Upgrading my pc - Where do I start?

DazedAndConfuzed

Hi all,

I'm looking to upgrade my pc as it's started to make a strange whirring noise when it (eventually) starts up, and it's not been touched for 4 years so it's about time for a refresh.

I was hoping to keep the case, CD/DVD drive and hard drive but get a new Motherboard, graphics card, processor and more RAM. Not really got a budget in mind but I'd love to be able to make it play downloaded high def movies and some of the latest games.

Just not sure where to start or what's compatible with what, etc. I've got a full system spec if that'd help with recommendations?

All help is gratefully received!!

Cheers :beer:

BillScarab

Strange whirring noise could be a fan.

You could do a seach for motherboard bundels, they usually come with motherboard, cpu and ram, then add a graphics card.

However your hard drive is old and maybe IDE whereas most modern ones are SATAII. I'd seriously look at just buying a new machine. Once you've bought your new parts it won't cost much more to replace everything.

The other thing to consider is the PSU, will the one in your existing case handle a modern GPU?

There's some motherboard bundles here to give you some ideas.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/bundles.html

the.ciscokid

Hmm, it gets a bit more complex that you would think when you are building a PC - at least it does for me, as I usually try to balance what I want against a budget.

You will likely need a new HDD if you are planning on playing newer games, speed (rpm), and data transfer rates (if it is IDE) might limit you ability to play the latest games. Also (though I have never had one fail on me) your HDD can fail when old, and if you have important data on it, you could lose it (or it might cost you a lot to get back from a data recovery specialist etc.). Better to spend the extra £50 IMO.

The last PC I built all components were bought from ebuyer - I wont go into details but I had to RMA the motherboard twice, needed to return some RAM once, and had a faulty PSU - all with the space of a couple of months. I will say that there returns isn't bad, but since then I have decided not to use them again.

You could try looking at the Overclockers UK forums for some more advice - and purchasing components from there - they are supposed to be good.

CD/DVD drives are cheap, and you might want to think about upgrading that as well -since the RW speeds of these can limit your experience - would you just watch downloaded movies (tut tut!) or would you want to watch the movies from Blue Ray disks themselves?

Do you have your old Windows disc? If so, make sure you use the licence for the old PC on the new one - so long as you getting rid of the old one- that way you wont have to spend money on a new OS. My last machine for gaming on cost ~£600 all in, with pretty high specs.

Have you ever built a PC before?

antispam246

If you're able to tell us the current specs of your machine people will be able to advise you better, e.g. make and model of hardware or if the machine was bought as a package the make and model of the pc itself.

As it's already been stated a machine of 4 years of age may not be able to be upgraded sufficiently enough to warrant doing it versus buying a new machine. However, it also depends on what you want to use it for and exactly what sort of performance increase your after.

With the upgrades your looking for you need to ensure your new motherboard will fit your current case as well as the current RAM you use being compatible with a new motherboard selection. This really applies to everything hardweare wise, when you switch the motherboard out the only thing that's guaranteed to remain compatible is the cd/dvd player.

If you set on going down this router post the info as mentionedb efore and people will be able to give you a better idea.

Lil306

As Bill has mentioned. An upgrade bundle will be the cheapest and best way to go since you want to keep the components.

I bought a new PSU, new graphics card (as the M/B didn't have AGP or VGA) and a motherboard bundle (Athlon XP 5200 and 2GB DDR RAM), it cost me £170 for everything in total from Novatech.

I don't play games much myself, but the graphics card does the job. If you play games you can get decent cards anywhere from £60 upwards.

Hard drives are definately a must if you can afford to buy one. However, one thing I WILL recommend is make sure your PC has sufficient cooling. I bought a new 250GB SATA HDD and it's health is at about 70% because of the temps in my PC, where as my old 160gb IDE is still chugging away after about 6 years at 100%. Go figure!! So look into extra cooling fans for another £7-10

I'm looking at buying a Zalman 1000GS case from Novatech soon as I want to expand the PC and I'm putting 2 more graphics cards in it and doubling the RAM again

One more thing to note, current memory is cheap so you can get 4gb, however if you get 4gb unless you use a 64-bit version of Windows XP you can only see 3.5gb. If you have Windows Vista / Windows 7 I don't believe it's an issue, IIRC all versions can see more than 4gb out the box.

BillScarab

Lil306 wrote: »

As Bill has mentioned. An upgrade bundle will be the cheapest and best way to go since you want to keep the components.

I bought a new PSU, new graphics card (as the M/B didn't have AGP or VGA) and a motherboard bundle (Athlon XP 5200 and 2GB DDR RAM), it cost me £170 for everything in total from Novatech.

