I have a OEM Gateway FX530S, with some upgrades already in. Current specs: Upgraded PSU: Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Power Supplies OEM CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 2394 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) OEM Mobo: Intel (Big Arm) 975X Viiv Motherboard LARGER VIEW OEM HDD: WD Caviar Blue SATA Hard Drives 500 GB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM Upgraded RAM: 8.00 GB (2gb x 4) PC2 - 5300 (667MHz) OEM GPU: GeForce 8800 GTX OEM Soundcard: Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express Standard C-D/D-V-D-RW Drive, don't care about that though. ==================================================== Upgradezor! Now I want to keep my case (see first link). I want to keep my 8800GTX, but I want to put a better cooling system on it, so I can overclock it better. Any ideas? I want to keep my memory, love it, but I want to overclock it to 800MHz (PC-6400) but my current mobo only supports 667MHz max (I think) :dry: I want to add (maybe replace and sell the old HD) with Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive Want to upgrade from current soundcard to PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series Here's the biggy! I want to put in a mobo in with unlocked BIOS, and keep my CPU and overclock it to 3.0GHz each. Not sure what mobo's (I hope some) are compatiable with my case/cpu/gpu/RAM/HDD. I want to move my CPU from OEM mobo to new mobo, i hope thats possible, the cpu has a giant metal heatsink currently. Please be advised: This getting most I can out of upgrades with little money. This not a "lets get best everything, or whole new system". I actually like my current specs fairly good..buts getting lame as time progresses even more... I know this a lot of info, just read it all and give your best help. Really appreciate it.
OK, here you go... OK. Are you gaming? If so, the 8800GTX is extremely low-end and you'll do well to replace it. If not, don't bother overclocking it. It will never be a good gaming card; see here: Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Yeah, that's the limitation of the northbridge. You can't really do anything about that short of building a new rig from scratch. In that case, you might as well go for an i7 and forget about DDR2 altogether. You'd be much better off with this guy here: Newegg.com - Seagate Pipeline HD ST31000322CS 1TB 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Retail If you're gaming, upgrading the video card would be a much better investment than upgrading the sound card. If you are determined to throw lots of money at it though, you might notice a difference if you have a really nice speaker setup (e.g. not Logitech ). I really wouldn't bother. If you want to go this far, you're basically building a new rig around a mediocre CPU. And when you're done, you'll have one somewhat new system and a mound of worthless spare parts. My honest advice based on my experience is to just start from scratch if you want to put that much money into upgrades. Then you'll have two working systems instead of one plus a bunch of waste. Even if you wanted to sell the old one, you'd get a lot more for a fully-functional PC than a bunch of obsolete parts, right? It is, but I wouldn't. See above. If you take my advice, you'll upgrade the video card and maybe the HDD, leaving pretty much everything else the way it is. A GTX 260 (core 216) would be a very good investment for not much cash, and it will run rings around your old card. No problemo.
