Spec me a couple of bits

Nefastus · 12 Feb 2006 at 22:11

Okay, my dad wants to upgrade some parts for our family computer (it is like so ancient right now!). His price range is from about £300 to £450. This must include a new processor, motherboard, memory, hardrive, dvd drive and of course a good graphics card (for my gaming too). If possible, could you inclube vat too? Thank you!

Trigger · 12 Feb 2006 at 22:12

Could you tell us the spec of the system you have now please?

Nefastus · 12 Feb 2006 at 22:28

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1500+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.3GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Hardrive: 20gb Maxtor 2B020H1
Graphics card: NVIDIA 5200 128mb

I believe that is all I know about our system.

Trigger · 12 Feb 2006 at 22:45

Optronix Midi Tower Case - (Black) 400w PSU (CA-001-OP) -- £26.44 Including VAT at 17.5%

AMD Sempron 64 3100+ 1.8GHz (Socket 754) CPU - Retail (CP-136-AM) -- £70.44 Including VAT at 17.5%

Asus K8N4-E nForce4 4X (Socket 754) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-125-AS) -- £58.69 Including VAT at 17.5%

GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL) -- £64.57 Including VAT at 17.5%

Samsung SpinPoint P HD160JJ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-024-SA) -- £58.69 Including VAT at 17.5%

NEC ND4550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Beige) - OEM (CD-023-NE) -- £29.96 Including VAT at 17.5%

Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO² 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-101-SP) -- £129.19 Including VAT at 17.5%

TOTAL = £437.71

Right, although a Socket 939 system was *just* in budget I decided you would get more for you money through Socket 754. The CPU should be pretty good and it has more cache than the standard semprons cache of 128. Although the Socket 754 CPU's don't support dual channel, I went for two sticks for upgrades in the future. The PCI-E graphics card is very good for the money and mods very well. I used one of those cases the other week for a friend and was impressed with the build quality and the PSU had pretty decent rails as well

Should also be easy to upgrade as you would just require a new CPU and motherboard to go Socket 939. Should serve you very wel for now though :cool:

Nefastus · 13 Feb 2006 at 08:40

Quick question for you, Trigger. I do not think our present fan will do wonders for this, would you be able to find a good one that is within the budget?

Thanks!

Lakeland · 13 Feb 2006 at 11:03

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) £17.57 Including VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Vantec.html (if the case dont have a fan, pick one of these thats the right size, more than likly 120mm)

if you arnt over clocking then you wont need a new heatsink, the standard one will be fine, just a bit noisy, so if your bothered about noise its worth the extra £17.

semi-pro waster · 13 Feb 2006 at 11:16

Trigger's specification looks good to me, I might suggest a change to the NEC 4551 as it is the newer version but other than that no obvious changes

Nefastus · 13 Feb 2006 at 16:28

If I switched a Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO² 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-101-SP) with a Sapphire X1600 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-114-SP) would that be better for my gaming? Also, would it run with the setup? Same if I went for a 200gb hardrive instead of a 160gb.

Thanks!

semi-pro waster · 13 Feb 2006 at 17:28

Nope I wouldn't change, although it may be clocked higher the X1600 doesn't have as many pixel shaders, as many vertex shaders or as many pixel pipelines not to mention that the memory bus is 128bit as opposed to 256bit which cripples it somewhat. The X800 GT02 maybe older technology but it is better and it costs about the same.

A 200gb hard drive will work fine, if you want to get one then it just depends on your budget.

Nefastus · 13 Feb 2006 at 18:11

So a Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 200GB 2000JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-048-WD) would be okay?