Some of you may have read my posts both here and in the gaming forum and some of you may have not. My situation is as follows:

My desktop PC:
Antec Super Lanboy chassis
Tagan 2Force 480w (ex-CPC elite)
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Socket 939
AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (OCd to 2.2ghz from 1.8 on Freezer 7 Pro)
1 gig DDR Crucial matched pair (PC-3200)
160gig EIDE Caviar system drive
400gig SATAII Samsung Spinpoint
500gig SATAII Samsung Spinpoint
750gig SATAII Samsung Spinpoint
Plextor 712SA SATA burner
Leadtek PCI-E 6600GT (slightly overclocked, not that it matters these days!)
Samsung 206BW display with 17" POS one additionally.

My laptop:
Dell XPS M1710
2gig C2D
2gig RAM
80gig 7200rpm HDD
512mb 5900GTX
17" 1920x1200 display

My laptop is 2.75yrs old and still copes with everything I throw at it. However, it is getting noticeably hotter when watching 720p stuff and gaming. I tend to take my laptop out with me if I need a laptop for gaming or wi-fi, or mobile movie watching. It used to be my main machine and my PC served as storage for all my music, movies and TV. Now that I'm living at home again for the time being, my desktop has become the main machine again. It still acts as storage space, but is perfectly happy ripping CDs, browsing, watching TV, playing records and it copes perfectly well with Ground Control II, Starcraft, UT99 and Tactical Ops. I used to play GRAW on it (which did work on a 1024x768 display, no problem), but I haven't played that in a while.

When I got my laptop, I played Far Cry, CoH, GRAW, Call of Duty and the new(ish) Coh expansion that I can't remember the name of. The 59GTX is still a powerful card, but has always struggled a little with the high res of the laptops display.

Now to the reason for this post......
I'm about to run out of HDD space (again), but have no room in my chassis for more HDDs. I also want to buy ArmAII and I'd like to be able to play CoH with everything turned up to the max on my 20" Samsung. I would also like to give my laptop a break and stop using it for everything, so that it can last as long as possible. Finally, Starcraft II is still in the back of my mind and as I still love the first one, I'll be gutted if I can't play it.

So, do I:
1) Max out my desktop
Another gig of ram, a new graphics card, swap the HDDs around so that a SATA one is my system drive.
Pros - cheap, will play most things on low-medium settings I would've thought and will give day-to-day ops a big boost.
Cons - possibly won't handle the latest and greatest games, doesn't solve my storage crisis, I may not have capacity in my PSU for a mid-end graphics card, or the necessary plugs. Of course, it's also likely to be a stop gap measure in reality.
2) Build another machine from stratch and use my existing desktop as server/media storage/whatever
Pros - ticks every box I want/need but the obvious one.....
Cons - expensive
3) Continue to make do until I absolutely HAVE to do something. If I wait for more news on new graphics cards and CPUs/architecture towards the end of the year, perhaps then would be a better time to buy?
Pros - free, for now
Cons - will become increasing frustrating and difficult pretty quickly

Things to consider:
If I build something, it will run 32bit XP Pro SP3 until I'm happy to spend on 7 of some description, probably not until next year. How will this affect component choice e.g. RAM?
ArmAII seems to like quad core, but after some initial research, it seems that's more complicated/expensive than I first thought. AMD still in with the Phenom II X4? 6700 old hat, but budget? i7?

Would really appreciate peoples thoughts and experiences with this. Bearing in mind I have no money, whatever I do will be very carefully considered. Thanks guys.

EDIT: Just realized that's my old Socket A motherboard!! My current one is the A8N32 Sli Deluxe.

It's not a bad rig that really.

Is the proc 939 or AM2? If its AM2 you can pick up a cheap Pee-nom X3-X4 up now, and it'll make a hell of a difference.

Swap the GPU out for something quicker though. I have a 9600GT in my PC. Only cost me £70 at christmas and it's playing games like Arma 2 on high settings. I'd also put some more RAM in it. 2GB is the minimum today, and [LIFTED] drags along under 1gb RAM.

