PC guts upgrade...
 

Well, kind of spontanious but i was thinking of Upgrading my Mobo CPU and RAM on limited budget of about £300, but its really £200 as I am counting on selling on my old Guts on Ebay for about £100ish

Here is what I have currently

Antec 600w PSU.
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
4 GB Corsair DDR2 (800) 4 x 1 GB
Asus P5Q PRO (socket 775)
XFX Geforce GTX 275

Drives and case are pretty irrelevent so I wont go there, but I have 4 HDDS, all SATA II.

I been reading and price checking a bit the last few days and I was thinking to aim for a lower end Intel i5 Ivy bridge maybe a 3450S or 3470T or 3330 (all same price but i dont know the difference between them :P)

Mobo, would be at similar price as above CPU, I like Asus alot so would want to go with them. Obviously I need socket 1155 and im thinking to go with the Z77 or Z68 chipset.
In addition I would like DDR3 support, at least 6x Sata II/III ports (MUST have RAID!), 3x USB 2 headers for my case, USB 3 is nice but its not a big deal :)

For Ram I will get a cheapish branded 16GB 1600mhz kit, (4x 4GB)

I will stick with my old PSU and Gfx card for now, I will upgrade graphics at a later date. Gaming isnt by biggest priority at the moment, but 3d Modling applications is, here - The GPU only really helps out with viewport performance, something that my 4 year old GTX 257 can handle just fine, but my CPU and RAM is letting me down - especially when it comes to Rendering and multi tasking apps.

Any suggestions/ advice?
Just please dont tell me to get an i7 chip, I know they are great but I cannot afford one right now, end of story.
Ive looked at AMDs range, but I cant see anything that matched the i5s price/performance ratio.

Ta.

So I converted the pounds roughly to around 450$ usd.

Why don't you try these three:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16819117286
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16820220619
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...=P8H77-M%20PRO


The motherboard is known to work with the CPU.

Xeons had crossed my mind, Maybe that ^ Xeon is bit out of my budget (checked its price on UK supplier sites)
I could go for an E3-1220 maybe, I need some benchmarks to compare Low end Xeon performance against low end i5s, I have little doubt as to which one will come out on top, its a question of by how much....

Well check out the Xeon e3 v2 (the v1 is sandy bridge, the v2 is ivy bridge).

I would highly recommend using a Xeon, whether its performance per ghz, or performance per watt, Xeon e3 usually crushes the i5 (hell, often even the i7)

Now for motherboards, if you decide to go with a Xeon, most motherboards that work with i5s work with Xeon e3s, however, I would recommend Asrock, since most of their motherboards are tested to work with Xeon e3, and Xeons are officially supported.

You've given me some valuble food for thought there, at first I thought you were suugesting something a bit dodgy re the Xeon & board combo, (as I mentioned in the other thread) But what you actually have is a very clever little desktop solution, much appreiciated :)
Never had an ASrock board, always used Asus as they have never let me down, where as MSI and Gigabyte have, but deep down I know that is just down to chance.

On the other hand- while it pretty dear I found this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...x16)-dvi-i-atx
It suits all my needs -apart form being very stingy with USB headers :D

:up:

I dont know, the Xeon route, looks a bit problematic where boards are concerned, still looking though.

Well Xeons are supported by most boards, at most you might need a bios flash (that might be kind of hard though)

like this asus: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Int...Z77M_PRO/#CPUS

or this MSI: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z77A-G...div=CPUSupport

Xeon support is not really hard to find, since a Xeon is simply a "better" i5 or i7, the basic design is the same

AMD Phenom II X6 Six-Core Processor,have good performance, using it occasionally as a supplement to my Intel-based computer.

But even on them Asus specs, there is a warning that some of the boards features may not work correctly with Xeon, I might have to flash the BIOS and yadda yadda,
I dont know if that true or if its just propaganda to encouage Xeonofiles to purchase more expensive boards.
Either way, you said you self that it requires a bit of work and it certainly needs more research, For Simplicity sake I just want something that will work out of the box, so think Ill stick with i5 on this occassion, I can always overclock it a bit too.... but i will be mindful of the Xeon solution in future.

It aint bad, but for £20 more the i5 gives quite a bit more performance, plus a 1155 socket mobo gives me the possibity to upgrade ot an i7 or Xeon later on.
On a socket AM3, there is no where else you can go as the phenom II is already top of the ladder.
AMD nailed Intel good and proper with the Athlon 64 back in 2005/2006, but since then, they seem to have been struggling a fair bit.

I made earlier comparisons between them both (Intel and AMD Quad-Core Processor), and the difference is mainly due to what to use it with, it's just game it's "relatively equal" but I agree that the i7 is good.

I must hesitate to recommend AMD now. Even if the FX can provide good performance, the power usage is almost 2 times what an i5 would use.

With an i5, remember to get the 3***, not the 2***, the 3 series is ivy bridge, and provides better performance