Advise on rig upgrading?

[Gunhead]

Been thinking of regutting my old war horse and these are the main parts i've been eyeing:

Gfx: Asus EN7900GT TOP, 256M, PCI-E
MoBo: EPoX 9NPAJ SLI (http://www.epox.nl/products/view.php?product_id=378)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+

I'm not interested in shoveling piles of money into my gaming rig, so basically i'm looking for a good price-quality setup that'll give enough performance for a while to come.

How you lads reckon those look?
What'd be sufficient power supply to run a system based on those?
Can anyone recommend a good webstore with sales across EU region?


ta in advance.

[James24]

Looks great, the 7900gts are great overclockers.

for powersupply, since you bought a sli motherboard i'd go for a decent 500W psu (seasonic s12 500 springs to mind but i don't know much about PSUs)

HOVIS!!!

[Gunhead]

Cheers James.

Hmm... Then i'm better upping my power supply too, got a 430W atm.
Prolly go for Antec Neo HE 500 (http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=05506), i've come to appreciate Antec's stuff.

[Hovis]

The Bread says it's good. Depends on what you're paying for the graphics card though. Shop around for the thing and remember cheaper is better because they're basically all the same. Pre-overclocked is the biggest ripoff of the last couple of years, specially on current model graphics cards, because it doesn't matter what they've pre-overclocked it to, they all have the same top speed and coolbits costs nothing to download.

Power supply wise I think an Antec could be what you need. 500W should do you all right and be pretty well future proof too.

Bread's top tips are:

1. Get the cheapest 7900GT that you can, then buy a £25 Arctic Cooler for it (they use the same one as the 6800GT used it). This'll get you more speed and make the thing effectively silent. It's better value getting that cooler on a cheap 7900 and overclocking it yourself rather than getting a pre-overclocked 7900. If you can't overclock a graphics card ask us how, cos it's dead easy and well worth it.

2. Try to get your hands on an X-Fi sound card too. They take sound control away from the CPU, giving you more free runtime, and the sound quality is much better. Also they're normally good for a few years. I'd say go for the middle of the range one, the top end ones are pointless. I bet the bottom of the range card is fine too, but I would hate to recommend it and find out later it sucks.