OT - PC upgrades and micro SD cards
mcerd1 - 26/1/09 at 11:03 AM
easy question first - does anyone know any cheaper source of these
microSD 16Gb
I've been thinking its time to upgrade my PC a bit...... (most of it is 3 years old now)
at the moment its a 3.0 P4 (630)
on an asus MB (P5ND2-sli deluxe)
with 2Gb of memory (533Mhz DDR2 4x512Mb)
and a pair of GF6800 graphics cards (asus 6800 ultra 256Mb PCI-E, sli running at 8x each )
and a old PCI version of a SB X-Fi sound card
and I'm running XP pro on it
I was thinking about upgrading to a core 2 quad, but now these core i7's have appeared and I'm wondering if its worth waiting a little while
for these to get a bit cheaper ?
and most of the motherboards I'd like for either option are far too expensive (£200 - 300) 
as you can tell I'm after quite a high spec machine for games, CAD (work) and music etc, but it also needs to last a while (about another 3 years
with minor upgrades along the way) and I'll build it myself
so does anyone have any thoughts / recommendations ?
BenB - 26/1/09 at 11:10 AM
£38 on Ebay delivered...
Cheaper ones available if you're not choosy re Sandisk.... (£26 IIRC)...
UncleFista - 26/1/09 at 11:24 AM
quote:
Originally posted by mcerd1
I'll build it myself
so does anyone have any thoughts / recommendations ?
Yeah, don't bother 
I always built my own, since 486 days.
This time the missus convinced me to buy a Dell.
It's a revelation, almost silent[1], good looking, stable, fast etc.
All for less than I'd have paid for parts with Vista[2] thrown in.
I'd never build another for myself.
Have a look at HotUKdeals site for offers
[1] A big plus for me, I'm sick of humming beige boxes..
[2] Vista is great, as long as it's used on decent machines, it stumbles on older/crapper machines.
mcerd1 - 26/1/09 at 12:02 PM
quote:
Originally posted by UncleFista
Yeah, don't bother
I always built my own, since 486 days.
This time the missus convinced me to buy a Dell.
it needs to be XP pro (work stuff) and I still hate vista 
I'd keep the case I've got for now (cheap big black server tower) its not to noisy given whats inside it - and most of the noisy bits will
need replaced (inc my very nice hiper PSU )
when I built the last incarnation of this machine (its on its 3rd life at the moment) I priced a dell of as close a spec as I could - it came to
nearly twice the money 
and still didn't have some things I've got with this one, and would have been harder to upgrade too
I'll look again though
[Edited on 26/1/09 by mcerd1]
mcerd1 - 26/1/09 at 12:37 PM
I've just had a look to see what's on offer - the dell branded ones are a bit lacking in graphics and options compaired to the alienware
branded ones, but at least they all seem to use decent bits (ie the same/similar asus bits as I've been looking at)
one of the alienware ones is basicaly just a slightly updated version of what I've got - but the newer MB supports the core 2 duo/quads and mine
is just too old for that (otherwise I'd keep it)
but the prices are still a bit on the high side for me
if I was looking at a core 2 quad of the same spec (ie without an OTT motherboard) then I recon I could get the parts I need for just over half of
that
stevebubs - 26/1/09 at 12:48 PM
take a look at novatech for motherboard/CPU/memory bundles
and Aria.co.uk for microSD
SteveWalker - 26/1/09 at 02:16 PM
Assuming nothing has changed recently, I think Dell design their own motherboards and PSUs - ie: they are not upgradeable except by buying from Dell
and their "spares" prices are horrendous.