Upgrade help £100

Claire Drew · 15 Sep 2007 at 20:11

Just bee given a old p4 rig.

2.4ghz 533mhz on Soltek board
512mb sdr ram
TI4200 128ram
1 x dvd burner 108
1 dvd rom
1 x liton cd burner
case and psu 350 watt

I have tried to instal XP pro on a new hardrive but it refuses to install anything. Random reboots and blue screen of death.

I want to gut this rig and upgrade it for around £100.

I have 1gb of DDR2 533mhz that I upgraded from a couple of months ago so wanting to use that. Also the TI4200 and roms case etc.

So realy wanta CPU & Board & hard drive, any ideas. Also looking for option to add on, more memory and better CPU ata alater date

Rig will be used for burning DVDs and will not be on internet and odd girly games.

Secret_Window · 15 Sep 2007 at 20:19

More ram, bigger hdd, I suppose. If it's not for gaming, then the cpu and gfx like you said should be left alone. So that leaves memory and hdd.

Teaf · 15 Sep 2007 at 20:34

This CPU and this motherboard should do you just fine. Problem is however it's a little over budget. If you wanted to reduce the cost, then this asrock motherboard might be worth looking at.

Another note however, since OcUK don't sell XFX products and due to your extreme budget... XFX do a 650i ultra for £50 ish from competitors you may want to shop around and you should be able to get the E2140 and the XFX 650i Ultra board for under £100 with delivery.

Claire Drew · 15 Sep 2007 at 20:50

CPU is what I was looking at to be honest. Beats AMD hands down for the value dual core etc.

Did notice the board was not agp so would have to get new graphics card

Do the XFX offer boards with onboard graphics and waht are both boards like for clocking as the suggested CPU's ae ment to be good clockers?

mp260767 · 15 Sep 2007 at 21:05

i'd get the following, might as well keep the 4200 it should do for what you need unless you play anything that needs the newer sm3 shaders:

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard £36.99 (£43.46)

Intel Core 2 Duo E2140 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.60GHz (800FSB) - Retail £37.99
(£44.64)

Sub Total : £74.98
Shipping : £8.25
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £14.57
Total : £97.80

have you tried installing xp pro on the system you're gutting or have you put it on the spec in you're sig ?

Claire Drew · 15 Sep 2007 at 21:16

My sig rig is runing Vista 64bit.

The P4 rig was running XP pro for around 2/3 years but was getting more and more unstable.

As previous random reboots and blue screens.

Farthering law gave me rig today see if I could do owt with it.

tried to reinstall XP but would not have have it. some times it would start other times need to try turn it on a couple of times before you got owt.

So I cleaned it out stripped it down and checked all connections.

Put back together and fired it up but same problem. Wiped hard drive and tried to put a clean install on but got blue screens and random reboots when trying to install (loaded xp files to drive) but then crashed.

Claire Drew · 15 Sep 2007 at 22:01

My mate may been getting rid of this board, is it worth buying and if so what would you pay?

ASUS P5B Socket 775 Core 2 ready P965 ATX Motherboard

Is it better then the suggested boards?

Teaf · 15 Sep 2007 at 22:02

Claire Drew said:
Is it better then the suggested boards?

Yes, I would take that board over the 650i Ultra or the Asrock. Cost wise... hmm, not sure.

mp260767 · 15 Sep 2007 at 22:18

its a better board, but for the 100 upgrade i'd go for the asrock/processor, otherwise you'll nee to add a gfx card.