Advice on an upgrade

[VladTheIgnorant]

Yo guys,

I'm still using an ancient machine for my gaming.
Athlon XP 2800+
1 Gig Crucial Ram (2*256 + 1*512)
Radeon 256mb 9800 Pro
Asus A7V8X-X

this is now struggling to play games on even the lowest of settings so was thinking bout upgrading.
It only needs to last me a year cause then i'm leaving town and wont be taking my desktop with me. So I was trying to keep within a budget of £300-£350.

Making use of older technology I came up with:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-175-AM)
£89.99
Asus A8V-XE VIA K8T890 (Socket 939) PCI-Express DDR Motherboard (MB-160-AS)
£39.99
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£114.99

Subtotal £244.97
VAT £42.87
Total £287.84

I have a Gigabyte G-Power cooler which I'm guessing should be o.k. with the 4000+. Plus I would re-use the RAM to keep costs down.
One thing though is that my current case is awful and the 350W PSU that came with it and only gives out 10A on the 12V rail according to the label on the side! Don't know much about PSUs but reading up it is suggested around 25A on the 12V rail.

So guys. Your challenge if you choose to accept it is to criticise my spec, and suggest a nice case/psu combo.

Thanks

Vlad

 

[semi-pro waster]

Welcome to the forums. This is just over the £300 but I'd just try overclocking the 3700 and it saves you ~£30, remember that you won't be able to run your Ram in dual channel mode since you have 3 sticks. If your current cooler works for socket 939 then you will be fine otherwise I'd suggest going for an Arctic Freezer 64.

GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£114.99 £114.99
MB-002-AK Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 (Socket 939 & Upgradable to AM2) AGP & PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-002-AK)
£37.99 £37.99
CP-150-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM)
£59.99 £59.99
CA-052-AN Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-052-AN)
£43.99 £43.99
Subtotal £256.96
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95
VAT £46.71
Total £313.62

 

[VladTheIgnorant]

Sorry bout the no reply- don't have great access to the net.
2 things:
Is the PSU in that case good enough? would have expected to need at least a 400W one.
I'm not really into overclocking. things generally explode when I do, so does that mean that the CPU would end up being a bottleneck for the 1800XT?

Cheers

Vlad

 

[semi-pro waster]

The PSU is fairly decent and is a modern unit so should cope fine, if you don't want to overclock that is fair enough, the 3700 might hold back the X1800XT a bit but not to any significant degree and it is a fair bit cheaper than the 4000.