Upgrading my main PC

Zardoz

Hi Guys
I am getting round to upgrading the core of my PC.
I have been replacing parts of it over the last few years but the core is limited for expansion.

I originally built it 7 years ago and it started out as an Athlon Xp 2100 Cpu with 512Mb of 333mhz Ram ,a Geforce 4 Mx460 GPU and an 80Gb hard drive with a CD-Rw.
I used a Chieftec Dragon case .
I later added an Audigy 2 sound card and a Hauppage Tv card.
I then replaced the CD-RW drive with 2 DVD-RW drives (IDE).
The Ram was increased to 2Gb and the GPU upgraded to a Ti4800.
I added 2 extra IDE hard drives ,320Gb and 200Gb and removed the 80Gb.
Recently I added a 1Tb Sata drive by way of a Sata-PCI adapter and I replaced the PSU with a 500w Artic as the old one was straining.

Its running pretty decently for its age,cant really fault it but I now think its time to upgrade the Motherboard,CPU,Memory and Graphics card.
I will keep the case,PSU,DVD-Rw's,soundcard,tv card and hard drives.
I want to use it for general purposes as well as some video editing and a bit of gaming.

I was thinking of
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 3.1GHz
or
AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz
as the CPU

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 AMD Nvidia 720D Socket AM2+ 7.1 channel audio ATX Motherboard

2Gb of 800Mhz DDR2 Ram (I will add another 2Gb at a later date )

And for the graphics card I havent a clue

My total budget is ~250 euro

What do you guys think ,I'd appreciate any feedback.
Many thanks
Zardoz

Deano12345

Zardoz wrote: »

Hi Guys
I am getting round to upgrading the core of my PC.
I have been replacing parts of it over the last few years but the core is limited for expansion.

I originally built it 7 years ago and it started out as an Athlon Xp 2100 Cpu with 512Mb of 333mhz Ram ,a Geforce 4 Mx460 GPU and an 80Gb hard drive with a CD-Rw.
I used a Chieftec Dragon case .
I later added an Audigy 2 sound card and a Hauppage Tv card.
I then replaced the CD-RW drive with 2 DVD-RW drives (IDE).
The Ram was increased to 2Gb and the GPU upgraded to a Ti4800.
I added 2 extra IDE hard drives ,320Gb and 200Gb and removed the 80Gb.
Recently I added a 1Tb Sata drive by way of a Sata-PCI adapter and I replaced the PSU with a 500w Artic as the old one was straining.

Its running pretty decently for its age,cant really fault it but I now think its time to upgrade the Motherboard,CPU,Memory and Graphics card.
I will keep the case,PSU,DVD-Rw's,soundcard,tv card and hard drives.
I want to use it for general purposes as well as some video editing and a bit of gaming.

I was thinking of
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 3.1GHz
or
AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz
as the CPU

Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 AMD Nvidia 720D Socket AM2+ 7.1 channel audio ATX Motherboard

2Gb of 800Mhz DDR2 Ram (I will add another 2Gb at a later date )

And for the graphics card I havent a clue

My total budget is ~250 euro

What do you guys think ,I'd appreciate any feedback.
Many thanks
Zardoz

I'd switch that Nvidia Chipset motherboard for an AMD chipset

Phenom II definitly

Where are you buying from ?

Zardoz

Deano12345 wrote: »

I'd switch that Nvidia Chipset motherboard for an AMD chipset

Phenom II definitly

Where are you buying from ?

I will most likely be buying from EBuyer but its not definite yet.
The Phenom II seems to be a great chip for the price and it can be unlocked to become a quad core I think .

I will have another look at the motherboards,alot of them seem to be Matx ,which isnt much use to me or anybody for that matter ,no room for expansion if required.

Leman_Russ

Zardoz wrote: »

The Phenom II seems to be a great chip for the price and it can be unlocked to become a quad core I think .

Some can be unlocked.

There are 2 ways that AMD make Quad Cores into Tri/Dual Cores.

The First way is if a core does not make the rated speed. They just soft lock it and you can unlock it, but it will be unstable if you overclock it and may have to underclock it to get it to work at all.

The 2nd way is if the core is faulty. They hard Lock it by physically killing the connections. There is no way to unlock these.

Solitaire

The first is also if there are sufficient leakage faults in the CPU to prevent it from keeping under its own TDP rating with everything at rated speed. These can stay stable even at rated but generate a lot of heat in the process

Leman_Russ

Solitaire wrote: »

The first is also if there are sufficient leakage faults in the CPU to prevent it from keeping under its own TDP rating with everything at rated speed. These can stay stable even at rated but generate a lot of heat in the process

Which is worse than being unstable in my opinion Anything over 0C is too hot :pac::pac::pac:

Solitaire

Bah. Get a bigger cooler :P