Hello I’m looking for some help with upgrading my pc. current spec: case: Coolermaster Mystique 631 psu: Akasa AK-P100FG motherboard: Abit IN9 32X-MAX cpu: Intel Core QX6700 graphics card: GeForce 8800 GTX ram: 2x1gb OCZ PC2-7200 DDR2 Special Ops Edition i have about £200-300 to spend. I have stopped using my pc as of late because the constant noise (it drives me insane) (I’m using stock cooling on my processor but I do have a Tuniq Tower 120 LED) So I’m looking for a quiet system that will still allow me to play games, Photoshop etc. so basically i dont know what to upgrade. whats worth upgrading and what worth keeping? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Scott
Typically in a computer noise is created by the cooling fans. If the noise that is driving you mad is a constant humming I am on the right track. If it is any other sort of noise please describe it as it may be a fault with one of the components in your system. For a budget of £200 to £300 about all that can be done is to make the system a bit quieter. To increase the performance would take around £800. With the hardware you have I would wait for another 12 to 18 months before doing a major upgrade to increase performance. If you are unhappy with the performance of your system when gaming maybe look at replacing your graphics card in 3 to 6 months when Fermi is out and the prices on ATI 5 series cards have dropped. Firstly the good news is that your PSU is way over-rated for the system you have. That has some drawbacks but in terms of reducing noise it is very good. I would suggest replacing the case and fitting the Tuniq Tower that you already have. Cases can be difficult to recommend as they are influenced by personal taste as much as anything else. Some that may be worth considering are: Fractal Design R2 Silverstone Fortress FT-01 Zalman MS1000-HS2
I would think about increasing your ram to 4gb for gaming and photoshop. Also checkout your case fans for noise aswell as your gfx card. Id hold off upgrading your gfx card ATM because Nvidias next gen Fermi cards are due for release. Meaning greater choice and maybe better prices.
How many case fans have you got running and what are their sizes? And i dont understand why you wont use the aftermarket cooler instead of the stock cooler? That would cool better than the stock cooler and would let you overclock. What games do you play? If you are playing very demanding games and using photoshop a lot it is good to increase the RAM to about 4GB. And the graphic card also it depends on what games you play. As i said earlier if you are playing demanding games you can upgrade your graphic card to an ATI 5000 series or wait for Nvidia Fermi. But if you are not such a serious gamer your setup seems to be fine. You can wait for some time without upgrading.
sorry for not doing it this way, I'm new here and well was pretty lazy so didn't look around. Bingo! its a constant (very loud) humming that is annoying me. Obviously there are noises from the hard drive etc. but they don't annoy me. Thanks for the help first of all. I think your right about waiting to upgrade on the major components I don't really have the cash or the need to upgrade right now. Gaming performance isn't a huge factor to me at the moment (it was when i bought my pc but now a days not so much.) The only problem I have with my PSU is the length of the cables and the fact its not a modular PSU. In the case i have there is no room to hide the cables so they are clumped together in the centre of the case which obviously isn't great for airflow or getting my Tuniq Tower in. SO a new case sounds like a good idea. Out of the cases you suggested the Silverstone Fortress FT-01 was my preferred case and I've read a few other reviews and it seems like a pretty solid case. The price seems a little steep for the size but its a fair bit bigger than my case. edit: Fractal Design R2 is actually not to bad. I have two case fans both : Noctua NF-P12 (with the Low-Noise-Adaptor) Good question, basically it use to be attached to my old motherboard but when it broke i had to pull off the backplate for the the cooler (so now i have the back plate but no sticky pad to re attach it) and have never really been bothered to find a suitable sticky pad. SO laziness is to blame. Its been a year or so since I've played games on my pc but I use to play Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Cod 4, Empire: Total War, Grand Theft Auto IV etc. i would like to get back into playing pc games but its not priority. I use photoshop , illustrator etc. pretty often so a ram increase doesn't sounds like a bad idea either. I think from the feed back I'm getting so far upgrading my motherboard, cpu and graphics card would be silly right now. However investing in a slightly larger case and 4GBs or ram could be worth it. I forgot to mention I'm running vista but i bought a copy of windows 7 recently so i will be updating that soon as well. 1. Find a new case 2. Fit my Tuniq Tower 3. New Ram (4GBs) hope all this makes sense just back from work and I'm very tired.
