About 2007 I bought a Medion PC from Tesco - http://www.trustedreviews.com/pcs/review/2007/08/13/Medion-6486-PC/p1

Now opinions / jokes / comments aside - its been absolutely great and is still going strong.

Specs are:

2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 processor
Windows 7 Pro x64
8GB DDR RAM (had to flash the bios to do this lol!)
1500GB hard drive
Nvidia 8800GS

To be honest - its pretty nippy and I probably don't need to upgrade it but I've got the urge! I did look at a new PC (I'd like a 27" iMac but the bank manager disagrees...) so instead was looking at my best options for upgrading it. I think the best CPU I can put in it is Q9650 as its LGA775 1333 max but they're over £200 so by the time I've done that and put a new gfx card in its quite a lot of wonga. Is that worthwhile or am I better starting again?

Or should I just not bother lol!!

Either don't bother for now, buy my pc bits when i put them up for sale soon, or start fresh and go the Sandybridge route:

Intel i5 2500K
Asus P8P67 (The base model will do, seems to have the same OC Features)
Titan Fenrir, Thermaltake Frio, Akasa Venom etc Cooler
Videocard of choice: GTX460, 58xx, 68xx, 69xx, bang for buck is the 460 atm i believe, if you don't play a lot of games go for a 4850/4870 for DX10 support, 5770 for DX11 or something even cheaper still.

What Bacon said, i5-2500k, new motherboard, new GFX, eBay the old bits 

Oh, consider an SSD too.

Would also say go for the new i5 route with a 460

Hmm SSD is a great shout actually and a new GFX card is a must. How much benefit is the i5 over the quad then? The Q9650 seems very good in all the benchmarks

Quote from: Rivkid on January 13, 2011, 15:20:19 PM
Hmm SSD is a great shout actually and a new GFX card is a must. How much benefit is the i5 over the quad then? The Q9650 seems very good in all the benchmarks

Well I wouldn't even contemplate the tough demanding stuff without 4 cores at 4Ghz minimum, you know like Facebook, Minecraft, Email, Farmville especially if you want to run them with other stuff like MSN, notepad, calculator etc.


In seriousness it depends what you're doing I guess, me I'd go for the 'in for a penny in for a pound' approach

Quote from: Rivkid on January 13, 2011, 15:20:19 PM
Hmm SSD is a great shout actually and a new GFX card is a must. How much benefit is the i5 over the quad then? The Q9650 seems very good in all the benchmarks

Reports are generally up 15-30% just on architecture improvements I think. Don't be a fool, go bleeding edge!

Agree with Matt, I mean will you really notice the huge different compared to if you just stick a shiny new GFX card in your current pc? yes maybe but not by a huge amount but if your doing it you might as well do it properly

And the 15% that Nige just said is the improvement over the old i5's nevermind the older chips

Quote from: matt5cott on January 13, 2011, 15:25:42 PM

Well I wouldn't even contemplate the tough demanding stuff without 4 cores at 4Ghz minimum, you know like Facebook, Minecraft, Email, Farmville especially if you want to run them with other stuff like MSN, notepad, calculator etc.


In seriousness it depends what you're doing I guess, me I'd go for the 'in for a penny in for a pound' approach

It gets some hammer - Adobe Premiere, loads of Pro Tools work, photoshop etc... I've got a 360 and a PS3 for gaming but I do miss certain things about playing games on the PC. Theres certain things that just don't feel right on console - RTS for a start!

If money wasn't an issue I'd have no issues going full bore but sadly I've got lots of bills and not so much income!

Rivkid squirrel it to one side until you can afford it, the prices will drop anyway and the two will meet in the middle

I think you're right Matt - I'd need to replace the RAM as well as I've got 8GB of DDR2 in my PC....

Might just leave it awhile and save up for a full new build

Ah yes forgot what you do with your machine. In that case you will notice the difference going from the dual core older chip to the 4core shiny chip. Just delay and save until you can go full wack

Quote from: Rivkid on January 13, 2011, 15:38:58 PM
Might just leave it awhile and save up for a full new build

Best idea to be fair.  Sandy Bridge is here, and Bulldozer is very nearly here as well.  You'll not see Good Prices until both are on the market and easily available.  I was considering an upgrade as well, but figured there is zero point in upgrading at the moment, and in my case if i'm lucky and Gigabyte release a BIOS I should be able to drop a Bulldozer in to my board anyway. 

Quote from: Rivkid on January 13, 2011, 14:42:51 PM
(I'd like a 27" iMac but the bank manager disagrees...)

hackintosh

Quote from: Eggtastico on January 13, 2011, 16:31:58 PM

Quote from: Rivkid on January 13, 2011, 14:42:51 PM
(I'd like a 27" iMac but the bank manager disagrees...)

hackintosh

Yeah I've done a couple actually - not bad to be fair but I got frustrated trying to keep them updated without bricking them. Not to mention getting all the drivers working...