Well, due to the wonders of the student lifestyle (read: a complete lack of disposable income), it's been a long while since I've upgraded my PC. I've been looking around to try and upgrade for, ideally, under £500.

Due to my current specs being somewhat abysmal (due to their age), I'm looking for: processor, mobo, RAM, sound card, GFX card and maybe a new SATA drive to pair with my existing two regular ATAs.

I've been looking around, and here's the sort of thing I've come up with. I already have a top-line Antec 400W power supply (may be 450W, I forget, and I'm nowhere near home right now) - so if I can do without replacing that, that'll be good, if not, I'll grab another Antec or Enermax.

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 Socket 775 (2.66GHz) FSB1333 6MB Cache
  
• Mobo: Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 PCI-E
  
• RAM: Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10666 XMS3 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL9(9-9-9-24) DHX
  
• Sound: Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Music
  
• GFX: EVGA 8800GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E
  

Total cost is currently around £425.

If anyone could make any decent comments on this, that'd be great. I mainly use my system for coding/graphic work and gaming. I'd really like something that'll run ArmA really well at 1280x1024.

Thanks in advance.

im not smiling over the psu.

No, I agree. I was prepared for that, though, anyway

Might be worth dropping the sound card in favour of another 2GB ram? I don;t know how intense your graphic work gets, but I'm finding my new 4GB pretty useful over 2GB.

Well, within budget I could probably afford both, pending any other changes. I plan on sticking with XP, though, so I'll have to 'suffer' only being able to address 3.5gb of that RAM...

What I'm more concerned about is the mobo - I'm not very clued up on them, never have been. All I want is a good board that will enable me to make the most of the processor, whilst giving me at least 4 rear USB 2.0 ports, support for a front panel with 2 more, etc. I'll be hooking up a new SATA drive, two ATA HDDs, a CD burner and a DVD-ROM (though, in the interests of saving myself hassle, I may just pick up a new combo drive).

Of course, I can see which boards have these features, but I don't know which are the best suited from people's experience (out of the ASUS/Gigabyte/MSI boards...).

The mobo is RUBBISH.

nVidia chipsets on Intel suck. Balls. Seriously.

If your on a budget then the Gigabyte P31-DS3L might be good, if you've got a little more then an entry level P35 board such as the Gigabyte P35-DS3 is good (or the DS3R if you want RAID - for £7 more it's worth it imo!).

I'm an Asus man, but the speed difference is virtually non-existant, and you'll only notice the difference in quality if your running something silly like 500+ FSB daily (i.e. overclocking).

Quote from Jakg :

I'm an Asus man

Amen to that. While I cannot actually quantify any sort of performance increase you would get with an Asus board, or even any greater amount of stability (seeing as I've never had anything other) I can tell you that I have never had a single problem with any of their components. They are very well built, and you can tell that they are quality parts. I have an Asus motherboard, an Asus graphics card, and an Asus sound card and all three of them are amazing pieces of technology. I highly recommend anything by Asus, and I suggest you at least look at them before you make your decision. They are slightly more expensive, but, as the old adage goes, you get what you pay for.

That said, Asus also apparently makes SOME boards which aren't that great. I tend to go for the more expensive boards, which are geared towards hardcore gamers and are well built and designed, but I have heard a lot of complaints about certain lower-end boards by people on Newegg, so be careful what you buy.

*s******s*

EDIT - Contrary to the swear filter, I wasn't saying *s{insert-deragotary-name-for-black-people-here}s*, i was saying *snigg.ers*

I like Asus - their products are usually good. I have an Asus GFX card (well, two of them!) by accident, though. The GFX card's are a joke as they are just "stickered" by Asus in effect.

To get an Asus board with the same specs as the Gigabyte P35-DS3R you'd need to spend an extra £20, for example. For the average user it's in no way worth it.

OT - At a Uni open day today I met someoneo who was the spitting image of McLovin.

EDIT 2 - You've got DDR3 RAM and a DDR2 board. DDR3 is not worth it at ALL atm (unless your overclocking like mad!). Get 4GB of DDR800 RAM, it'll be fine.