Student Issues...

Well, recently I can help but think that my computer is lacking, it has kept me going well for about 2 years, the only upgrade being a DVD RW drive and my GFX card.

Well, now I feel underpowered, and would like an opinion.

Change?

Processor: P4 2ghz TO P4 Intel P4 3.2 (£133.61)
HDD: Maxtor 6Y060L0 (60 gb) TO Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 160GB UDMA133 (£52.76)

The rest I am quite happy with, I have 512mb of RAM, and for now, why the prices I see so high to get a gb I am content to wait, my GFX card suits me fine, until I know more about pixel shader 3.0 etc, I digress...

Is it worth just upgrading those two and leaving the rest? or am I better of just slugging by?

Extra consideration is that I am entering my second year on quite an intensive computer course at UNI, and I really dont want to have to worry about HDD failures(or misc errors)... paranoid? Maybe, rather that than re-doing an assignment...

Well, as dijointed as the post maybe I hope that someone has an opinion (I've always prefered the software end of computing)

Cheers

-Ciz

 

first off, may i ask a question? (as i tend to do in this forum). What do you do on your computer? the processor upgrade may not be worth it and probably isn't possible with your current hardware; you'll want a new motherboard first. the hard drive, though, will probably be a very worthy upgrade. even if you're not running out of space, it can speed up your computer significantly.

 

No problem.

Well, a mix of (reasonobly grapichly intense)games, programming(C++), a bit of digital image editing and this coming acedemic year 3D modeling (using 3D Studio Max, it runs now(as you would expect...), but I want it a bit nippier).
Basically, my comp is what I do the most(I won't say my life).

Going to check a few things and most likly open up more question for myself, thanks for the reply

-Ciz

 

from the looks of it, if you can afford both a new motherboard and a 3.2C, then it should be worth it. but if you're going on a limb to get both processor and 3.2C, then the 2.0 should suffice for now. in reality, the 2.0 is good enough for what you're going to be doing, although yes, a little nip won't hurt

or if you don't feel like you want/need the extra hard drive space (think about that very carefully now), then you might want to seriously consider the mobo/proc as the next step up.

 

I'd agree with Strogganoff here

CPU intensive stuff like 3D modeling likes lots of ram and lots of bandwidth going around the system. So a mobo/cpu upgrade would be a real plus here. Going from a PCChips mobo and a XP2000+ to a Abit AN7 XP3000+ is a BIG difference.

But if you want to be sure of your data ... new hard drive is good in fact, if you get a SATA drive you can partition it and use a small partition as a swap drive for photoshop/3d programs, which improves performance a lot!