Upgrading PC
I built a PC way back in April 2007 for gaming and photo editing (I know!). These are the base specs:
32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate - 680i SLI machine at 3GHz overclock (stable)
- Case - Antec P180B
- PSU - Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850: RS-850-EMBA
- Motherboard - Asus Striker Extreme
- CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo - E6700
- Graphics Card - Asus GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB)
- Display - Dual display 2 x 24″ BenQ FP241W LCD
- Hard Discs - 2 x 500GB - Samsung SpinPoint T166 HD501LJ, and 2 x 250GB
- CPU- Heatsink Scythe Ninja Plus Rev. B
- Memory - 4GB of Corsair TWIN2XP2048-6400C4 (SLI Cert)
- DVD Writer- Samsung SH-S183L/BEBN, SATA, Black, OEM, LS + Nero
- Floppy Drive - 1.44Mb Sony Black Floppy Disk Drive OEM
- Keyboard - Logitech diNovo Edge
- Mouse - Logitech M Revolution
- Tablet - Wacom Intuos2 A4
- UPS - APC ES 700
The fans are ultra quite 120mm and the systems runs very quite. It’s a really great setup especially with the two 24 inch dual displays for my photographic work and is linked up to the home network for streaming, remote control, remote backup, etc. One of the reasons that I went for the Antec P180B case (apart from it being quiet) is that I had the physical (space) option of adding another graphics card for dual-SLI support but I never got around to it!
Anyway, the time is fast approaching where I’m thinking of going over to quad-core from the current dual-core setup. I’ve just started doing some research and need to see what motherboard firmware upgrades are available for quad-core support. I know that the RAM isn’t the fastest available but if I do upgrade the RAM then I’d likely want to change the motherboard as well. Not sure if I want to go down that route.
The other consideration is that I want to concentrate now more on the photo editing side using Photoshop CS3 Extended and I’m not sure if a quad-core configuration will provide much of a performance increase for Photoshop. I’ve already maxed out the memory to 4GB in 32-bit Vista mode and I suppose that I may need to go to 64-bit Vista if additional memory is going to provide me with the best performance boost. I need some assistance here so am looking at pointers. I’ll likely post to Usenet as well but I’m always willing to hear directly from individuals so please Contact Me!
Copyright © 2008 Kulvinder Singh Matharu - All Rights Reserved