I wouldn't bother swapping EIDE for SATA system drives. TBH, you won't see much of a difference.

To give you of an idea of what you want, here's the specs from my Arma 2 readme file:

System requirements:
--------------------------------
Minimal PC System Requirements
• Dual Core CPU (Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, Intel Core 2.0 GHz, AMD Athlon 3200+ or faster)
• 1 GB RAM
• GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 7800 / ATI Radeon 1800 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 256 MB VRAM
• Windows XP
• DVD (Dual Layer compatible), 10 GB free HDD space

Recommended PC System Requirements

• Quad Core CPU or fast Dual Core CPU (Intel Core 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or faster)
• 2 GB RAM
• Fast GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT or ATI Radeon 4850 or faster) with Shader Model 3 and 512 or more MB VRAM
• Windows XP or Vista
• DVD (Dual Layer compatible), 10 GB free HDD space


I have a 3.4ghz Pentium D (4mb cache model), 9600GT OC'd to 850/2250/1150, 4GB DDR2, Gigabyte GA8i945PM mobo. 640gb Seagate drive + 2x160gbs in RAID 0 + 1x320gb hdd.

My PC plays Arma fine. Although it is a little dissapointing.

Thanks Bally. My CPU is 939, so an upgrade is out of the question.

I'm not sure if my PSU has the plugs for something better. If it did, I'd probably go 4770 for the cheapness and 40nm of it all.
Whilst that readme would appear to indicate that said card and another gig of RAM would see me through ArmaII, that doesn't solve my storage problem and almost certainly isn't future proof enough to play Starcraft II or anything else coming up.

I dunno though, you've got me thinking.......
Anyone else?

IIRC you can get the 4870 for the same price as the 4770 these days if you look around (I think it came up in a thread)... What about getting a cheap 1tb HDD and transferring some stuff across or whatever?

I think a 4870 would probably stretch my PSU cables wise and power, but worth noting, thanks. On a new build it would make a lot of sense, although I might try to stretch to a 4890 or one of the nVidias in that case.

This article makes interesting reading about the choices on offer at the moment.

Do you think I'm nuts then Ernie? Should I just order up another Samsung and jiggle things around? Thing is, the cooling in my chassis is pushed. I've got two quiet 120mm fans one each end and that's it. With four SATAII drives parked right next to each other behind one of those, I think I might be asking for trouble with a hotter, modern graphics card and another gig of RAM. No?

It just seems to me that once I looked at changed the chassis so I've got more room for HDDs and better cooling, I'm then looking at the PSU as well, at which point it seems like it's time for a new machine. After reading the above article and some research, I think i7 is a little expensive. IF I go new build, I'm considering a quad core Phenom as a possible solution. Consider this:
Q9650+Biostar TPower I45+4gig RAM=£400ish
i7 920 D0+Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R+3gig RAM=£400ish (obviously £50ish more if you want 6gig, which I presume you would)
Phenom II X4 955BE+MSI 790FX-GD70+4gig RAM=£360ish

However, by choosing a less expensive motherboard (easy to do with AM3 and in fact CPC just loved one at £70!), and/or perhaps going for a triple core Black Edition instead of quad, I can drop that price even lower.

Thoughts?

Thoughts in no particular order...

I'd go with the cheapest components that'll future proof you for a few years, which is all you can really plan for IMO, ignoring Crysis

I have to say, if you're going to all this trouble you may as well sort out a big enough case first and foremost if the current one isn't big enough... It'll be easier to install everything and give you a jumping off point for the components. I think

So, the cheapest card that'll give you room to maneuver both in terms of games and physical space inside your case, a power supply that'll cover said card and whatever the cheapest, most effective quad-core is, taking into account the mobo needed. Is it worth looking at the 'average' game's recommended requirements? I spose it all depends what frame rate you wanna be playing at...

