Well, like my dad always used to say, spend half save half. Now that my car i had at uni has been sold, i've decided to spend £350 on something, probably some computer bits or a nicer double bed !! Heres what i am thinking... Power supply - Currently i have a 350W or so, and i calculated i actually need more like a 420W-520W. So to me this looks good: £57 Seeing as i use the PC for a lot of movies at the moment, i am seriously considering water cooling for aesthetics and silence. £175 Case is quite pretty as is, especially with the reserator. But how about a side panel and green light? £27 £12 Its either all of the above, or a new graphics card and power supply! I really havent played games for ages, and the way things are going at the moment its going to be better to wait until the 6800 and x800's have all come out and start to really drive down the 9800's before i think about upgradeing. Even then its going to be a decision whether to go with PCI-express and do the mobo & chip then a new gfx card. What do you guys think... Aesthetics or speed?
You could get a 6800gt to replace your ageing GF3. That would be a nice upgrade, and as they are about £350 you would have £50 left towards a PSU. The only thing is that your CPU may bottleneck it a bit. But as its a 2500+ u may well be able to oc it to 3200+ speeds.
those fanless radiators arent worth it in my opinion. you cant fully silence a high end PC. and a single fan on a radiator wont kill you. and like mike said, you can OC your cpu, my brother just got one and OCed it "not all at once" but increased its fps over a time line of about 24 hours to 3200+
I've done my research on those fanless watercooling units, sure they arent the best, but for better performance i am looking at an extra £100 to either make my own kit up, or getting a higher performance kit. Adding a fan onto the outside of the reserator isnt such an issue, nor is adding a more powerful pump. Just keep the pipe length short and you can get really decent silent operation. I have 6 80mm fans in my rig at the mo (not including the PSU), i just want to get rid of all of them so i can watch movies and play games in peace! Good point with the 6800, beleive me i was almost hitting the buy button several times this morning. Its just the cost for one card which i will want to last a few years, with the advent of pci-express set to take over agp i dont want to get a new card then have to go out of my way to get older technology when i want to do a mobo upgrade. The 2500+ is already clocked in at 3000+, any higher and the PSU craps out or the fans get too loud.
6 fans is alot, you dont really need that many unless its really really hot there.. 2-4 fans is plenty for a case "in my opinion" your going to need a new video card soon anyways. its a 6800/x800 for a couple more years, or a gf3.. water cooling and a new case wont improve your game perfomance. and some simple foam "no need for the expensive stuff" around your case should help with some of the noise, as well as some feet for the bottom, which a couple small squares of carpet or 20 folds of toilet paper would work for alot of the vibration noise, and foam on the outside panels of the case "or even on the inside" should help with the noise too also water cooling isnt always that silent, expecially the high flow pumps, like 450+gph pumps are still about 30-35db "but you can put them outside the case in an insulated box, they normally dont very hot though some do"
Very true. Main reasons for the 6 fans is because of the 3 HDDs and the overclock on the cpu. The power supply only has the one fan and adds a fair amount of heat into the case, so there are 2 extract, 3 input and the 80mm on the HS. The fan controller keeps the noise down a little but its a real hum !! Not really looking for game performance just now, havent played a game for more than 1hr since last year, so the priority at the moment is not so much on the gfx card. If i was to get a new gfx card, (even though the x800 or 6800gt would be superb) i would be a bit more sensible and get a 9800pro for £180 rather than spend £300 on a single card that would only last an extra year and probably wont get used as it deserves to be !! Good point with the pump. Zalman have used a relativly low powered pump which keeps the noise down quite a lot. Hence "silent" being plastered all over it !! Will think about it over the weekend. Knowing the gf, she will try and get me to buy the bed i looked at this week. Its £315 so there goes the pc !!
You say you don't game much, so I'd say get a new graphics card now, such as a 9800Pro. It'd last you a while because it sounds like you aren't too demanding! It also sounds like you wouldn't use the full potential of summit like a 6800. Then the rest of the money, put towards a decent PSU to make sure the new card run without a hitch etc. (Tagan 480W IMO.) BTW, 9800Pro for £180? You been looking in PC World? Or do you not shop online?
haha.. nah i was looking online. Was looking at the high(ish) end of the 9800's not the ghay 128bit versions.
