System Upgade
Right now, Cody and I are saving as much money as we can to pay for the wedding next August. As such, expenses that might otherwise be quite affordable undergo ruthless examination and are, more often than not, deferred or dispensed with.
On the other hand, my system is over three years old and is showing its age. Case in point: it can’t even run The Sims 3.
More details after the jump.
To that end, Cody and I have been entertaining the idea of a system upgrade. A full-out, balls-to-the-wall upgrade is out of the question, but an internals-only upgrade that retains the current optical and magnetic drives, the case, the monitors, and so forth is not beyond the realm of feasibility.
Based on some advice from knowledgeable sources, the core components of this system will be an Intel Core 2 Quad 9550 CPU, a GeForce 260 GPU, and 4 GB of RAM. After digging around on New Egg for well-reviewed products that would fit with these criteria, that also sported discounts and such, I came up with the following set of hardware.
- Motherboard: ASUS P5N-D
- Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower W0178RU
- CPU: Intel Core2 Quad 9550
- GPU: EVGA GeForce 260 GTX (896 MB)
- RAM: G.SKILL DDR2 800 (2×2GB)
All told, this system would run about $700 after accounting for all the rebates. I’m not going to make any decisions about it in the immediate future. I have no super pressing need for an upgrade right now, but one is definitely warranted in the very near future.
Not a bad idea Ryan.
I’ve been using that exact motherboard in my rig since my last major system building (about a year now) and have not had any problems with it.