Changing my Dragon for a Scorpion

[Polarman]

Changing my Dragon for a Scorpion (not anymore!)

Have'nt posted in quite a while. But i've never been that far.

I'm preparing a a small upgrade to my current Dragon platform. Nothing really over the top as my budget is a bit limited. This will make my wife happy because my current setup will end up as hers. So this will be a kill two birds with one stone upgrade.

I will only end up in changing a few components. Here's what i decided so far.

CPU:

AMD FX-4100 (3.6 GHz/95W) (150$-160$ probably)

Staying with a Quad is more than enough for my use. My 940BE will totally kick her single core Athlon 3500+ in the nearest garbage can.

Motherboard (135$):

MSI 990XA-GD55

This will replace my MSI DKA790GX Platinum and will replace a prehistoric Asus A8V. The 990XA has more than enough features to make me happy. I find those FX boards with 4-5 PCI-E are overkill and pointless.

Memory (50$):

CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB

It will be nice to switch from DDR2-800 to DDR3-1600. My wife has 512mb of Kingston value ram so the speed boost & capacity will be much better for her.

Hard disk drive (60$-75$):

Go SSD, short answer is NO. Waiting a few extra seconds is not worth the extra headache and money for my sake. I'm sticking to an old trusty mechanical drive.

Here's where it gets a bit harder to decide. I'm not sure wich one of these 2 to get.

Western Digital RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB or Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB

I never had any problems with WD so i'll get a new WD for this build too. The RE4 is Sata 2 but has a 64MB cache. The Caviar Black is Sata 3 but has only a 32MB cache. Both are single 500 GB platter. I know that Sata 3 will NOT do sqwat about speed for a HDD but the extra cache probably will. I'm leaning more towards the RE4 for reliablity reasons and it's only 15$ more.

Why get only 500GB you ask. Well right now, i only use about 200GB out of 640. My pc is not a PVR nor a p0rn library. My wife will appreciate the 640GB. Her paltry 80GB is slow and obsolete.

DVD Burner (25$):

Unfortunatly, i have to buy a new one because mine is IDE. Newer Mobo's don't have IDE anymore. Have to get a SATA burner. Good thing those things are cheap now.

Projected total is around 435$. Not too bad considering that 2 will profit from an update.

Comments welcomed.

UPDATE:

I've downgraded my Scorpion plan to a Leo.

Seeing the FX is not up to par, I'll be getting a Phenom II 975BE instead.

Even if the FX-4100 benchmark are next to inexistant, from the very few stats i've seen, it behaves no better than a X4 645 or A8-3850. :shadedshu

This changes my motherboards plans also. The new board will be an MSI 890FXA-GD65

For RAM, i've decided to get these: Gskill F3-10600CL8D-4GBHK

They're 1333 (8,8,8,21 @ 1.5V) this will assure me maximum compatibility and stability. (I hope )

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

never mind i was looking at US prices.

everytime i see newegg i think USA

for canada i think NCIX.

 

[bbmarley]

dont you need ddr3 1866MHz ram for bulldozer?

 

[HalfAHertz]

You don't necessarily. Plus the ones he's buying are nice and he could probably oc those to 1866 if he wanted to.

 

[Polarman]

Made my hard drive choice and purchased it.

I got the RE4. There was a 10$ off promo at newegg.

 

[Polarman]

Upated my post!