To upgrade or not to upgrade that is the question
 

Or maybe it isn't...

Either way, the situation is this: I've got a 2.53Ghz P4b, 1Gb of PQI PC3200 and a Leadtek 6800GT. However, the 875P mobo is slowly giving up the ghost. I could try to get my hands on a decent full ATX P4 board (got lots of PCI stuff that needs room), but those are rather costly for their gen & are only to be found second hand.

At the same time, my mother's pc seems to be having some weird problems (and i found a leaking capacitor that's a herald for misery to come), so she'll need a replacement sooner or later. In essence, I could pass on the P4b & mem to her and buy a cheapass mATX mobo with integrated graphics which suits her surfing needs just fine.

What to do, what to do? Money isn't the big issue, but I hate to waste things.

Now, the actual question is threefold:

1) Do I dump the old system and dive into the dual core age? Or do I fix my old rig up and patiently wait? :p

2) Would it be worth it to fix the problem temporarily and wait for afordable dx10 graphic cards instead of getting a new rig now?

3) In my quick search for new components, I've found out I'm actually not that well informed when it comes to motherboards & DDR2 memory.
Another thing I'm wondering about is how good the respective PSU's perform upside down (especially the passive one), since the new case places the PSU at the bottom & not at the top.

Either way here is already a lil' list I made, feel free to comment on the good & the bad. (silent = good, but I want some power too. ;) In essence, I'd like a system I can tune down when idle or downloading stuff, but that I can boost up whenever I'm gaming)

I don't see much reason for giving artificial respiration for such slow CPU. It will be still some time before quad core CPUs are affordably priced so I don't see reason for trying to wait for them. (and in fact it will be some time before all games can use even two cores well)

As for CPU other option would be E6300, it overclocks so well that price difference to E6400 is better used in other parts. (I would keep 4MB L2 E6600 as next step)


For graphic card it's better now to take some affordably priced card and wait to late winter for competition to drive prices of DX10 cards lower...
Also it's seem as quite sure that Ati's R600 has 512bit memory bus so there's good change that G80 based card's won't be looking anymore so fast month from now.
X1950 Pro would be one quite good option for that contingency, unless you use higher than average resolutions when gaming it should give very good performance in most games especially considering ~200€ price.


For PSU I wouldn't suggest passively cooled one because those require great attention to airflow/case cooling, unless you're silence freak good actively cooled PSUs should be quiet enough in all normal use.
For that price you would already get something made by Seasonic.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article699-page1.html
(new Seasonic made PSUs, S12E+, M12 and Corsairs don't have virtual rail mess so so I would prefer them for future proofness against power hungry components like graphic cards)


As you apparently want good cooling with lowest possible noise there's some very questionable things in that case.
First of all badly leaking side panel, now exhaust fans very propably just draw air through sidepanel instead of drawing it through whole case from front and cooling devices in there, also noise leaks out from those holes.
And depth is shortish for top end DX10 cards: (Way to go Antec, good gaming case design!)
http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2006...Hundred/4.html
(and no dust filters)



You might want to check prices also from here:
http://geizhals.at/eu/

i'd rather blame nvidia for thatone tbh... (and you simply need to fix the cage at another place (plenty of room for that)
but i'm not looking to buy a 8800GTX anyway, so i don't foresee a lot of probs.

(the review is a bit overly harsh, but for the price, you'd expect better though. maybe i'll just keep the Chieftec CX i got)

thanks for your other comments btw

What's exact model number of that Chieftec?


IIRC I saw somewhere mention that length of 8800GTX complies to some expansion card length standard.
(What plenty of room? There's too little 5.25" bays and it becomes cramped after installation)

it's a CX-01B-B-W-OP but the one resembling it most is the CX-01B-B-SL @ http://www.chieftec.com/products/Workcolor/CX01.htm or the LCX-01 BD @ http://www.pc-cooling.de/en/CASES/Ch...+Netzteil.html

the cooling is basically the biggest difference, mine is an early version with 2x 80mm exhaust, 2x 92mm intake into the hdd rack from the side.

either way, i'm pretty sure it has long since been discontinued. overall a good case though.

an EATX standard perhaps ;)
possibly some weirdass BTX standard, but either way it's far from being considered 'normal' or 'handy'.

as for the Nine Hundred? are nine 5.25" bays not enough?

the possible configs are
- External 3 x 5.25"; Internal 6 x 3.5" for HDD
- External 6 x 5.25"; Internal 3x 3.5" for HDD
- External 9 x 5.25"

Otherwise that case would be quite good for moderate power consumption components but there will be compartment of warm air on top of the case above PSU so at least don't put optical drives to uppermost bays.
For higher power consumption graphic cards cooler which directly exhausts warm air would be preferable.



2 optical drives is minimum, then card reader/fan control panel, connection panel of sound card... now how much there's space for 2 HD racks required by 4 HDs?
(also I prefer leaving empty bay, or putting short device to either sides of optical drives for keeping them cool)

PS. "A full-size PCI card has a height of 107 mm (4.2 inches) and a depth of 312 mm (12.283 inches)."

after some snooping around, i've come to these 2 possible rigs:
(i might be able to buy a X1900XT that clocks XTX from a friend though and there is some reasonably priced OCZ PC2-6400 4-4-4-15 floating around as well)

another possibility is wait til Q1 2007, for the reasonable DX10's, since i dont feel much for buying a temporary 3dcard (too expensive, so either an X1900XT+ level card, or none at all).

i welcome all comments (including flames ;) )

get a cheapo PCIe card, wait for march and ATI/NVIDIA midrange cards, you'll have a ball then:)

E6400 will pay of more for OCing, higher multi then the E6300.

then which card would you advise? new? second hand? (remember that i do want to game in the meantime ;) )

but basically it feels like throwing away money to me. while i must admit DX10 is gnawing in the back of my mind.

on the other hand i can probably get an X1900XT 512mb that clocks X1900XTX for about 250-270 from a friend.
yeah, that's why i included it into the more overclock-proof rig. (the other has rather crappy mem & such)

if you're not planning on using SLI/CF on that mobo, you can run 2 VGA cards for dual monitor (and more) extravanganza :)

get one second hand for sure:)
I'm selling a 7900GT for €160 ;)