Upgrade HDD and Memory but to what? That is the question!!

[paraffin]

Hello Guys and Gals, I was just wanting some opinions on what to upgrade my HDD and RAM to I have about £150 to spend.

I was looking the following scenarios

1.)
Samsung Spinpoint 2 x 500GB in Raid 0 = 2 x £60
Corsair TwinX XMS2 PC6400 4-4-4-12 = £54

2.)
Raptor 74GB = £85
Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2 Dominator, PC2-8500 (1066) = £84

3.)
Samsung Spinpoint 500GB = £60
Corsair TwinX XMS2 PC6400 4-4-4-12 = £54
Maybe upgrade something else with spare cash?

Here is my system spec at the moment.

System Spec
Asus P5N-E SLI Mobo
E6300 @ 3GHz
Arctic Pro7 Cooler
Kingston PC5300
Seagate 250GB Baracuda 16MB Cache
Hiper 530W Modular PSU
MSI 8800GT 512MB
Coolermaster Centurion 5
NetGear Rangemax PCI Wireless Card

Any advice on which route to take or better components would be excellent.

David

 

[akhilles]

What's the usage of this pc? Gaming? What's the ram & amount?

 

[paraffin]

The main use of the machine is Gaming.

I currently have 2GB of some cheap Kingston 5300 ram.

I want to stay at 2GB so all the RAM specified are 2 x 1GB modules.

Sorry if I wasnt very clear.

 

[exarrkun]

if you aren't overclocking, the RAM upgrade isn't worth the money
it will give you a 5% performance increase at the best

about the HDD's... it depends on your storage needs
do you need 1TB?
and the raptors are a bit faster but IMO a stupid buy at the moment with the SSD's getting more popular


if I were you i would buy nothing and save the money to buy an eight core, 9800gtx or whatever in the future
If you really need more storage i would buy a Seagate 500gig HDD. they are a bit more expensive but they come with a five year warranty.

your system is still to good to upgrade IMO

 

[nhobo]

If you are out of space or want a nice speed upgrade, get another 250GB drive and run JBOD. Raptors are about the least bang for the buck available. More RAM will provide only marginal improvement for multitasking and large file management like Photoshop. You've got a pretty nice system as is, why throw more money at it?

 

[paraffin]

OK so what do I spend my £150 on, its Xmas money any suggestions, could be anything?

 

[exarrkun]

personally? here's my list

1)girlfriend
2)new gsm
3)second 22' screen
4)lots of redbull (i'm a student and have exams in january)
5)new room decoration
.
.
.
10)save it!!!!!


of course that's my opinion

 

[paraffin]

I might just get another 250GB Baracuda in Raid0 as I need a bit more space and performance and then put the rest towards a holiday!

Thanks for the Help..

 

[geofelt]

If you need hard drive space, then get another one. Don't bother with raid-0, there is virtually no performance gain for games or typical applications.

Faster ram will buy you almost no more speed. More ram can be helpful, and at current prices it can't hurt. Just match what you already have.

The raptor is nice, and a bit faster, but that much.

A second monitor of any type is the best suggestion in my opinion. I find it incredibly useful.

 

[akhilles]

No apologies necessary. Just wanted to know what you were upgrading for.

I know you're overclocking at least the cpu. If you overclock the ram, you will get a bit of performance boost. You can also overclock the gpu. If I were to upgrade the same pc for gaming, I would invest in a quad core cpu since the pc pretty much ran out of upgrades. Then I'd overclock the q6600 to 3ghz.

 

[paraffin]

I do do quite a bit of video conversion from avi to DVD as weel as gaming would raid0 help in that scenario?

What would raid0 help with except boot times?

I want a Q6600 G0 but not sure if I really need that yet.

 

[geofelt]

Raid-0 might help for video conversion, but if you put the input on one drive, and the output on another drive, I think you would do much better. For a good tutorial on raid and hard drive performance, go to www.storagereview.com.

I doubt that you will notice any difference in boot times with raid-0 vs two single drives.

 

[Newf]

Seems to me that an E6300 @ 3GHz is OC'd pretty well.
Not much room to improve without serious $ for Quad core.
I second the girlfriend payout plan.
Otherwise, monitor improvement, a G5/G9 mouse, or a 2nd hard drive as mentioned above.

 

[paraffin]

I already have a decent monitor the 226BW so basiclly what you guys are saying is that I dont really need to upgrade for a while until at least SSD's become a bit more affordable!