Could use some help on filling in the blanks please. I'm more or less broke and my 4+ year old AthlonXP 2400 rig is living on borrowed time and will implode any day.
However, I've managed to coerce the following freebies from a friend who has just returned to his native US. All new or barely used.
Asus P5VDC-MX board
Pentium D 945 DualCore 6.8 GHz (with Intel's own fan and heatsink)
2 x 1GB DDR2 PC 4200
Stuff I could butcher from my old : (can't give you full model codes on some stuff, I'm at work right now...)
Creative Soundblaster Audigy2 Platinum
ATI Radeon 9800XT* (but I'd rather get an upgrade)
Generic ATX Tower case
Antec 550w PSU (from their bottom end line about 4 years ago)
A generic DVD/CD-RW drive
Generic Floppy drive.
Windows XP Home Edition, SP2
(Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse are all pretty new so no need for upgrades here)
The HDD is only a WD 20GB 5400rpm beast and desperately needs to be replaced. Its backed up with an external 60GB Maxtor Firewire drive. Its principally a gaming machine with CSS and EQ2 being the most commonly played. As you can probably tell, the rig was a hamfisted construction put together by a moron ( ie. me) and I'm amazed its lasted this long.
So in short I'm looking for advice on a new gfx card, HDD (or 2) and anything else that might improve things. Here's the kicker - I've got a budget of £200-250 max.
Your help would be gratefully appreciated!
However, I've managed to coerce the following freebies from a friend who has just returned to his native US. All new or barely used.
Asus P5VDC-MX board
Pentium D 945 DualCore 6.8 GHz (with Intel's own fan and heatsink)
2 x 1GB DDR2 PC 4200
Stuff I could butcher from my old : (can't give you full model codes on some stuff, I'm at work right now...)
Creative Soundblaster Audigy2 Platinum
ATI Radeon 9800XT* (but I'd rather get an upgrade)
Generic ATX Tower case
Antec 550w PSU (from their bottom end line about 4 years ago)
A generic DVD/CD-RW drive
Generic Floppy drive.
Windows XP Home Edition, SP2
(Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse are all pretty new so no need for upgrades here)
The HDD is only a WD 20GB 5400rpm beast and desperately needs to be replaced. Its backed up with an external 60GB Maxtor Firewire drive. Its principally a gaming machine with CSS and EQ2 being the most commonly played. As you can probably tell, the rig was a hamfisted construction put together by a moron ( ie. me) and I'm amazed its lasted this long.
So in short I'm looking for advice on a new gfx card, HDD (or 2) and anything else that might improve things. Here's the kicker - I've got a budget of £200-250 max.
Your help would be gratefully appreciated!
In which case Lolcb's advice is probably best although depending on how stable the PSU is it might be worth thinking about a replacement as well.