Upgrade help please

Jekyll

Jekyll

Jekyll

Associate
Joined
25 Feb 2009
Posts
38
The chipset fan on my motherboard is slowing down, everytime I turn on the PC I get the message "CHIP SET fan fail or too slow" so instead of just replacing the motherboard i thought its time to upgrade. My current setup is

AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+
Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi S939 PCI-E
Geil 2gb 2x1GB PC3200
Leadtek GeForce 7800GTX 256MB
WD Raptor 74GB
WD Caviar 250GB
2x NEC DVD RW
Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music
XP Pro
SM 2493HM
Old CM ATCS case, think its the 201b

I was looking at
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000 3.10GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail
I read in the reviews that it can get hot and the stock fan isn't good enough, has anyone here had those problems and can someone recommend a good replacement cooler please.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition 2.70GHz (Socket AM2+)
Whats the difference between this and the 6000 above, besides price and GHz? Has anyone had any problems with this overheating?

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
Do I need to upgrade the memory or will what I have do?

I really have no idea what motherboard to go for. I had a quick look at some, and one thing I did notice, they all seem to only come with 1 IDE connector. I'm no techy, so how would I go about connecting my 2x NEC DVD RW's?

I recently bought an LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive, thinking it would be a simple plug in and use job, but after reading the system requirements on the back .. after buying (d'oh! :rolleyes:) I'm not so sure.

2. Graphic Card: Card with following GPU recommended.
GeForce 7800 GTX 512/7900 GT ..
(Please download PureVideo HD driver at www.nvidia.com)

3. Graphic Card Driver shall meet AACS compliance criteria.

4. HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection):
Required to view pre-recorded Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Disc which are copy protected.
Click to expand...


Looking at that, my graphics card isn't upto scratch, so I was thinking of upgrading to one of the following

EVGA GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (01G-P3-N981-TR)

EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (01G-P3-E880-AR)

As for the PureVideo HD driver, or the graphic card driver meeting AACS compliance or the HDCP .. I have no idea. If anyone has bought one of these drives did you have any trouble installing and using it, did you need to download anything?

Sorry for the long post, I had many questions and thought I'd get em all out at once :D

If anyone can help it'd be greatly appreciated, thanks.
 
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro would be a decent cooler.

The black edition has an unlocked multiplyer, i'd go for the X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition.

Go with PC6400 memory, no need for pc8500, as yours is pc3200 would say its ddr so it wont work in a newer mobo.

have a look at the Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 AMD 770 motherboard, the 1 ide connector will be usable for your 2 nec dvdrw's.

to confirm the lg blue ray/hd spec try running the BD/HD-DVD Advisor tool from Cyberlink's website, should tell you whether its a problem.

have a look at the sapphire 4830 graphics card:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-187-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=938
 
What are you doing with the bits you are upgrading?

I've got a thread open now asking for ideas for my machine.

I'd quite happily make you an offer for your CPU and 1 stick of RAM.

Regarding the IDE dilema, you can get IDE to SATA converters. Im running one on an IDE hard drive I have connected to a SATA socket and it works beautifully. You can pick them up on ebay amongst other places.

I might even make you an offer for your graphics card :)
 
I'd first ask how much he games and at what resolution before recommending him an 4830 512mb lol...

Anyway why not an intel system? Also do you want to overclock?
 
Thanks for the info mp260767

@Ucof - I hadn't thought what I was going to do with them tbh.

@EgonSpengler - Budget is £500 for cpu, motherboard, memory and graphics card, everything else i'll be keeping.

@Vir - I'm not much of a gamer, mostly play Ulitma Online, some worms 2 and Doom 3. I recently got my first tft, a Samsung 2493HM, atm I use 1280 x 960 res, but I'll be trying 1920 x 1200. I've never really looked at Intel, always had AMD, and no, I wont be overclocking.

Thanks all for the replies so far :)
 
Well, drop me a line if you want to sell/dontate them. Im trying to find bits I can upgrade on my old Socket 939 board and its proving a nightmare what with the age n'all. :)
 
maybe look at the following:


Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (102-B50102-00-AT) £132.24 (£114.99)

AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.8GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £123.99 (£107.82)

Asus M3A78 Pro AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £80.49 (£69.99)

Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £39.09 (£33.99)

Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM3/LGA775) £22.99 (£19.99)

Sub Total : £346.78
Shipping : £8.49
VAT : £53.29
Total : £408.56
 
keep the sound card, thats good enough as it is and yes the Ati Radeon 4850 is a good graphics card to go for
 
Thanks mp260767 :)

Do I need the 4GB memory, I'm using XP pro, doesn't that only use 3GB?

Although I bought an OEM copy, so would I be able to use that after upgrading? How is Vista now? I'd heard bad things about it.

Would i need to format when upgrading the motherboard? If so, would I just need to format the windows drive or both?

Thanks again for the advice :)
 
I'd go with mp260767's spec, although the kingston ram is just a little bit more and faster, would be tempted to go for it. For the price you might aswell get 4gb, even if you can only see 3, especially if you decide to upgrade to vista. The problems with 64bit vista are long gone, I'm not having any trouble with mine.

A new mobo will require formatting the hard drive. It's just the drive with the OS on though. But games etc won't work from the other hard drive, they will most likely need re-installed, anything else should be okay though.

The ram I mentioned

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-039-KS
 
Thanks ro55o :)

Anyone know if i'll be able to use my OEM version of XP after the upgrade or if i'll need to buy a new copy? I don't get all this licence stuff :(
 
This week only deal

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £164.99

Is that worth the extra £32 over the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB?
 
Jekyll said:
This week only deal

XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £164.99

Is that worth the extra £32 over the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB?
Click to expand...

It is a superior card and at a great price, worth it in my opinion. I've just noticed your monitor supports 1920*1200, so the 4870 would be better suited to that resolution than the 4850.

As for XP, you should manage to install your oem copy again, if you encounter any problems then just contact microsoft and tell them your motherboard fried and you needed a new one ;)
 
Thanks ro55o :)

I've another question I hope someone can help me with, I have an front I/O panel for my case with headphones, mic, usb and firewire, but I have no clue how to connect it to my sound card.

So .. does anyone know how to connect the front I/O port for headphones/mic to a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music please?

The connectors on the headphones are labelled:
R-OUT
L-OUT
GROUND
R-RET
L-RET


The connectors on the mic are labelled:
GROUND
MIC-IN
MIC-POWER

I can't see any labels for the pins on the X-Fi.

Thanks :)
 
Ucof said:
Asus M3A78 Pro AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard????
If so, you'll want page 21 of the Enlgish manual on this page: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us


It looks like the audio connector is in the bottom left of the motherboard.
Click to expand...

Yeh, I was just checking out the manual to get an idea of the motherboard setup.

Its just making me think of more questions :D

I can only see 1 chassis fan connector, so how would I connect the fans at the front and back of my case and what is a PWR_FAN connector on the M3A78, that be the bios fan connector labelled CHIP_FAN on the A8N-SLi?

*sigh* so many questions :p

Thanks for your help Ucof :)
 
The fans can be connected with one of these if you run out of motherboard connectors.


Also, the PWR_FAN and CHIP_FAN connectors are both for connecting fans to. I assume that CHIP_FAN is for a north/south brige chip cooler, and that the motherboard designers got their English a little skewed and wrote "PWR_FAN" instead of "FAN_PWR" ;)
Speaking of which, where is the CHIP_FAn connector? I only see "PWR_FAN" and "CHA_FAN1".
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom