Hi all,
I last built a PC probably 8 years ago, and am completely out of touch with hardware. I have read a lot of conflicting advice in internet reviews so I thought, as this forum looks like it has a lot of informed users, I would register here and see what you guys think. Sorry if some of my questions seem basic to you, but they aren't to me!
My current rig, which I purchased roughly 4 years ago pre-built is:
Coolermaster Tower case
Asus A8N Sli 939 Motherboard
AMD 64 4000 San Diego
2Gb Crucial Ram (4x512Mb)
Sata 250Gb Western Digital
Sata 250Gb Hitachi
IDE Dvd Recorder
IDE CD Recorder
Floppy
580w Thermaltake PSU
GTX 7900 256mb
22" LCD screen (1680x1050 native)
I have recently upgraded the Gfx card to a 4850 ATI 512Mb, which is a great improvement, but is being held up by my cpu and memory (I imagine?).
I only have around £200 (+ maybe £100 next month) to upgrade the motherboard, memory and cpu, so I have been looking at a core duo, or an amd chip with 4Gb ram.
Which one would be the best improvement for me, and what is a good motherboard/cpu combo?
My PSU is quite old now but still reasonably powerful, but will the connectors still be OK for a new motherboard?
I saw a video of a guy installing a new motherboard yesterday and he was installing sata connectors to his DVD drives. Will my IDE drives ones still be OK? I would like to use whatever I can from my current rig.
The last PC I built was an athlon XP 2500, is the basic principle still the same, or will I struggle to put a new one together?
I mainly use my computer for games (COD4, BF2, Empire Total War and soon Aion), and for graphic design work using Adobe CS3.
Many thanks in advance,
Andy
I last built a PC probably 8 years ago, and am completely out of touch with hardware. I have read a lot of conflicting advice in internet reviews so I thought, as this forum looks like it has a lot of informed users, I would register here and see what you guys think. Sorry if some of my questions seem basic to you, but they aren't to me!
My current rig, which I purchased roughly 4 years ago pre-built is:
Coolermaster Tower case
Asus A8N Sli 939 Motherboard
AMD 64 4000 San Diego
2Gb Crucial Ram (4x512Mb)
Sata 250Gb Western Digital
Sata 250Gb Hitachi
IDE Dvd Recorder
IDE CD Recorder
Floppy
580w Thermaltake PSU
GTX 7900 256mb
22" LCD screen (1680x1050 native)
I have recently upgraded the Gfx card to a 4850 ATI 512Mb, which is a great improvement, but is being held up by my cpu and memory (I imagine?).
I only have around £200 (+ maybe £100 next month) to upgrade the motherboard, memory and cpu, so I have been looking at a core duo, or an amd chip with 4Gb ram.
Which one would be the best improvement for me, and what is a good motherboard/cpu combo?
My PSU is quite old now but still reasonably powerful, but will the connectors still be OK for a new motherboard?
I saw a video of a guy installing a new motherboard yesterday and he was installing sata connectors to his DVD drives. Will my IDE drives ones still be OK? I would like to use whatever I can from my current rig.
The last PC I built was an athlon XP 2500, is the basic principle still the same, or will I struggle to put a new one together?
I mainly use my computer for games (COD4, BF2, Empire Total War and soon Aion), and for graphic design work using Adobe CS3.
Many thanks in advance,
Andy
