Pc gone bust, upgrading...

DanGerMus

welcome to the world of upgradeing your pc. Technology just moves so fast dude.

BlitzKrieg

this showed up today on komplett (people were saying the new cheap cards were on the way)

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=334640

Would it be a good alternative?

I ask cause if I buy that i can actually afford a pentium dual core 1 gig of ram, a new hard drive, and a somewhat decent board.

TerrorFirmer

I wouldn't bother. Its supposed to be a very weak card, much like the budget cards of its predecessors like the 6500, 7500 etc, all weak cards that fell between low and mid range. Obviously it would be better then those cards but you get the point...

BlitzKrieg

think i might have it:

Taking in all your advice (and my own slogginf on reading up things) and my budget

my choice will probably be:


327806 ABIT IL9 PRO, Intel 945P, Socket-775
- ATX, SATAII, DDR2, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16

330167 Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz Socket
- LGA775, 2MB, BOXED w/fan

334246 Samsung SpinPoint S166 160GB SATA2
- 8MB 7200RPM

308934 Corsair Value S. PC5300 DDR2 1024MB
- Kit w/two matched Value Select 512MB


328327 HIS Radeon X1650XT 256MB, iSilence II,
- PCI-Express, GDDR3, 2xDVI/Tv-Out/HDCP


it comes to exactly 512 (inc. shipping), which is fine because a friend is buying my old parts of me bringing the total down to 400 thereabouts (or less if I ship the rest of my old parts)

it isnt a top end machine by far, but its a leap by a mile from my old machine and its open ended enough to ensure that the next time i need to upgrade I wont be stuck. (or did I again overlook something?)

TerrorFirmer

You could always keep your P4 and stave off upgrading to dual core right now. If its 775 then I'm assuming it's probably half decent like 3 or 3.2Ghz...I have a 3.2Ghz in my second machine and it's perfectly fine for games like Company of Heroes at high settings and other day to day stuff like encoding and ripping too, I'm going to upgrade it to a c2d eventually but I don't see a pressing need right now as it does what I want it to do fairly well. So you could hold off that for awhile....just if you're looking to trim things down. And pick up a cheaper Dual core in a few months time when new stuff comes out, or when people are selling their old stuff.

Are you doing alot of overclocking? If you are then never mind but if not, another cheapish route would be:

ABIT IP-95
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=329792

2Gb Value Ram
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=301116

Fatality 7600GT
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=329670

Total : 320

So if you kept your P4, the Fatality 7600GT is a great card, and as a bonus is passively cooled so - no noise at all. It costs a few euro more then the X1650XT but would probably take the lead ever so slightly. And having 2gb of ram would be nice too, save you from upping it later.

BlitzKrieg

ABIT IP-95
http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=329792

does that board have 2 ata ports? it says it does but it also says it can only support 2 devices...though usually with 2 ata ports you can support 4?

if that can support 4 ata ports I will defitnally buy that one. and can put off the whole mess of getting new hard drives etc until i have a bit more money.

BlitzKrieg

i swear this is the last post on this.


two quick questions to finalize my purchases.

1.) I see a few motherboards have 133 ATA ports for hard drives (which I need) but they have (raid) after them, I asume this is for setting up hard drives as raid 1 or 0...can I use my two current ones for that, or will there be a hell load of compatability issues? I want to avoid the problems of reinstalling windows (using the guide on page 1) and also access the information on my current hard drives...I will upgrade to better ones, but its not as much of a priority as the other parts.

2.) I'm selling my old parts onto a friend who has been unable to buy a new pc in far too many years, his machine is a very old pentium 2, I'll be giving him pretty much all the parts to a pc except a hard drive/graphics card/psu/case. He intends to buy a new graphics card and hard drive i think. But I believe he is keeping the old case and PSU. Is there any warnings/tips I should pass on to him for putting this together. He only wants a machine that can play half life 2...which mine did, hence the ease of selling it on to him.

Fanny Cradock

BlitzKrieg wrote:

2.) I'm selling my old parts onto a friend who has been unable to buy a new pc in far too many years, his machine is a very old pentium 2, I'll be giving him pretty much all the parts to a pc except a hard drive/graphics card/psu/case. He intends to buy a new graphics card and hard drive i think. But I believe he is keeping the old case and PSU. Is there any warnings/tips I should pass on to him for putting this together. He only wants a machine that can play half life 2...which mine did, hence the ease of selling it on to him.

Off the top of my head:

Make sure his PSU is of sufficient power for the new components;
Check that the case is suitable for the motherboard form factor;
Might be a good time to clear nay dust and gunk lodged in the heatsinks or fans;
Ground yourselves when installing the parts.

awhir

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=56&subid=912