Advice/Spec Needed - Upgrading Components of Old System

Pen66

Pen66

Pen66

Associate
Joined
1 Oct 2007
Posts
1,088
Current system

AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2700+ (Socket A (462))

AM39L VIA KM400

DDR PC2700 512MB (2x256MB)

110GB IDE HD




Right, I'm wanting to upgrade this (I know it's old and ****** but bear with me please) and I'm going to need some advice please as I'm new to upgrading computers.

I need a new motherboard, processor, ram and a half decent graphics card. Is it possible that I will be able to keep my current IDE hard drive for just now and upgrade to a SATA I or II later on? I also take it that my current CD/DVD, Floppy & card readers will work with a new motherboard?

My current monitor is a flatscreen 17" thing but still uses the wide port/serial connection, will this be a problem? How do I go about finidng the rating of my PSU?

Is it worthwhile buying one of these bundles from this sites shop? Or would I be as well buying components separate?

Final thing (almost), I would like to keep my current XP SP2 OS and possibly in the future upgrade to Vista.

Budget

Approx £300, if possible :D

Am I expecting too much from this budget as well?



Update

I am thinking about waiting a month and saving so I will have £500-600 to spend on:

a new motherboard, processor, ram, a half decent graphics card, a decent PSU
possibly a new monitor depending on if this (monitor) cable can connect to the new setup?:
imageupload86731342qy8.jpg
 
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anything built with £300 today will blow your current setup out of the water and maybe even out of existance!

when you say wide port/ serial connection can you describe in more detail such as number of pins per row and approximate shape of connection (or a pic will do nicely).

what purpose is the pc used for by the way as this may help in deciding the correct components for you
 
woudl seriously think about saving money and just buying a new computer, anyone will tell you that virtually not upgradable and your wasting your time

Stelly
 
hikaru452 said:
anything built with £300 today will blow your current setup out of the water and maybe even out of existance!

when you say wide port/ serial connection can you describe in more detail such as number of pins per row and approximate shape of connection (or a pic will do nicely).

what purpose is the pc used for by the way as this may help in deciding the correct components for you
Click to expand...

Pic

imageupload86731342qy8.jpg


Going to be used for student work (programming), downloading music/videos (general net stuff) and casual gaming (i.e. football manager but I'd also like to run some recent games at decent quality.

Stelly said:
woudl seriously think about saving money and just buying a new computer, anyone will tell you that virtually not upgradable and your wasting your time

Stelly
Click to expand...

Taken into consideration, I thought it would be good to ask first. Comment appreciated though.
 
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BillytheImpaler said:
Pick and choose what you need from this. It's a fairly good start.
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2153/cherapfd2.png
A better graphics card would definitely be a good investment. A 1950 Pro would be quite nice as they're dirt cheap now.

EDIT: If you have a 400+ Watt PSU this is darn good:
asdfwd1.png
Click to expand...

Nice one thanks for that.

I'm thinking that I now need to upgrade my PSU as well but I can accomodate an extra £50 for that I think, is this enough for a decent PSU?
 
May want somewhere nearer £60 for a decent one. There are a few enermax, OCZ and antec PSU's around OCUK for that sort of price :)

I myself have a 600w OCZ extreme gamer I originally got for about £60 and I can't fault it apart from not being modular.

So OCZ get a recommendation from me :)
 
Cheers, I've updated the original post but here is the update:

Update

I am thinking about waiting a month and saving so I will have £500-600 to spend on:

a new motherboard, processor, ram, a half decent graphics card, a decent PSU and possibly a new monitor depending on if this (monitor) cable can connect to the new setup?:

imageupload86731342qy8.jpg
 
Pen66 said:
Cheers, I've updated the original post but here is the update:

Update

I am thinking about waiting a month and saving so I will have £500-600 to spend on:

a new motherboard, processor, ram, a half decent graphics card, a decent PSU and possibly a new monitor depending on if this (monitor) cable can connect to the new setup?:

imageupload86731342qy8.jpg
Click to expand...


I think that saving up is a good idea mate...

Stelly
 
Thanks for the replies everyone, just one last question

Will I be able to use my current IDE HD (and use it as my main one, with XP as it currently has on it) and then connect a SATA HD (as a secondary drive) and use this for more space?
 
You sure can, though if it were up to me I'd try to transfer the data from the IDE drive to the SATA one such that the SATA disk became primary and the IDE was storage. It's hardly important and you'll do just fine without such an action though.
 
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