Thread: How to Upgrade Computer ?

I bought my computer 3 years ago, I hand picked each component, ive been pretty happy with it but its starting to show its age now and I basically just want it to be faster, I do A LOT of multitasking, work in photoshop mostly and play games too (Battlefield2142, DarkFall).

I would like to do the best upgrades I can but not sure if buying a new cpu is worth it, i could overclock mine...

Here are my main specs :

Motherboard : ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 ( 2.13Ghz )
Ram : Kingston KVR667D2N5k2 2x1g DDR2 PC667/PC5300
Graphic Card : NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT (note : this was purchased 1.5 year ago, so not looking to upgrade this )
Hard Drives :
1 x WesterDigital WD2500JS ATA 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb
1 x WesterDigital WD2500KS ATA 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb
Power Supply : Antec Smart Power 2.0 SP500 ATX P4 500W 20/24Pin
Case : Antec NSK6500 Mid Tour
OS : Vista 32bit, but planning on upgrading to Windows 7 asap.

What would be the components to upgrade and with what should i replace them?

1. It depends on the upgrade, but it probably is powerful enough. What do you actually want to upgrade? Motherboard, CPU and memory?

2. Get new DDR2 800 MHz memory modules and sell the old modules. Running 800 MHz modules at 667 MHz would work, but unless you really need 6 GB, don't do it.

3. Get good modules if you don't like crashes. If you keep that P5W DH motherboard, bear in mind that it's a bit picky. You should look for 800 MHz modules having tight timings and needing only 1.8V, e.g., G.Skill PI Black that runs very well on that motherboard.

4. Again it all depends on what components you replace.

5. If not losing data is important, then don't use RAID 0. A faster hard disk like the WD6401AALS isn't expensive and it's faster than your current hard disks.