An update from advice given ref graphics card.UPDATE PURCHASED AND MORE ADVICE PLEASE

[Colinevan]

Well guys, first of all many thanks for all your help and advice given on the previous post. Here's what iv decided to do and why.

Id love a new pc, however for those that actually know me. Id prob spend a ridiculous amount of pennies and it would be abso overkill and monsterous. So iv decided to learn a little whilst having a go myself.

However please feel free to offer your opinions or advice.

Plan - as mentioned this was initially just upgrade the graphics card as it was cheap to do, however reading peoples opinions make me believe i also require a new power supply. So iv researched a lot over the past few days and like the idea of also saving money so im prob going to go down the route of a new or second hand gtx260/280 or a new card around £60.

regarding the power supply, i actually stripped my pc case apart and decided to spring clean it ( ie hoover all the cack out) and found out my existing one is 350watts. So i also need a better power supply.

I also researched about keeping things cool, and abso love the idea of a water cooled pc, so i then thought , hmm a new case, new psu, better cooling and overclock my q6600 as its quite popular to overclock and seems reliable with reasonable performance ( plus i already own this ). Please offer advice or opinions for this part

Speaking of temps, i thought id research at what its currently operating at

These are the results using speccy.

Operating System
MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2
CPU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz 49 °C
Kentsfield 65nm Technology
RAM
4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 332MHz (5-5-5-15)
Motherboard
Foxconn 9657MA (Socket 775) 40 °C
Graphics
HP w2207 (1680x1050@60Hz)
SAMSUNG (1920x1080@30Hz)
256MB GeForce 8300 GS (nVidia) 83 °C
Hard Drives
313GB Hitachi Hitachi HDT725032VLA360 ATA Device (SATA) 36 °C
Optical Drives
ATAPI DVD A DH16A1P SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

If you look , graphics card operates quite hot when watching a film on a hd tv. This deffo needs more cooling if i was to keep. and is obviously the week point on the setup at the moment.


Im going to upgrade to windows 7 at some point , so that speeds things up a little as well.

So back to advice now. I am on a budget esp as with kids and were expecting in june as well so if i cant stretch to water cooled ( only like the idea as its cool, seems a nice project to build and you can say that youv been there got the t shirt etc etc.

So i need some recommendations for either a new nice spec case circa £80 or a second hand case that might be water cooled spec approved. I appreciate i need to either super cool with plenty of heatsinks and fans or how much would i need to water cool things. It mght be good practise to keep things cool even when i can afford a new cpu. ( im led to believe that the news chips would run cooler than an overclocked q6600 anyways.)

I need a reasonable psu that's reliable , i'm budgeting around £70 new or second hand. If i Need to alter budgets though just advise please.

Graphics card i think im covered with, however if anyone knows any bargains i'm all ears.

Mother board. Now this is a grey area, how do i know if my current board is suitable fro overclocking and will handle everything else.

In the long term, but this may be quite a while off - just to give people want i want to do, i would upgrade processor - prob i7 or high end i5 , along with a sd bootable drive and keep my current drive and poss another one - something like 1tb or 2 tb.

Lastly am i being daft thinking of overclocking, i just saw it as a nice stop gap with a perforamance increase.

AS before thanks in advance. really is much appreciated.

Best regards

Col.

[Richard Lowe]

YGPM

[Colinevan]

Another update now guys.

After much advice and reading and a few trips to microdirect iv reviewed the whole upgrade and have started the ball rolling.

Just purchased a new case
Haf 922 with window - quite rare for the bargain price of £73 delivered. These are normally around £100 with no window and are quite pleasing to the eye

I was going to go for either the smaller 912 or a coolermaster storm enforcer
This one
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Pr...-Plus---NO-PSU
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Pr...nforcer-Gaming

As i liked the window option, however they were slightly smaller which made me wonder if it will be big enough for the future. Went home and saw this and ordered

Std one here for ref
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Pr...22-Case-NO-PSU

If any one wants one, theyre on amazon at that price

Next step was to search for the psu.

