SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!

I made a mistake in the earlier post and forgot to mention that, out of £1200 pounds my PC cost to build, i actually get to keep some other parts now that upgrading is due; twelve-hundred quid, and i keep my Viewsonic 22" monitor, two hard disks at 250 GB each, the power supply, and the case.

I *do not* get to keep my CPU, CPUfan, RAM, motherboard or VGA.
Well, i get to "keep them", but not "in my build"; so, i'll just eBay them or something. CPU is obviously going out (in place of a 2500k, or whatever is coming in Ivy Bridge if it's really amazing), and with the new socket (1156? 1136? 2111? who knows) the old mobo and even the CPUfan will not work anymore.
And 4gigs of Corsair 4/4/4/12 ram (runs at 4/9, or even 3/10 if underclocked) would have been fantastic a couple years back, but it's all DDR3 now.

Oh, i can't tell you vehemently enough how happy i am that DDR3 has run into the wall and that 1333Mhz is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to 1600Mhz.. hopefully, no more minute upgrade steps every other week.. for a while. Not that *I* would.. but you know;    fanboys.

Things that broke:
1)Samsung DVD writer :/ was a disappointment, hated the cheap DVDs i bought from Poundshop, didn't actually have Lightscribe even though it was sold as having it, and well, it broke.
Replaced at £18.
2)Artic Cooling Pro7, the CPU fan, the little plastic pegs broke on one of the legs, well, half a peg on one leg, and i *did* uninstall it and then install it back again about 8 times, so i guess it's mostly my fault. Great fan, worth every penny of £17, now replaced with a £15 fan from some never-made-fans-before-but-made-other-PC-stuff company, works just as well (but the removable metal brackets that hold the fan in place are really, really bad).
3)the perennially failing-no-not-really-failing HD from Western Digital, one of two i have, i should have taken the hint when i saw it came new with a horrible soldering mark while its twin brother didn't. WD are possibly still the best brand of HD - reliability being funny enough, one of their strong points.
It's a shame they went for this "low energy" 5400rpm shit on their best models, i really want the extra 1% speed i get from a full 7200rpm model(irony.. sorta).

4)one of the two sets of RAM was somewhat faulty, and got replaced for free (and rather speedily) by Corsair.
Now, rather than say "Corsair make the best RAM", i will say "Corsair always price their RAM so well that there isn't any reason to buy anything else, ever". They do always hit that sweet spot, with the proper voltage, timings, speed, and the package (say, 2x4Gb instead of 2x2 or 4x2, plus the sweet heat dissipators), and in general they have consistently, for the past 3 years, offered this "package" of getting everything EXCEPT THE REALLY FANCY BESTEST for maybe two quid more than the competition.

And plus, if you want "the bestest", well, they do that as well.

5)Asus was a really big disappointment. They robbed me of a legit return, with my 8800GTS failing well within the limits of their loudly trumpeted 3-year warranty, and the card making twice the trip to their repair centre (expenses on me, mostly), and twice coming back as broken as before. Third time in, i just threw it in the garbage.
This is of course after a real Odyssey in trying to get a RMA in the first place.

And of course, the Asus mobo i bought was partly faulty as well, with the hi-def sound making a horrid white noise whine, and therefore i simply chucked it in the bin, not wanting to go through the same shit again.

I should point out that as of today, two companies make the "best" motherboards, and these are Gigabyte, and unfortunately, Asus. Asus also unfortunately makes the best VGA, as they always price down some truly sweet models, but as now i know how horrid their support is, i can easily say "stay away .. if you can".

6)My 4350 is also "half dead", and i replaced it before it died completely, with a really weak 5450, essentially the same thing, different name. Just an impression, i thought the 4350 actually did better, but meh.
I guess, if i had been less careless with my receipts, i would still have most of these parts, or even better a new one to replace the faulty, without having to pay.

SO THERE'S A LESSON, SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!

Of course all this is dependant on getting properly hired (and not just a "timewaste", £5'hour job), and fortunately i have just been contacted by a business owner looking for a manager ;/ shame how he was supposed to call me today, and hasn't. I'll ring him 2morrow, anyway.

My next build - if everything goes properly - will be like thus:

a 2500k, but not before i go to [H]ardforums and really read up on how soon the new stuff from Intel is coming out, and really *what* are we looking at.
If nothing magic is coming out, then a 2500k it is, simply because it's absolutely identical to the 2600k (IN REALITY, EVEN THOUGH on paper they look different), costs less, and can perhaps work even a little better.

a Gigabyte mobo, priced at around £105~110.
but i might try a MSI since everyone on [H] says they are awesome and cheap - more than risking it, i just see this as an opportunity to handle some new hardware and get an informed perspective at this company.
in case you haven't noticed, i see http://hardforum.com/ as the holy bible, torah and quar'an all rolled into one (and covered with whipped cream).

a whole, £130+ pack of 4x4Gb of Corsair DDR3 1.5v 1333Mhz RAM (or even 1600Mhz if they cost the same, which sometimes they do; as long as they are both 1.5v, they give me more overhead to OC).
Yes, i know it's not sensible, as i will probably not need 16Gb of ram, but the catch is, i want to buy the RAM  *in one package*, and not risk buying a second set later and having it perform *better* than the first, it might sound like thats good, but you risk stability issues. Rather have four worse sticks, but tested to run in parallel.

