I just bought the parts for my latest system refresh. I'm upgrading from an Athlon 64 X2 (socket 939, AMD can bite me) with an AGP 6800GT. The computer is still fast enough, but it's started to become unstable and I suspect that the drive controller is failing since when it crashes, it tends to not see the hard drive on reboot. I've gotten it up and running by re-seating all cables and removing the side of the case to ensure it runs cool, but I'm sick of babying it along so it's time to upgrade.
The parts I just bought are:
Asus P5Q Pro
Intel E8400 (buying this mobo and cpu at newegg on a combo deal, saved me $30).
Nvidia 260GTX vid card (MSI, $199 after all rebates)
2x2GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066 ($78ish after all rebates, comes with a 3-fan ram cooler)
I figure it'll be really fast stock, and with the good RAM I got it should overclock pretty nicely if I choose to do so.
Among the other parts I still have are a soundblaster audigy2 ZS, although I have one of those Razer sound cards on the shelf that I might try out. I also have a 500gb SATA HD that will remain in use.
The main thing I still *should* buy is a larger LCD to match the monitor. Right now I'm using dual LCDs but each display is only 1280x1024. That 260GTX should push nearly double the pixels at higher framerates, with better image quality. With a 1280x1024 monitor, I'll pretty much be pegged at 60hz with all the eye candy and antialiasing turned on...
Total cost before mail in rebates including shipping is about $630. There are $95 in rebates though, bringing this refresh down to about $535ish.
And yes, I could have waited a month and gotten the new Intel i7 and all that, but then I'd be buying DDR3 and the early mobos would cost around $300, so the cost would have just about doubled. This ought to work just fine and if I run out of cpu power in the next year or so, I can pick up a quad core cpu when the prices drop as the i7 cpus become mainstream.
Oh yea, I'm running winXP but got 4GB of ram anyhow since I sometimes use linux and hate running out of ram. DDR2 is so cheap, I almost bought 8GB of DDR2 800 instead of 4GB of DDR2 1066 (pretty much the same price) but I figured that would be overkill. I can always add more memory later but I expect 4GB to be enough for another couple of years.
