Possibly upgrading my computer

[Jason_B]

Possibly upgrading my computer/ building new, $900 budget

Hey Everyone,

1st post here on the forum, been trying to find a decent forum to join to start my questioning!

Currently I have a HP m7680n stock minus a ATI 1900XTX card, and a 550W PSU. Its been a good computer the past 3ish years, and well ive recently moderatley started getting into gaming(COD4, UT3, Crysis). The computer runs COD4 and UT3 on 1680x1050 res, 4xAA, about 40-50FPS online with COD4, and 50-60FPS on UT3 while online. Crysis...well I dont want to go there

Anyway, what im looking at doing is upgrading my case, for more cooling, and possibly upgrading the mobo so I can OC the cpu a bit. Ive never really built a -=modern=- PC before, with SATA cables, and all the new stuff. I have how ever messed with computers in my computer tech class, with the old stuff IDE cables, Pentium 2 &3 processors, 80GB HDs, yea, those kinds of computers. I have a general idea of what to do, but again not really too much experience.

The case im looking at is the ever so popular Antec 900, or maybe the Cooler Master 690(just discovered tonight browsing the forum ). Both seem to have adequate cooling capabilities and wont break the wallet.

As far as mobos go, ive seem to narrowed it down to 2. The ASUS P5N-D, or the EVGA 122-YW-E173-TR.

One other thing im looking at for the future is possibly upgrading my ATI card, to a nVidia 9600GT(possibly 2 for SLI), and wondering if I should wait till the current card I have gives out, or if even a single 9600gt is a much better upgrade. Right now its a great card for what im doing, but Crysis laughs at it.

What im looking to get out of the orderal is a OCd CPU, (Currently a E6400 2.13Ghz Duo Core), and getting about 2.5Ghz out of it, some where around there, and well, just a future machine that can play the newer games with the same performance I have now, or more. That and I really want to drop as much of my current into the new stuff(HDs, CPU, Memory, CPU Fan ect...) and not really buy that's unnecessary.

Looking forward to the help ill be getting from the forum, and ill be sure to do some reading here .

 

[baron5]

antec 900 is a great case but ive heard it collects alot of dust, instead i would rec. the antec 300, which is a smaller version still has great cooling and is a very good priced.

dont get a nvidia chipset or sli 9600gt's, niether are worth it, your best of gettin this mobo
Newegg.com - BIOSTAR TForce TP45D2-A7 LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards
and a 4830
Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100265L Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
or evena 4850 of same make if you have the cash.

im a little confused with wat u mean by minus 1900xtx, but if thats the card ur running now, the 4830 will destory it. you could also get a slightly cheaper mobo if u wanted to, i rekon you should be able to get about 2.8-3ghz hopefully.

 

[Jason_B]

antec 900 is a great case but ive heard it collects alot of dust, instead i would rec. the antec 300, which is a smaller version still has great cooling and is a very good priced.

dont get a nvidia chipset or sli 9600gt's, niether are worth it, your best of gettin this mobo
Newegg.com - BIOSTAR TForce TP45D2-A7 LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards
and a 4830
Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100265L Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
or evena 4850 of same make if you have the cash.

im a little confused with wat u mean by minus 1900xtx, but if thats the card ur running now, the 4830 will destory it. you could also get a slightly cheaper mobo if u wanted to, i rekon you should be able to get about 2.8-3ghz hopefully.

Correct, by minus I did mean currently have the 1900XTX. I see you picked up on my budget with the recommendations . Im well open eared, because I still have at least a month or more before I go indulging, that's if I even do it at all. As for the dusty 900...I dont mind, I clean my current rig every 1-1.5 months, and I know if I upgrade Ill be doing it a bit more often to take care of it. I found out about a year ago, I never cleaned my case for a year, and wondered why my GPU temps soared to 115* Since then I have been more aware of it

 

[baron5]

as logn as u clean out the antec 900 itll be fine, also consider maybe the nzxt tempest aswell, thats a great airflow case.

once i went all out and got a 8800gtx/q6600 computer wen prices were ****** i was a noob back then, since then i only get budget builds and make sure i get the most i can for a cheap price, budget is very important to me.

 

[Jason_B]

Another question I had. Who knows what kind of stats the memory out of the HP is, but how much of an increase of performance would I get if I purchased a decent set of memory(Sub $50) for XP Media Center, I believe max is 3GB on 32 bit?

 

[Jason_B]

Well after thinking it over with myself, I may go the route of currently selling my HP for like $500-600ish, and then just go new on everything

Here is what I have came up with, suggestions, comments?
DVD Drive: Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD Burner - CD / DVD Burners

HDD: Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3320613AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives 2x

Vid Card: Newegg.com - EVGA 896-P3-1260-AR GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Memory: Newegg.com - OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

CPU: Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Mobo: Newegg.com - ASUS P5Q SE LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Case: Antec 900 from best buy, $125 out the door

PSU: Going to use my current 550W PSU, unless thats not enough power.

Total: $885

 

[SuxoR]

125 from best buy? Not bad...