PC upgrade... HELP!

Aelred89 · 2 Jan 2007 at 22:31

PC upgrade... HELP! New RAM Question

After a long arguement with my dad i'm not allowed to take a new PC up to Uni

However he has allowed me to upgrade my current system. Atm i have

Intel P4 540 3.2Ghz
Intel 915P Express chipset
1GB DDR2-SDRAM (unnamed i guess

)
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
ATI Radeon X600 (main point of upgrade)
250GB SATA HDD

Whats the best way i can upgrade with and without changing the mo/bo?

Aelred89

thefishdude · 2 Jan 2007 at 22:43

do you know the make and model of your mobo ??? you may be able to get faster chip in it,

if not its pci or agp grahpics card ??

and how much you want to spend ?

stinka · 2 Jan 2007 at 22:50

id just wait till you get to uni and blow a large chunk of your student loan on a new C2D build, your dad will never know

stinka

Aelred89 · 2 Jan 2007 at 22:59

I can't seem to find my mo/bo info anywhere

It is PCI-E and i rekon i'd have about £300-£400 to spend

Aelred89

thefishdude · 2 Jan 2007 at 23:08

300-400 thats the magic number

you could do this

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
(£124.54)
HIS ATI Radeon X1950 Pro ICEQ 3 TURBO SILENT Heatpipe 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (H195PRQT256DD-R)
(£129.24)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(£99.86)
Sub Total : £300.97
Shipping : £8.95
Vat : £54.24
Total : £364.16

just add your hdd your ram and your dvd drive i assume it has dvd ??

in theory you would then have a very nice pc using the latest mobo, cpu and gfx

do you know what psu you have ?

stinka · 2 Jan 2007 at 23:11

with that budget your looking at 8800 nvidia, but this would be bottlenecked by the rest of your system so id go for a x1950 pro and maybe another gig of ram

Aelred89 · 2 Jan 2007 at 23:23

I've found outmy mobo is an ASUS "Puffer2" according to CPUZ, which means i can only use P4 5../6..

Is it worth changing my P4 3.2 540 to a 640 with the 64 bit technology? and i was thinking about getting the Connect3D ATI Radeon X1950 XT for £164.49

Aelred89

thefishdude · 2 Jan 2007 at 23:50

yoru pc is a hewlit packard or compaq i take it ? this is your mobo

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00300023

to be honest i think the cheapest and easiest way to improve your pc would be just a gfx card change. the one you mentioned is good how ever it may be limited by the rest of your system so would be over killi would recomend an ati 1950pro wich is astill a great card i have it now and runs eveyrthing. it is also only £130 not sure about changing the cpu not sure if you woudl see much of an advatage

Aelred89 · 3 Jan 2007 at 09:17

yeh that looks pretty much like my mo/bo, notice the lack of space for the PCI-E

I've had to take out my tv tuner card to make way for a new GPU

Aelred89 · 3 Jan 2007 at 09:39

RAM Question

Also if i wanted to upgrade the RAM would my mo/bo handle DDR2 PC2-5300? I currently have DDR2 PC2-3200, or will it be best to stick with that? :confused:

I don't really understand RAM all that well, if i was to add to my current RAM can i mix 5300 and 3200 or do i need to buy all new stuff?

Hope you can help

Aelred89

m3zzr · 3 Jan 2007 at 10:34

sorry, mis-read the original post, so edit the crap out so i now dont look like a n00b..

now i probally look like a n00b anyway