Thetownend.com

Right my computer is shit.
I want to upgrade the motherboard, processor and ram. I'm guessing i can use the old case?

I already have a 1GB graphics card but i want enough power to use Photoshop etc...so I'm guessing 4GB of ram minimum?

Can any of you kind souls direct me to some parts so I can do it on the cheap?
I want it powerful enough so I don't need to upgrade for a while after

Thanks xxx

chillblast.com, down dorset way..........

If you're running anything newer than XP and replace that amount of hardware you'll likely have to re-install due to Windows recognising different digital signatures from the new kit.

What are you running hardware wise at the moment? And what OS?

2gb of ram
Dual core intel processor 2.8ghz
Windows 7
1gb nvidia graphics card

The motherboard only takes 2gb of ram

To what kind of level are you using Photoshop? That rig should run it perfectly for your most average needs.

For web design, I find flash is very slow.
Plus football manager is slow as fuck soapy tit wank

What is causing it to be slow and shit? Everything? Just in games? When you have loads of windows open? Is the hard drive close to being full up?

What model processor is it? It should be quick enough being dual core but it may have a shit cache.
What model graphics card is it? It may be 1gb but it could still be shit.

The hard drive is empty I've just formatted it

The processor is celeron I think, from 2007
The graphics card is nvidia geforce 210

Do you still have the 4gb of RAM?

You're going to need all other kit new though.

They only sell complete systems afaik.
If you want to utilise a full 4gb of ram then you will need a 64bit OS

yeah i do mate

If you're looking to spend around £300 notes then I would get new motherboard, core i-3, 4gb of fast DDR3 memory and a new graphics card. I've priced up a great package on overclockers.co.uk and if you know a geek or want to learn about overclocking (it's not too hard) it'd be even quicker still. See the attached pic.

The only real cheap option you have is to go for a better motherboard and processor but older models to allow you to use the DDR2 memory you have. It will be quicker than your current setup by far, but you wouldn't be able to play any decent games. That will cost about £90-100 add in graphics card for another £100 to total £200. Or go second hand and trawl some stuff on ebay. I've managed to get my laptop to last 7 years through upgrading a mix of new and second hand parts. It's still decently quick running Windows XP.

Cheers si
The package looks good, will have a look at over clocking too

It's piss easy. Buy a better fan, play around with the processor settings in the bios and test for stability. Repeat that until system becomes unstable and step the settings back a notch or two. It's easy, just need patience and enough time. Then you can do the same for the memory.

Apparently that motherboard and processor combo should overclock real nice, will probably get 4ghz out of the processor no problem. You can always get it up and running then decide if you'd like to overclock at a later date.

If you're not going to be running games (aside from football manager) you can probably get away without the graphics card for now and buy it another time. Core-i3 & that motherboard has integrated graphics (or use your current card). Photo editing is cpu & memory intensive.

The new core i5/i7 socket 1155 is a fantastic chip/system that does auto overclocking and worth the extra if you can afford it.

I have built 2 systems with the G6950 chip and personally wouldnt recommend it, yes it overclocks well but its not a very quick chip while running applications, you would be better off spending a little more (£10 ish) and get the core i3 540 chip that runs at 3.06ghz out of the box and with massive overclock potential too.

If I was spending £300 on a new mobo, memory and chip though I would go for the socket 1155 over the 1156, that is unless you could stretch to a core i7 but thats most of the budget gone on the chip alone!

What type is the motherboard socket you have now? 775?

The £300 includes a graphics card as well

oops an error occured!

What I tried to post in the last post was....

I would go for the 1155 processor as it is vastly better than anything at the moment (even with the slight problem which is being ironed out as we speak)

But get generic memory (just as good for a cheap system and for a few quid less) and a less good graphics card as its cheaper to upgrade those later for cheap.

And priced this up at £303.

[url width=800 height=539]http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g171/jjedmunds/Untitled-1.jpg[/url]

Fair enough, I'm only going by what I've read etc. I don't know much about the Sandy Bridge chipset other than the problem in Dave posted in the other thread :)

They are brilliant chips Si, if the slight problem is ironed out.

They are very very quick and fantastic at multitasking, so much so I was going to sell my I7 and get one of the 1155 i5 chips as a replacement, that was until I saw they can't run PCI-E 16x + 16x they run at 16x + 4x, which is a shame.

[url width=494 height=285]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v728/sussex_red/pc_mac.jpg[/url]

I am surprised you didn't put this.......

[url width=468 height=351]http://cdn.wn.com/pd/c7/8f/32956d78616355463a205cdf9288_grande.jpg[/url]

:D