Switching over

[michaelkahl]

So it's been about 3 years since I last did a major upgrade to my rig, and I'm stick in a tough situation. I want to upgrade my pc, but don't want to spend alot. I play some WoW and mainly need the power for my photo editing. I am big into photography and recently picked up a Nikon D200, whose files are significantly larger than my old D70 files. As I'm downloading these images and editing them it's taking a while, and I think the days of my a64 3200 are almost done.
I was considering an E6600 with an inexpensive $100 board, as well as 2gb of ram and something along the lines of a 7600GT to power this rig...what do you think? Any suggestions, I really would rather go with a C2D instead of AMD this time, so I'm not trying to start any trolling.
I'm trying to keep this upgrade as below $500 as I can while still getting a good solid core computing system for my photo editing.
For HDD's I'm running 2x WD Raptors in Raid 0 (these are the old 74gb ones) and don't plan on upgrading them for a while. So mainly I'm looking at CPU, Mobo, Vid Card and RAM.
Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated...thanks.

[hUMANbEATbOX]

are you going to be overclocking at all? if so, i would say a e4300 ($115), 2gb ram ($100) and a decent mobo ($100) should do you. if you need, throw in a decent psu ($~80) and a video card ($100) and there is your $500.

it would be a huge upgrade from what you have, especially for photo editing. you should be able to get a e4300 from stock (1.8ghz) to about 2.8-3ghz with the stock cooler.

[knight_of_knee]

Well I just built a rig for my friend with a C2D E6320, which has the 4m cache like the E6600 but it's a bit cheaper at 168.00. I also got him a Gigabyte DS3 motherboard and it was only 99.00. For the ram I got him a set of 2 x 1GB G.Skill DDR2 800MHz, for only 95.99. And the 7600GT sounds like it would do fine for what you need and that would put you under 500 dollars for a full upgrade with some good products. You can go with the E6600 if you want, or the E6420, they're both good products. But I just built the a computer with those parts I listed and it runs like a dream. I got all that stuff at newegg.com btw.

[michaelkahl]

I took a look at the items you all mentioned and seems like some worthwhile options. The tough part is talking the wife into it :bang head
We'll figure something out, but I see it being easier for me to upgrade now rather than later...we'll see how it goes.

[michaelkahl]

I put all that (E6420 cpu and other options) in at Newegg, seems like a great deal, $532 after shipping ($8 3 day). I checked also with a local store, and they are willing to do a trade in and I could get a Gigabyte board w/ onboard video...crappy but would work for now...and 1gb ram for $370 with the E6600. But we'll see as I continue to check options.

[hUMANbEATbOX]

you haven't answered, are you going to be overclocking?

with a e6420 and e6600, you won't have room in the budget for a psu, and you will want a strong psu. it doesn't have to be top of the line however.

for a sub $500 computer, i think the e6420 and up are too expensive, and won't justify the extra cost of the system, especially if oc goals are conservative like 3ghz. the e4300 will do 3ghz very easily, so then its just a question of 2mb vs 4mb. is the extra $90-120 worth 2mb extra? not IMO, not in a budget rig.

[michaelkahl]

Honestly I'm not planning on OC'n this rig. Simply because my work is getting more and more serious and system stablility is more valuable to me than more speed. Even if I don't overclock I think these cpu's will be a big upgrade compared to what I'm using.
I'm currently running an Antec 550w psu

[hUMANbEATbOX]

ok, if you aren't overclocking, then i would try to expand the budget just a little bit, and get the e6600. but really, even a e6420 will do 3ghz on stock volts and be very stable.