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build/upgrade or buy/build a new one?

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Jammo the OrganizedFellow:
About a year and a half ago, I went shopping to build my first PC.

On 4/28/2008 I made my purchase from NewEgg. Here is the list:

--- ---1 x Thermaltake M9 VI1000BWS Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
1 x GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard
1 x XFX PVT88SFDF4 GeForce 8800 GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
1 x Thermaltake Purepower RX W0144RU 600W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Active PFC Power Supply
1 x Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 Conroe 2.33GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80557E6550
1 x G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-2GBPK
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
1 x SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B - OEM
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2C for System Builders - OEM
$885.57Keyboard, mouse and 24" Samsung monitor were purchased separately at Costco Wholesale (my beloved employer :) )

I've got some funds to spend on either:
A). Upgrade/Rebuild my current PC.
B). Buy/Build a new PC.
Either should be for under $1,000
Lesser is better, so I can renew some domain names I have expiring soon, and some software purchases also.
I really DON'T want to spend a grand!


My machine is showing its age.

WHAT DO I DO ON MY PC?!
I am not a gamer. I am a hobbyist/freelance Web Developer/Designer with Adobe CS4 (I have noticed it takes longer to launch than before). I do lot's of XHTML, CSS, PHP coding. I will watch the occasional movie (either NetFlix streaming or DVD - bluray not necessary).

I'm looking on NewEgg, and there are some CyberpowerPC price under $500-600 whose specs are pretty good. Right?
3.0GHz+, 4 gigs of RAM.
I have never been into hardware and stuff. I know there's lots to it. Web Dev and following those trends is where I spend most of my time. So I kind of need some help deciding what to pursue.

Renegade:
I made the mistake of not getting solid state drives in my new box. I should have, at least for the system drive. But, they are very expensive.

I suppose you *could* just stick a new drive in your box now and install a fresh OS then migrate over. That's the cheap way to make a new box fast & still keep your old data. A SSD is very fast, and will stay fast. Just an idea anyways.

Dormouse:
First, I'm not sure what you mean by your PC is showing its age & needs to improve. 18 months isn't that old, especially for non-gaming activity.

Second, all your components seem, from a superficial look, to be similar in standard - and therefore probably hard to improve by tackling one or two areas. Would be more cost-effective, when the time comes, to do a full upgrade.

That said, I agree completely with Renegade. A SSD works very much faster and is worth the money (certainly to me, & unlike him I did go for one when I built my last computer & have my OS & programs on it (& nothing else).

You could consider moving to W7 at the same time. And more RAM might help a bit, depending on what you do.

Jammo the OrganizedFellow:
First, I'm not sure what you mean by your PC is showing its age & needs to improve. 18 months isn't that old, especially for non-gaming activity.-Dormouse (October 18, 2010, 02:29 AM)
--- End quote ---
You ever "FEEL" like your computer is getting slower?
It used to be blazing fast, but now things just, are, slow, to, launch.
Firefox has always been slow to load, especially with all the plugins I have installed. It's just slower.
Adobe Fireworks. Also, seems to be getting slower.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
So I'm looking at NewEgg and Win7 Ultimate is $269.99. It's the one with XP Mode and has Bitlocker.

A quick search for the G.Skill RAM I currently have, is under $60 for 2GB! http://bit.ly/9h8JHY

I came across this Solid State Drive from Intel, it's a 40GB size at $99. http://bit.ly/dwO4Fc
===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====
I think that should do it, right?!

steeladept:
One silly question that has to be asked though is what kind of system maintenance do you do?  I have found doing regular system maintenance makes a HUGE difference in performance.  For example, do you defrag your hard drive?  What about clearing your temp folders and system cache (though I think by default the cache goes each time it is shut down). Have you ever run CCleaner or a similar product?  (I just use the built in Windows cleanup at work, and even that makes a huge difference sometimes).

Another question is how do you work?  Has it changed?  Do you now have a lot more open at the same time?  Most people do.  What about software?  Do you frequently install and reinstall software?  If so, you may need to consider some registry cleanup.  For safety sake, I do my cleanups manually.  I probably miss a lot, but it is a lot safer than using most registry cleaners.  You mentioned CS4.  Have you upgraded to that or was that an original install?  What about other software?  Are there a lot of upgrades?  A lot of this may seem irrelevant, but often these are things that Windows keeps around just in case, and it seems to me that after enough "just in case" accumulation occurs, a system just feels slower.

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