First question of many.

its the same board

The board mentioned by Paul is the same one I have mentioned, which means you dont have to buy more RAM, unless you want to upgrade the amount of RAM you have right now.

Yes you can use the existing parts you still have, GFX card , CD/DVD etc, but I will say a brand new 18 to 20 speed DVD writer all in one is less than 20 quid for the ASUS version, or add a few quid for a brand such as pioneer/sony etc.

It's all going to be dictated by the amount of cash you want to spend.

In terms of software, you operating system is going to be the tricky part. Normally when replacing board+cpu, I would advise a clean install of windows. However, knowing that you have a Packard-Bell, that probably means you had it pre-installed on the machine when you bought it, and it provides only a recovery CD. A recovery CD is a CD designed for that particular OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), and will generally install a complete suite of products without the option of disabling certain features. Again, it's really difficult to tell, I have not owned a PB, only DELL and IBM who both use a similiar setup.

It may be wiser for you to purchase a new OEM copy (OEM but independent of the brand name) of windows XP, and install that. That will give you a clean install, but it's going to add 60 quid to your costs.

In the meantime, make a list of the software you use, make sure you have all the install disks available, and then backup all your email / documents etc. If you are running windows XP, there is a wizard that you can run to backup all your data before you shut the machine down for the last time.
 
No, no that board won't work for him. If you look up the page, you'll see that he has SDRAM, not DDR Ram, so he'll have to buy new RAM anyway.
In my opinion, he should go with his plan of saving up some money (it needn't be a huge amount more than his current £200) & get a new CPU, Motherboard, RAM & graphics card all together. He could get a setup much better than what he has for £300 to £350.
 
Quixote said:
No, no that board won't work for him. If you look up the page, you'll see that he has SDRAM, not DDR Ram, so he'll have to buy new RAM anyway.
In my opinion, he should go with his plan of saving up some money (it needn't be a huge amount more than his current £200) & get a new CPU, Motherboard, RAM & graphics card all together. He could get a setup much better than what he has for £300 to £350.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%. It's very tempting to spend now, but with the price cuts on the Core2Duo's coming soon, the 8600 series graphics cards and RAM prices falling all the time, he'll get a MUCH better system if he waits until May or June.
 
Must be DDR

I just cant believe he could be running a P4 2.8 with SDRAM! It surely must be DDR, even if its the very first flavour of DDR.

Sonicboom, open up CPU-Z and click on the memory tab. Under the General section at the top, next to TYPE, does it list DDR or SDRAM ?
 
ih8modem said:
I just cant believe he could be running a P4 2.8 with SDRAM! It surely must be DDR, even if its the very first flavour of DDR.

Sonicboom, open up CPU-Z and click on the memory tab. Under the General section at the top, next to TYPE, does it list DDR or SDRAM ?
Click to expand...

It's not. It's a 2.5GHz Northwood (he lets us in on that about half-way down the thread).

I've checked out the model number on the NEC website and it's a VERY early S478 board, so early it didn't even ship with XP SP1!

It takes 133MHz SDRAM.
 
yep

Yeah I looked it up too, but this is what I found :

I MEDIA 5083
P/N : P700400501
Columbia GX (GA-8SIML) Ver 1.0 µATX motherboard
Specifications
Form Factor
µATX 24.4 × 22.9 cm Form Factor.
CPU Support
Socket MPGA 478B.
Supports Intel P4 FC-PGA2 (0.18 Micron, 256 K cache, 400 MHz FSB), 1.4 to 2.4 GHz
Supports Intel P4 FC-PGA2 (0.13 Micron, 512 K cache, 400 MHz FSB), 1.8 to 2.4 GHz
Supports Intel Celeron FC-PGA2 (0.18 Micron, 128K cache 400 MHz FSB) 1.9 GHz
100 MHz (x4 = 400 MHz) data bus support (Quad-Bumped technology)
System Memory
Supports 2 memory slots
Serial Presence Detect (SPD) support
Supports a maximum memory size of 1GB (using 2 × 512 MB memory modules)
Support only 2.5 V DIMM DDRAM configurations
Unbuffered type support
266 MHz DDR interface
Core Logic (Chipset)
The SiS 650 IGUI HMAC 3D Graphic SDR/DDR Chipset features
Processor Host/Bus support (400 MHz data transfer rate)
Supports DDR 266/200 SDRAM or PC 133/100 SDRAM
AGTL+ and AGTL compliant bus driver auto compensation
AGP 2.0 compliant
Supports additional AGP 4X/2X interface and Fast Write Transaction
The SiS 961 MuTIOL Media I/O features
PCI rev 2.2 specification support.
Supports PCI bus at 33 MHz.
3 PCI bus masters slots (1 combo with CNR connector).
133 MB/s maximum throughput.
Integrated IDE controller supporting PIO Mode 4 transfers at up to 14 MB/s, Ultra ATA/33 mode transfers at up to 33 MB/s, and Ultra ATA/66 mode transfers up to 66 MB/s and Ultra ATA/100 mode transfers at up to 100 MB/s.
Two USB controllers, supporting wake-up from sleeping states S1-S4, and legacy mouse/keyboard software.

Note: There is support for 4 USB ports on the motherboard, all of which are active at the same time (so no need for a USB selection jumper). Two of the USB ports are on the back panel, and the onboard F_USB2 header can be connected to two USB ports.
AC'97 link for audio and telephony codecs (AC'97 2.2 interface).
SMBus interface.
I/O controller

According to that it only takes up to a 2.4, but I guess there is no reason they could not have dumped a 2.5 in there at some point and forgotten to update the documentation.
 
well I have been trying to get a screen shot of my system info from CPU-Z,
But can't.

The decision has been made I'm going to new build a pc, :)

Doing a few sums £600-£700 could be availiable in a month or so.

Been looking at your cases and systems on a few of the sections and I got to say there a bit special, especially the water cooled types.

Still working on the wife, her argument is I could have a ps3 for less, but no thanks.

speak soon.
 
Well a PS3 is nice but a PC can do so much more than just games. £600 will get you an excellent system, now or a few months down the line. By all means get a good case too, it's well worth spending £40-£50 on a nice case. I think watercooling is not very practical for most people though. It is best suited to high-end systems where people have a lot of money to spare.
 
steps

Best to approach in steps. If you want to save and just go for the whole she-bang in on go, then go for it. As you say having only 1 pc in the house at the moment is a headache and if you were to hurt that remaining PC, the headache can be of migraine quality in short order (well certainly is like that if I touch the better half's pc!)

When you have your cash saved, re-post your questions.

Actually scratch that, just keep posting your questions! There is always someone willing to listen and assist around here.
 
I would advise against watercooling. Your cheapest option would be around £200 anyway and even those are beaten by a decent £30~ air cooling system.

Let us know when you have the cash available and we'll spec you the best possible system. Keep looking around here and you'll probably learn enough to know what you need anyway.
 
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