A new VGA - did you really thing i was going to spend so much and not buy a new graphics card ??
Probably, something in the range of £110-130. Whatever that is, i don't care.
£40 is too little to get anything good, and the sweet spot (where the card runs everything, for around two years, by which time you just buy a new one) hovers between £60 (the 5670, if you can find it when the discounts are flying) and £100 (the 5750), with the market going up and down in a really irritating way.
Of course whether this is an ATI or a Nvidia is totally irrelevant.

A third HD, from NOT WD, not because now i think WD are bad, but because my motherboard's BIOS shows me two hard disks, one from WD, and another from WD, both same manufacturer's code (identical models), and it's fucking irritating having to restart several times, and unplug one then the other, to find out which one is C: . so, from ANOTHER BRAND. Probably a 1TB model, 7200rpm, nice big cache, but nothing expensive. I can get one from £43 new.

EDIT: did i say £43?? my bad. i meant £38. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-hitachi-deskstar-0f10383-7k2000c-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-cache-89-ms-ncq-oem

I'd love a SSD, but then again, i don't see the point of a superfast HD if it's that expensive. Hey, i can wait five seconds more to load up a game, and i'd rather spend the extra money on more storage space, or better VGA, or what not. A normal HD does the same stuff as a SSD, just takes a little while longer. And data is practically *never* going to be a bottleneck in any real world application.
Plus, do not underestimate the advantage of getting five-ten times the storage space for the price :/ my case can easily hold 5 HD, and if you want to push it, that's 10TB for £300. A good SSD will have maybe 80Gb, so you would be constantly deleting the old game to make room for the new.

Well, thats it. My Viewsonic stays, no reason to change it, i'll upgrade to a 26" when and if they ever get made.  Which is *already*, since i just looked and Ilyiama makes a 27" for the same money i paid for my 22" three years ago, silly me. Of course.

Ok, so then, i'll upgrade to a new technology, like LED LCD, but then again, no, or at least not until i have read everything there is to read about them and understand exactly how that technology is performing at that time :/

unless you really want to be a twat, and then here http://www.scan.co.uk/products/23-samsung-md230x6-widescreen-eyefinity-six-screen-setup-! is a 6-monitor setup for two and a half grand, plus the cost of the videocards to run anything in that definition, which is - if my basic math training doesn't fail me - 5760x2160

Let me write that again

5760x2160

What sort of ludicrous triple-SLI do you have to run to get anything running at that definition??

Anyway..
As of today, the total (set to come down, even though we are at a low in the market) is £470. with the most expensive thing being the RAM, (all sixteen gigs of it), and that could be cut down by a meaty £80 if one wanted to just get the system running *almost to the top*, and while it doesnt include the price of the CPUfan, say another £20, it's bound to get cheaper as ram and other stuff comes down.

For someone (not me) who actually works with their PC, a £500 upgrade is a no brainer - for the price, you get a £1000+ PC that performs twice as well as a C2D base. Keep in mind that a P67 mobo will gladly and cheerfully whip your 2500k to 4~5Ghz.

Yep.

New architecture AND 4.5Ghz speed, thats a serious improvement on anything thats as old as mine, and mind you, my PC is still tons better than what you get in any Internet Cafe'.

So..
I really shouldn't try to end this post with anything like "a revelation" or "a wise advice".. if the stats from what i posted above don't convince you, i guess you don't love computers. But i can make again the point for watching what actually you get to keep from your old PC, and if nothing else, at least you get to keep the case - a good, solid case will last forever, and i find it comforting to know that the pieces i buy have somewhere to go once i take them home. My Ammo533 is not on the list of what needs to be upgraded, and probably will not be for another ten years; The HD i plan to buy is also going to stay in for at least another 5 years, as technology might make speedier HDs, but one terabyte of storage is still a fuckfull of data - oops, there is go again with bad words. Bad Me, bad, bad Me.

Wish me luck everyone. I am going to call mr. Epping (i name the people in my phone with where they live) and if things go as planned (HE said we were meeting mon-tue for a business proposal, after all - i didn't imagine it), i will soon be the proud manager of a pizza restaurant - mo' money, more possibilities.

Maybe some P***y, too.