Previous advice seemed to be not below 600w and a decent brand such as ocx, corsair etc.

Its my birthday next week (34 ha ha ) and pay day so next purchase is the psu.

Im torn between the corsair gs series or the the ocx modular as its neater and im happy to increase the power upto 700/800w and ideally around £80 so im open to advice really.

As mentioned when these components are built up, next stage is a second hand gtx260/280 or even a 460 now as they all range from £60 to £100.

Then for the learning part in me, its all too easy to just buy a new cpu and motherboard so im going to have a go at overclocking the 6600. Processor wise at the moment its fine, however with a nice breathable tower and decent psu , why not try and get it to 3ghz. The one downfall is that i deffo need another motherboard. AS my current one is ancient. As its old techology hopefully they should be cheap to pick up again any advice would be great.

Next stages would then be a new sd drive simply for operating system, another hd for storage (prob 1tb as they are below £100 ) as well as my current rather measly 350gb

Then lastly when it needs is new mobo and cpu. Reading up the bulldozer amd;s offer stupid speeds and are cheaper than a decent i5 or i7.

Thanks in advance for any help or info or advice. If anyone knows what sort of spec mobo i need, it would be greatly appreciated.

Ps - although the end result in theory is a brand new decent spec pc, doing it this way helps me understand more and allows me to do it bit by bit.

[Richard Lowe]

Steer well clear of the Bulldozer CPU's they're horrible, in most situations slower than the CPU's they are replacing! In certain workstation/n threaded applications they're ok(ish), but for what you and me use it for it's a complete dog!

Look for either an Asus or Gigabyte motherboard with a G35/45 or P35/45 chipset and you'll be go for pushing the chip a bit, though I wouldn't bother as you won't really notice any difference.

Save the money for a 2500k + motherboard/RAM

[AC199]

Heh, aside from not noticing much of a performance increase, with that furnace of a chip in the board you'll run into overheating issues before you know it. I'd recommend putting CoreTemp on your PC and monitoring temps with that CPU anyway. Anything over 75 degrees, worry. (Before some pedantic bugger mentions the TDP for that chip is 95 degrees, I know, but bios temp monitors are notoriously bad at being accurate in my experience)

The OCZ PSU would do the trick, neat and tidy means better airflow, which means less heat which means a happier PC, just watch for them exploding when you power on for the first time, make sure the correct 12v line is plugged into the mainboard, they never used to label them, I went through 3 before I worked that out...

I'd also recommend staying way from AMD chips right now, they are such a huge leap behind Intel right now its laughable.

AC

[Richard Lowe]

Originally Posted by AC199

Before some pedantic bugger mentions the TDP for that chip is 95 degrees, I know, but bios temp monitors are notoriously bad at being accurate in my experience)

No the pedantic buggers would say that TDP is actually the maximum power dissipation measures in watts and 95 degrees is the maximum transistor junction temperature

[Colinevan]

Originally Posted by AC199

Heh, aside from not noticing much of a performance increase, with that furnace of a chip in the board you'll run into overheating issues before you know it. I'd recommend putting CoreTemp on your PC and monitoring temps with that CPU anyway. Anything over 75 degrees, worry. (Before some pedantic bugger mentions the TDP for that chip is 95 degrees, I know, but bios temp monitors are notoriously bad at being accurate in my experience)

The OCZ PSU would do the trick, neat and tidy means better airflow, which means less heat which means a happier PC, just watch for them exploding when you power on for the first time, make sure the correct 12v line is plugged into the mainboard, they never used to label them, I went through 3 before I worked that out...

I'd also recommend staying way from AMD chips right now, they are such a huge leap behind Intel right now its laughable.

AC

Regardinf the ocz, i must admit the anorak in me liked the corsair gs range as it simply had led's of various colours to light up my nice new case ( when it arrives ). Can tell the mrs that the kids will like the pc when its lit up

However im now seeing the benefits of going modular for neatness . I was looking at hte gs800 as its £70 and the ocz was slightly more expensive but from memory was only 700/750. AS this supply will prob last 5 years ( i hope so ha ha ) should this be a concern.