upgrading hardware, need advice

my current setup

2.66GHz Core2Duo
3GB ram
320 7200.11 seagate sata3
sony dvdrw sata3
LG dvdrom sata3
windows XP pro sp3

what i want to put in

u guys said it was a waste of time on the ram so i have scratched that

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 Kentsfield 2.66GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor

Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM


the question is, will these make my PC faster?

 

well first of all i would think by replaceing a duel core with a quad core your going to gain some speed. now the hard drives.......ive never liked western digital ive always been a seagate man....i dont think u will get any more speed frome swaping the hard drives b/c they are the same,sata3 and 7200rpm the only thing u will get is more room/storage. and ya the ram u can leave alone. u might have too much ram.

 

well the seagate has a 16 cache and the wd has a 32

 

I would be a bit of an upgrade. Why are you upgrading? Games running slow, overall sluggish computer, or just feel like adding some firepower?

The increased cache in the drive may speed you up a bit. If you want to upgrade your drive, look for the higher RPM drives (Raptor etc.). Or you could set up a RAID 0, but that has it's pitfalls as well. Of course you could always get 3 or more 15k rpm drives and set up a RAID 3! :drool (I hope I have my RAID terminology right, been a while since I read up on it.)

If I were you, I would possibly look into some better RAM (not sure what you have) and give it a little overclock for a bit of speed! Then a down the road, buy all new stuff.

 

i dont game, but i do an aweful lot of RARing, which i would love to have go faster

mainly its just for the firepower, i considered getting a vilosiraptor but the price gez

my ram im using a-data ddr2 pc 6400, 1 sticks of 1 gb and 2 of 512

 

Now this is only my personal opinion, but when a lot of folks go for more 'firepower,' one of the things that is overlooked is the PSU. What's the wattage and brand of your PSU? Granted, you may be okay in that department, but it sure doesn't hurt to check

 

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2701646&CatId=3980 $9.99 if you believe in the rebate fairy!

Get something like that and overclock it a bit. :-D

 

my motherboard will only take a max of 6400

i have an msi p6n sli platinum


psu im not so sure, i think its an emerson 550w, is there any easy way to find out?

 

Once you remove the side cover and see the PSU, it should be marked on the unit. I just looked up your MB and, according to the spec sheet, your MB can handle up to 8 gigs of DDR2 800+ RAM. Here's the spec sheet http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=P6N_SLI_Platinum&class=mb

 

Yeah, I take that back. After looking at the link to your board, it seems to be a bit picky about RAM.

 

its very picky it wont accept ram that is over 512 MB and not 1.8v

i use to only use patriot extreme til i tried to upgrade, and pow computer wouldnt respond

 

New board? This is an upgrade thread...

 

noooooooooooooo ive done that every year for the last 3 years, i promised myself this year id just do small items

 

Well, if is budget type upgrades, i can't help yah! I go to the extreme.

 

not much upgrading for me santa must have not felt like going by newegg

i did get the 750 gig WD black tho