Cheap decent upgrade?

[clarkey1984]

Hi all, I am finally going to upgrade from my HP dc5100 sff machine, as its up to its limits and can't really cut it anymore, I was going to go for all new, probably an i3 or mid range i5 chip, new board that supports ddr3 etc, but after a convo with one of my mates he said why not build a core2quad based system, he has done so, and it's quick, it can hold its own against a more modern i3 or lower end i5 system pretty well, admittedly his is overclocked to about 3.5ghz from the standard 2.83 (his machine has the Q9500 CPU) and the whole thing cost him about 100 pounds to build, I've decided to do the same and use the following parts.

an Intel DQ45CB motherboard, a Q9650 CPU (the fastest one the board can support) a good cooling system (with good cooling my friend reckons I could run an OC at 4ghz no problem) and then use an existing dell dimension 3000 case I've got (standard micro ATX) the existing 500gb sata HDD, the 4GB of DDR2 800 (4x1gb) ram and the hd5450 gpu I already have in my current machine, plus I have a 500w micro ATX PSU at my parents from another machine as well, so I can realistically build this for less than 100 pounds, I've found the mobo for about 20 quid, and the CPU for just under 60, I may go up to 4x4gb ram at a later date so it's maxed out but even with that added to the costs its still much cheaper than buying an entry level celeron PC off the shelf, and several times cheaper than an i5 based machine.

I can't really see any down sides to this plan, sure I'm still working with (at least) 5 or 6 year old tech but for something quick ish and being on a budget this seems to fit the bill.

Am I correct or is there some massive flaw in my plan that I haven't spotted?

Many thanks in advance

 

[Alabalcho]

I see two flaws:
- your motherboard is using DDR2 memory
- you are using all four DIMM slots for paltry 4GB of RAM
- Intel stopped supporting that board four years ago (the date of latest BIOS upgrade)

You're going to buy new motherboard anyway, why you go with such an ancient board?

 

[clarkey1984]

To be honest, all I did was type Intel q9650 motherboard into Google, found a page that had a list of suitable ones and picked an Intel one, the last time i built a PC was back in the IDE and socket 478 days, a lot has changed.

Ideally I'd like a mobo that supports up to 16gb of DDR2 ram (or ddr3 if the price difference is negligible and a ddr3/lga775 board exists) obviously supporting my chosen CPU, is very tuneable when it comes to overclocking (I read the Intel I mentioned originally doesn't OC) and that isn't too expensive, so basically I have an idea of what I wish to do but no idea on what mobo will suit my criteria, does anyone who actually knows what they are doing (unlike me) have any advice on what board would fit my needs?