cheat as chips gaming rig, or upgrade

famas · 21 Mar 2006 at 20:29

hi all
my friend has a cheap pc, based on the intel celeron processor, which i think is a socket LGA775,
it has 256mb of cheap ram
a 40 gb ide hard drive
no graphics card
a cd-rw and dvd rom drive.
and thats about all, bought from a well known internet bassed company, we all know the one!

any ways he wants to play the lastest games at medium resolutions, he says he wants it to be based on my pc, same sort of speed, etc, but for his bugdet theres no way he can have what ive got.

now the question is,
do i try and upgrade his pc,

or would it be easyer, cheaper to try and save as many parts from the original pc and just upgrade the mobo, processor, etc

now im pretty sure that i can put 1 GB of ram onto the original mobo, and my friend said it can take a graphics card, but theres no way it can have a pci express card, not even sure if its an agp 4x8x.

now the hdd is ide so im guessing theres no chance of getting a sata hdd.

also can i get a better processor for that soket, like a pentium?

he is going to be using the pc for gaming and surfing the web, watching movies, storing a lot of music, etc, but his main concern is that it must be quick, so a gb of ram, and better cpu are high on the list, but then also a hlaf decent graphics card,

his budget is the real problem tho, hes only got around 300=350£ to play with,
u can see why im having trouble.

any way all help is much welcome

Neoni · 21 Mar 2006 at 20:35

cheap? you mean "cheap as chips"

lee87 · 21 Mar 2006 at 20:46

I think the best thing to do would be to swithch over to amd and get a pci-e gfx card. He could upgrade to quite a decent pc with that money.

MB-041-GI Gigabyte K8NMF-9 nForce4 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-041-GI) 1
£41.95 £41.95
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK) 1
£39.95 £39.95
GX-055-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO16 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-055-PC) 1
£79.95 £79.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) 1
£125.95 £125.95
Subtotal £287.80
VAT £50.37
Total £338.17

famas · 21 Mar 2006 at 21:13

lee87 said:
I think the best thing to do would be to swithch over to amd and get a pci-e gfx card. He could upgrade to quite a decent pc with that money.

MB-041-GI Gigabyte K8NMF-9 nForce4 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-041-GI) 1
£41.95 £41.95
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK) 1
£39.95 £39.95
GX-055-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO16 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-055-PC) 1
£79.95 £79.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) 1
£125.95 £125.95
Subtotal £287.80
VAT £50.37
Total £338.17

yeah thats very similar to a spec that i was thinking of, only thing is, will a micro mobo fit in the case, will the original psu be powerfull enough? do i get a sata hdd to speed things up, or is there not that much difference between ide and sata, i also forgot to mention that he wants a dvd-rw,

and yes neon it should be cheap as chips.

Explicit · 21 Mar 2006 at 21:51

lee87 said:
I think the best thing to do would be to swithch over to amd and get a pci-e gfx card. He could upgrade to quite a decent pc with that money.

MB-041-GI Gigabyte K8NMF-9 nForce4 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-041-GI) 1
£41.95 £41.95
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK) 1
£39.95 £39.95
GX-055-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO16 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-055-PC) 1
£79.95 £79.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) 1
£125.95 £125.95
Subtotal £287.80
VAT £50.37
Total £338.17

That will be a nice upgrade from the intel. Good performance for £338.

Scythe · 21 Mar 2006 at 21:53

If its a hell pc, you won't be able to do it. They use special connectors on their PSU's not standard.

famas · 21 Mar 2006 at 22:03

yeah i heard about them using there own kind of internals, any thing else i should know about?

or is it just *** psu that will need replacing as well?

cheers guys

stvmor · 21 Mar 2006 at 22:59

Only stuff worth keeping are CDRW/DVD and Hdd. Don't waste £30 on a DVD writer and don't bother changing to SATA as these can be added later when more money becomes available. You may be able to use the case but the rest is for auction (can I say e-thingy on here?).

The PSU will be pants so junk it.