If you think you could transfer a couple of HDDs onto a 1Tb I would, especially if you could caddy any extra ones then. Should give you more room in the case too. Might even help with your electricity bill

EDIT - Depends what you want it for, but is i7 good in terms of 'bang for buck'? Can you get the sort of mid to high end results say a gamer would want with older and/or cheaper components (CPU, mobo, RAM)?

Ok, so after routing around Asus' site, I'm reminded how good my motherboard is! In fact, if it supported the latest CPUs and memory, I wouldn't need anything else. I have no desire for SLi or Crossfire and I hate not having PCI slots in case, as PCI-E cards of any sort other than graphics seem thin on the ground. However, there is one snag. I'm at capacity on the SATA front. I have only 4 ports and they're all in use.

I suppose I could transfer the two smaller HDDs' data to a 1tb, but 400 and 500gig drives are still sizeable and they're still quick drives. Seems a shame to waste them, no? Caddys just aren't practical, but I suppose there's the option of NAS. Of course, then you're talking more money.

i7 possibly isn't great bang for buck, as I've shown in my last post. But what is? I don't wanna go C2D because it's not enough of an upgrade and it isn't really future sensible (I won't say proof, coz that's just silly). The core of my PC has lasted me for 4yrs, but to be fair in that time, I've used the laptop. Originally, I had a 3000+ and I purchased the dual core 3800+ for just £40 a couple of years ago as 939 was dying. It was a decent upgrade and has lasted well.

I suppose I'd like to buy something quad core because I expect to move to Windows 7 in the not-too-distant future and more and more apps will want one. I'm not just a gamer, FLAC encoding took a step up with the 38, but my mates AM2+ machine is twice as quick as mine at that. I also watch a lot of HD content and I multitask too. I'm not your typical CPC reader who will just buy a cheap(ish) C2D and then go for a massive overclock to get better clock speeds. I want a little more grunt than that and I don't wanna have to deal with masses of OCing for day to day use. I'll probably have a go, because it's fun for a while, but I'm not extreme by any stretch of the imagination.

After more thought and re-reading of the thread and elsewhere, it seems thus:
I could buy a bigger chassis that does everything I want and has plenty of room for future upgrades. After all, my current chassis has seen two motherboards and 3 CPUs, with countless other things and is probably ready to be retired.
I could then buy a better PSU on the same basis and this would allow for a decent graphics card, as many HDDs as I want and plenty of future potential.
I could replace all of my existing components in this chassis and replace my PSU. I could also then buy another gig of RAM and a new graphics card. I could then see how I get on with ArmAII and with everything else.
I could possibly then wait until Windows 7 when more than 3gig of RAM will be worthwhile and I could retain my chassis, PSU, HDDs, graphics card and optical drive. Just buying motherboard, chip and RAM. Hmmm......

Regarding the drives, is there anything on them that needs to be backed up? It's just something worth considering, and I image mine at the very least...

How much difference would just a new card* and RAM make to games (for instance) at the moment? Or is the CPU the problem in that scenario? You can tell I don't do much PC gaming, can't you?

* PSU probably required there

The drives primarily contain A LOT of TV, movies and music. There's also some work and banking and website stuff and photos, but that's all probably less than 20gig. The rest of it is easily 1.5tb, probably more. So yes, in reality it should all be backed up as it's all important to me. I have Acronis, but haven't imaged the drives as I have nowhere to store the images

A new card and RAM would make a significant difference, but I imagine the CPU would be a bottleneck for the latest stuff. I suppose the only way to know for sure is to try it. And yes, it's obvious you don't play games

Maybe I'll just pack the whole thing in and give up

I'd suggest a console, but I believe you're still looking at patches, long loading times and lengthy installs

Cheap quad (far as I know )

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/new ... tter050809

It's cheap for a reason. Those ones apparently don't overclock well and it's end of life.
For the time being, I've ordered a 1TB F1 and an external dock for one of my existing Samsungs, as well as another gig of RAM for my existing system.
That should keep me going at least until October minimum. By then, I'll know what's happening about Windows 7 and will keep an eye on i5, i7 and AMD in the meantime.

^ Good show