Computer buff help required...
 

Right, Im bored of my current system... and I want to upgrade, now Im no longer a student and dont have student loans to build my computer with, I cannot afford to fork out £3000 building this system.... :lol:

I want to build myself a new computer.. not sure whether to go the Intel or AMD systems.. but rather one thats going to get me good performance, and not cost the earth to build!

so that means a slight lean towards the AMD side of things possibly... As £150 (ish) will get me a good processor and a good motherboard, whereas if I went Intel, that would get me just the CPU if I was lucky....

Whatever I build it has to be better than the following, and will probably use some bits of it as well...

XP3200
1Gb PC3200 RAM
9800Pro AGP graphics card
A7N8X-E motherboard
80Gb SATA HDD

and thats about the major bits of it....

I was thinking possibly this as teh CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Socket 939, ManchesterCore, 2x 2.2GHz, 1MB Cache, OEM

and whatever motherboard thats recommended around the £50 area....

I'll be looking at buying new DDR2 RAM (probably 1x 1Gb stick so I can go to dual channel with another stick later) and Im thinking of possibly a 7900GT graphics card ?

hard drive, I will use the one from above system... not sure if SATA 2 is worth buying a new hard drive yet... :lol:


anyone have any recommendations ?

cheers!

For starts I have to say that my PC is AMD 2800 and the rest the same as on urs apart from the HDD

I AM NOT UPGRADING IT!

Reason is that my housemate got a 64bit a couple of months ago.....we are both gamers and we both play the same games with no issues AT ALL

So unless you just fancy a new one or do something VERY demanding on yours I would keep the money or spend it on sthing else:)

my 2p

Scan have some Foxconn 939's with the nforce 4 chipset for about the fifty quid mark. They're generally pretty good and in budget.

Just in the the process of upgrading myself but I'm going for a media centre so its all about SATA II storage and wildly overpriced cases :D

I play flight simulators... and not the type you just happily fly about in.. more the ones where you try and shoot down your opponent before getting shot down yourself... Im upgrading ready for a new release which I know will kill my system stone dead.... as its predecessor is CPU intensive as it is... :lol:

Scan is where I plan on buying me stuff from anyway.. unless Dabs comes out cheaper somewhere along the line...

cheers !

If you're selling your CPU or graphics card could you drop me a PM please? I need a new CPU and the missus could do with something a bit more powerful for running her games.

I can get quite good prices from www.MicroDirect.co.uk

A cheap motherboard will be a false economy as will a socket 939. Go AM2 or possibly consider an Intel which gives a better bang per buck.

:thumbsup: Whatever you do always throw as much as you can at a mobo.
Historically (ie I havent read up on recent comparisons) AMD out perform Intel when it comes to games, with Intel being better at multitasking. www.ebuyer.co.uk may be worth checking out

AMD AM2 Athlon 64 4600+ Windsor Core, Dual Core 2.4GHz, 2x 512KB Cache,

one of them processors ? As for Motherboard, something ASUS or other well known manufacturer I will probably lean towards...

Around £50 should get me a half decent motherboard, not looking for all the bells and whistles.... :lol:

I do have a question about SATA though.... will a SATA 2 Mobo take a SATA 1 Hard drive ? I would hope there would be some backwards compatibility..... but its not the end of the world I f I have to invest in yet another hard drive... :lol: I can leave that until much later, and probably get Vista along with it as OEM.... or upgrade..