Hey all, I'm looking to upgrade my hardware in January as I've asked for all my of presents to be in the form of Newegg certificates . Here's what I have right now as far as hardware goes: Motherboard: MSI K9AGM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AM2 Board with HDMI out Processor: AMD Athlon X2 4000+ 2.1 GHz Graphics: NVIDIA 8800 GT 512 MB Memory: 2 GB DDR2 800 Hard Drive: 500 GB Samsung Spinpoint Drive: Lite-On DVD-RW Case: Antec Nine Hundred PSU: Antec BP500U 500 Watt Monitor: BenQ 24" Keyboard: Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Mouse: Logitech MX1000 Speakers: Klipsch THX 2.1 System Webcam: Logitech Quickcam 9000 Router: Linksys WRT54G v1.1 running DD-WRT Headphones:Bose QC2 and Shure SE310 Tablet: Wacom Bamboo OS: Vista 64 Home Premium OK, so you can see what the downfalls of my system are...the Mobo, the Processor, and Memory. I figure I'll have a budget of ~$500. So my question then is....what do I get? I'm thinking: Motherboard: Asus P5Q Pro P45 Board $160 Processor: Q6600 $185 Memory: OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR2 1066 $71 Drive: Lite-On 6X Blu-Ray $130 Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro $19 Total: $535 Comments?
I would just cut out the Blu-Ray and go with a normal DVD/RE-W or what ever, save the extra money and make it your goal and invest into getting a new GPU. Other than that every thing looks solid!
What sort of OS are you using? is it 64 bit. Do you need the Blu ray drive at the moment, like dorksterr said, maybe you should look at a better graphics card like the 4870.
Sorry, It's Vista 64 Home Premium. I'm not much of a gamer so the graphics card I have is more than plenty (I was running my 1920x1200 monitor off of VGA from my Radeon x300 mobile card in my four year old Inspiron laptop previously) I really do want the blu-ray drive though as I'd like to start watching blu-ray discs and it's cheaper to buy the drive then a player. Mostly I need performance for photo editing/graphics and CAD. I did think about getting another monitor (17 or smaller) to aid in graphics work or a new mouse. I love my MX1000 but the battery is not what it used to be.
The new Phenom II processors are out in January so I'd wait to see how they scale before I throw away the motherboard just yet, they should slot right into any AM2+ socket motherboard. You could then upgrade to an AM3 motherboard when you feel like it without having to buy a new processor. I'd wait to see how good they are first though. (January the 8th is the official release date)
