Well, physical shops here are pure murder. Online isn't much better to be honest. I mostly use price comparison sites (like
this) because individual sites are far too likely to be overpriced. Well I guess overpriced is relative.. it's almost always the normal price here orz
As for future proof.. well heh, I realise that's not exactly going to happen on my budget. What I mean I guess is something that can handle current stuff as well as possible, then I can scrape by like how I have been for the past few years (at least until it gets too unbearable again.)
Looking at my components I am somewhat sad that most of them will probably need replacing. As I said my CPUs a Pentium, RAM is 2 GB of DDR2 on a Gigabyte GA-945PL-S3P mobo (which I don't even think can handle the i series). Those are definitely going to need an upgrade. My HDD is a pretty pathetic 320 GB, but I had enough external storage that I don't really care. Same for disk drives, haven't used a DVD in aaages.
So all in all new PSU, CPU, mobo and RAM on a budget of ~500. How important is RAM? Had been planning on at least 8 GB but wondering if maybe 4 GB wouldn't work alright. Same for PSU, I need at least 600W and had been planning to go higher but will probably settle for something close to 600 after all. I'll keep the 480 until the rest of the setup is running fine then sell > switch for something more efficient. Thoughts?