pop and take your stuff with it. Make of that what you will. Don't touch the optical drives, they will make no difference. However a Samsung F3 1TB, which just became pretty cheap worldwide will make things more snappy and quite spacious.
Thanks for the advice guys, I know the benefits of a "proper brand" PSU I like the look of Corsair to be honest on that front they seem to have some decent PSU's at realistic prices comparable to the build so far. I'm thinking maybe the Corsair Builder 500W Power Supply (should be powerful enoguh?) at £47, what are people's thought on single 12v vs multi. I have always been led to believe that single core allows for better performance whilst multiple offers "redundancy but not as effective use of power" plus another 2gb of corsair memory and the Thermaltek Frio will be next into my Scan basket (with the expenses from work that should be paying off the Visa bill, ah screw it this is more fun!). The Samsung drive in a couple of months and I will watch Flea-bay for a bargain on the GPU front of 8800GT or higher.
PM Infiniti, he's selling a 8800GT for 40 pounds. Corsair single rail power supplies are highly approved of here. To be honest you should be able to get away with a CX430 (or CX400 if you can still find one, it's a slightly higher quality unit)
