Upgrading drives and adding ram, is this ok?

[CoolFunkMan]

Ok, so after a bit of thought, I've decided on upgrading my hard drive and DVD-RW drive after Christmas, as I currently only have IDE drives. I've also decided that I want to whack in an extra 2gb ram, as i do a lot of editing in photoshop and other design applications. I'm also considering purchasing Vista, is it worth it?

 

I'm planing on geting This SATA-II hard drive, this SATA DVD-RW, and this RAM (which is the same as I already have in my PC.) I was thinking about getting an 8800GT, but as I only upgraded 6 months ago, it'd be a waste of cash imo.

 

I already have one set of SATA cables that came with my old motherboard. Will those work, or are there SATA II cables that I'd need? Also, where can I get an extra lot (if I need them)?

 

Plus, I'm thinking about overclocking my cpu, though this still confuses me, and I have no idea how my system will handle it. Here's my current specs:

- Gigabyte GA_945P_DS3 motherboard

- Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.13GHz (1066FSB)

- BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI

- GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2,

- Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU

Will this, combined with the extra hardware I'm getting, overclock well? How do I go about it?

 

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance if anyone has any tips/help...

[Sanchez]

Things you need to check before you upgrade hard drives:

Are there enough SATA ports in my motherboard?

Are there enough SATA power ports from my PSU?

 

Checking your motherboard, you have enough space for 4 sata hard drives, so you're cool there. That's a good PSU so there shouldn't be any problem there either, so stick em in!

Your old SATA1 cables WILL work, but at the price of a new cable (2-3 pounds? - from any pc place) will be worth it. Nice choice of hard drive, I got a pair of those last week, they're excellent.

 

No, Vista is not worth it, maybe in a year or two.

 

Gigabyte aren't ideal overclocking motherboards but you should still be able to overclock a little, I'd need to know the cooler you're using and the current temperature your CPU runs at to give a good idea.

 

To overclock you go in to the bios and choose a higher CPU frequency but you'd get a much better guide if you googled "overclocking"

 

Oh by the way 4GB or RAM in a computer is useless, windows doesn't handle that much. Just add 1 stick.

[CoolFunkMan]

Ok, thanks for that! ^^ I'm deffinitely going for the hard drive and DVD-RW there, then. I'll deffinitely hold on Vista for a bit too. I've also just found this this SATA-2 cable here, is that better?

 

Everest is telling me that my cpu temps are 39c for core 1 and 40c for core 2 (though my pc's been on for a few hours, but it is idle) and I'm using an Artic 7 Pro cooler for my cpu. I also have 2 case fans.

 

And I'll deffinitely look for 1gb RAM too, which is good and would work with my current RAM though?

 

Thanks again! ^^ Sorry for the late reply too, things are rather hectic for me atm, with uni and work, etc..

[Sanchez]

That cable is fine, you should be able to overclock 5-10% with that, the same as your current sticks, No problem.

[CoolFunkMan]

So I should be able to overclock my cpu by about 5-10%, then? So that's probably a jump from 2.13ghz to 2.3ghz if my maths is correct (which it probably isn't, as I'm a bit crap at it. ) Ty for that though, now all I have to do is wait. Ty for that. ^^