Upgrading

[major]

I'm upgrading my pc this week and it's likely to be an Intel E6600, but I have no idea on the motherboard. My mates Core2duo keeps having blue screens and apparantly its due to the mobo chipset as some have problems with Core2duo's. My mate can't remember which chipset is the one that has no problems, but he said the mobos with that set are about ?100 plus. Sli would be nice, but I'm not too fussy as I only have one gfx card at the moment and a matching one is over ?120, and I will probably just wait and get a DX10 card when I have the money.
I'm limited to about ?250 for a chip, mobo and 2gb ram so I'm starting to think that an AMD X2 would be a better option as there doesn't seem to be the motherboard issue. 2gb of corair XMS2 ram is about ?52 in most places so that leaves me with roughly ?200 for the mobo and chip.
I usually buy stuff from ebuyer, but if you know of better or cheaper sites let me know. I may be able to get the bits at trade price, through a shop, but I still need to know what to buy.
Cheers

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[kndusr19]

I'd stick with ebuyer becuase I think they are great, good value for money with a fairly good returns turn around time!

I always read the reviews of items I buy and suggest you do the same at ebuyer. You can pick up a decent motherboard for around £50 for the intel 6600, check ebuyer. Considering that the core2duo processor will set you back £135. You might need a gfx card it its not PCI-E.

[Annabell]

Hi Major

Good choice the E6600 and any of the three Motherboards below will be compatible and you wont be paying over the top, "up to you where you buy them from hun" as for SLI or Crossfire unless your a competition gamer / high end power user - (my Uncle builds for these for a living) you wont need multi GPUs for one the cost - you would need a 1000w PSU, a very good = expensive Motherboard, (to make SLI / Crossfire worth it) two (2) high end graphics cards = £600+, and you need something a lot better than a few fans to cool this hardware "eg" Water Cooling / Phase Change Cooling, not cheep !, for most users / gamers one good high end graphics card is all you will need (as my sig) i run an 8800 GTS 640MB and it can play any game i can throw at it !

Abit AB9 Pro (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - (this is the board i am using now)
- Intel® P4 LGA775 Conroe, Pentium D, Pentium EE
- P965/ICH8R
- 4 x 240-pin DIMM DDR2 800/667/533 up to max. 8GB
- 1 PCI-E X 16, 2 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI
- 9 x SATA 3G Raid 0/1/10/51 x e-SATA, 1 x IDE
- Dual PCI E GbE LAN
- 2 1394 IEEE a
- 10 USB2.0
- 7.1-CH HD 882D S/PDIF In/OutDolby Digital Live
- Silent OTES
- µGuru, Support Guru Clock -- around £80

Asus P5K Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

- Intel LGA775 Platform
- Intel® P35 chipset
- Dual-channel DDR2 1066/800/667 MHz
- Heat Pipe
- 2x1394
- 12xUSB 2.0
- All High-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors -- around £85

Gigabyte GA_965P_S3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- Supports Intel® Core™2 Extreme/Core™2 Duo Processor
- Supports high performance Dual Channel DDR2 800 memory
- Features PCI Express x16 for outstanding graphics performance
- Integrated new generation SATA 3Gb/s interface
- Optimized Gigabit LAN connection
- Features 8-channel Intel High Definition Audio -- around £70

If you can give me a clearer picture of what you want to use your new build for i can go into more detail for you.

Ann