My current desktop computer is a Acer which has been upgraded by way of the CPU and harddrives and seen as it#s an off the shelf thing, it has a standard 350 Watt power Supply and a rather limited case I would say. I pondered on upgrading what I have (cheaper) or buying a new one outright for the new technology. The current spec of the machine is Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4Ghz), 4 GIG DDR-2 Ram, 1TB + 250Gig HD, Geforce 7600GS.

Let us first take a look at brand new – I spotted for example a Dell Studio XPS, this has Core i7 2.6Ghz, 6 GIG DDR3 Ram, 640GIG HD, ATI 4670 Graphics Card. I did a quick bit of rfesearch on this and find that in fact it inly has a rather weak PSU, its hard to say if the one I was looking at would have the same weak PSU or not but the end price for his Box only is about £600 let us say.

Now if we look at upgrading, I can buy a ATI 4670 for about £60 including postage, I can buy a Q6700 (2.6Ghz) for £132 and this fits into my existing boar – this been a quad core. The question I ask myself, aside from the graphics card, would I see any difference at all jumping to Quad core? Was not one of the reasons for Quad core been Wirecast which does not work on ATI and am I just upgrading for the sake of it?

The real goal I felt was having a ultra quiet machine, the Acer is very quiet UNTIL it get’s hot here and then the noise picks up big style and I am also having some issue with this machine in the way of streaming via FME and such – to the point that I do not stream any more via this machine. The Machine for everythign else is fine.