Spec help

Flenser · 18 Feb 2009 at 13:38

Hi guys and gals,

I'm a bit out of touch on system building after not having put one together for over two years now and I could do with a little help on a system upgrade.

My Sempron 3000+ is on its last legs and I was intending to just upgrade the memory to a couple of Gb in order for it to see me through another year but then my back-pay arrived.

Obviously the CPU, mobo, memory and graphics card will be incompatable with a modern system but I hope to reuse some of the other kit, I have:

Antec Lanboy case
Corsair HX 520W PSU
Seagate Barracuda 80Gb HDD (IDE)
WD 5000AAKS HDD (SATA II)
Lite-On LH-20A1S-11C 20x DVD+-R SATA Optical Drive

Now I imagine I can bin the 80Gb drive if necessary and go with the 500Gb for both boot and storage but all the rest of it is okay I hope?

I don't do any gaming (that's why god invented the Xbox 360) but I do intent to do music and maybe some low-level graphical editing. And I'd prefer onboard graphics if possible to keep the initial cost down.

Last time I spec'ed a system Intel ruled the roost and DDR2 was cutting edge... Help!

I have £150 to spend.

Thanks in advance.

Flenser · 18 Feb 2009 at 14:13

Thanks for the swift replies. :cool:

Is it still worth keeping separate boot and storage drives? I guss I must have had a brainwave at some point in history...

Flenser · 20 Feb 2009 at 10:12

I guess that was the definite suggestion then.

Many thanks mp260767 and Ben M, I'll structure my shopping list accordingly.

:cool:

Flenser · 23 Feb 2009 at 14:19

mp260767 said:
i still do it, saves losing stuff if a reinstall is needed, also helps with having the page file on another disk.

That was my reasoning for having separate drives in the first palce... I think.

Flenser · 23 Feb 2009 at 16:11

Am I likely to notice any difference between the two suggested motherboards?

(Not had a chance to check the spec yet as I'm at work)

And will 32bit XP be okay with 4Gb of RAM, is it going to fall over or just use what it's capable of?

Many thanks.

Flenser · 23 Feb 2009 at 21:25

Oh, and another one...

Will these motherboards boot to SATA or do I still need to slipstream the XP disk to get the drivers?

Like I say, it's been a while.

Flenser · 23 Feb 2009 at 22:57

Killwerty said:
No, they should boot to SATA fine.

Sweet! Not had a floppy for ages.

Thanks again guys, you've been extremely helpful. :cool:

Flenser · 4 Mar 2009 at 14:52

Just like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for their help again.

The bits arrived yesterday and I spent four hours last night stipping out the old components, fitting the new ones and reinstalling XP SP3 (slipstreamed using nLite with the correct SATA drivers just to be on the safe side) and all the rest of my software.

No problems at all, everything compatable and even XP didn't give any problems.