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Hi, I'm soon to be upgrading my main rig which is an i7 based triple channel machine with a 580gtx, another 6gb of ddr3 and larger crucial SSD.

My question is this: I have my old machine in a media case under the TV, this being an Intel Q6600 on an asus board with 3GB of ram and 64bit win7. When I upgrade the SSD from my workstation, I'll move the old one to this machine. I'm also going to get another 2gb of RAM for it and swap out the two 512 modules taking the total installed to 4gb (kingston hyper X 1066 ddr2). How will this set-up fair with a more modern graphics board...say a nvidia 460? I like the idea of keeping the machine going for a bit longer. I had thought about getting a new CPU, board, ram etc but it really takes it from an upgrade to purchasing a new machine which seems a bit overkill to play the odd game and browse the net/play blu-rays when I have my workstation in my office.

Thanks in advance for advice

 

The Q6600 is no slouch, with a mild OC it'll play modern games comfortably.

 

The Q6600 is more than enough for what you want - a HTPC. Keeping it cool and silent with a 460 in there will be a challenge though!

 

Thanks for the advice. You have a point about the heat spikeh, what I currently have is a cheap and cheerful coolermaster HTPC case

http://www.awd-it.co.uk/scripts/prodview.asp?idproduct=7887

and I think I might need to swap that too. There's approximately 11 inches of space length-ways for a GPU to reside before it hits the power supply. As far as I can gather that's the exact same length as a 460 so I may run into trouble trying to connect the power lines, or the card might restrict the modular cable connectors I'm yet to fill. If it does fit I think I may have enough clearance to fit a thin scythe fan to the top panel above the cpu cooler.


you can see what I mean in this album:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/album.php?albumid=1081&pictureid=14974

 

Go for a 6850 if space is an issue, an inch shorter than the 460.

 

Good idea, but partly wanted another nvidia as I has a notion that if I have some rendering to do I could take advantage of the cuda technology as I'm planning on getting octane renderer for blender and this uses the cuda GPU.