I don't play games much myself, but the graphics card does the job. If you play games you can get decent cards anywhere from £60 upwards.

Hard drives are definately a must if you can afford to buy one. However, one thing I WILL recommend is make sure your PC has sufficient cooling. I bought a new 250GB SATA HDD and it's health is at about 70% because of the temps in my PC, where as my old 160gb IDE is still chugging away after about 6 years at 100%. Go figure!! So look into extra cooling fans for another £7-10

I'm looking at buying a Zalman 1000GS case from Novatech soon as I want to expand the PC and I'm putting 2 more graphics cards in it and doubling the RAM again

One more thing to note, current memory is cheap so you can get 4gb, however if you get 4gb unless you use a 64-bit version of Windows XP you can only see 3.5gb. If you have Windows Vista / Windows 7 I don't believe it's an issue, IIRC all versions can see more than 4gb out the box.

The RAM is an issue with any operating system unless it is 64 Bit. Any 32 Bit operating system can only address 4GB of RAM (there are ways to get round this but they don't tend to apply for Home PCs).

Anyone building a new PC now shoudl really be going for 64 Bit anyway if they can.

Lil306

My bad, I'm aware of the memory hacking tricks but for the prices I'd rather go for 64-bit. Didn't know off the top of my head if it was corrected or it was an issue with all but I guess that sums it up

Saving_spree

Hardware upgrades can be important if you are running out of space on your hard drive or if you begin using memory intensive programs. Hard drive and memory upgrades are fairly cheap and easy to install.

DazedAndConfuzed

Cheers for the help. I've been looking on t'e-bay and seen this one, seems liek a bargain for £200 and easily upgradable?

DELL PRECISION 470 WORKSTATION AND GAMING COMPUTER

CAN BE USED AS A TOWER OR DESKTOP

WITH 2 X INTEL XEON 2.8GHZ PROCESSORS = 5.6GHZ

WITH 1024MB MEMORY (CAN TAKE UPTO 16GB RAM)

AND A DVD/CD DRIVE (CAN TAKE 2 DRIVES)

GRAPHICS CARDS MAY VARY BUT SOME ARE MATROX G450 / NVS 280, NVS PCI, ETC CARDS INSTALLED FOR DUAL SCREEN OUTPUT WHEN NEEDED AND VIDEO LEAD IS INCLUDED (CAN TAKE 4 CARDS)

WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL PRE-INSTALLED


The Precision 470 is built to last with its extremely accessible tool-less case and handy Front USB ports. The Precision 470 is a great foundation to build on with its simple tool-less component system for easy removal or addition of drives. Complete with 10/100 integrate Ethernet, DVD/CD drive, Floppy, and expandable PCI AND PCI EXPRESS slots make this desktop/tower computer a great solution for your casual computing needs
 INTEL ZEON 2 X 2.8GHZ PROCESSORS
 1024MB MEMORY
 80GB HARD DRIVE
 DVD/CD DRIVE
 GRAPHICS CARD, may vary and may be one of many but will come with video lead
 8 X USB PORT
 PARALLEL PORT, 2X SERIAL PORT
 ETHERNET PORT
Integrated Input/Output Ports USB 2.0 x 8 • Serial Port x 2 • RJ45 Lan Port x 1 • PS/2 Mouse x 1 • PS/2 Keyboard x 1 • Parallel Port (ECP/EPP/SPP) x 1



2 x 5.25" (External Access) • 1 x 3.5" (External Access)
One PCI Express x16 Graphics slot with support for 150w graphics cards
One 32-bit/33 MHz PCI slot
One 64 bit/100 MHz PCIx slot
One PCI Express slot wired as x4 (2GB/s) but with a x8 connector. A x8 card installed in this slot will function at x4 speeds

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Seems like that'll do the job really well, or am I being a bit dense?

Lil306

Personally I wouldn't bother with that one, seems to be a mismatch of components. If you're interesting in gaming you need 2GB Ram and Decent CPU at a minimum

Do you have a budget at all ?

You'd be surprised at what you can get nowadays for cheap. You will need to alot about £100 for your O/S for the computer. Or alternatively you could be cheeky and if your other PC has a COA sticker with product key, you can get a "backup" copy of Windows from a friend and reinstall Windows using that product key on your new machine you won't be using 64-bit but you'll still get a working O/S on the cheap.

Xeon CPUs are multi-cores mainly designed for servers.

EDIT - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMD-X2-7850-x2-2-80MHz-Gaming-System-9500-GT-4gig-Mem_W0QQitemZ280301620266QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_DesktopPCs?hash=item4143474c2a

That's a bit of a better example for you, bit more pricier but you basically buy a copy of Windows and your good to go after installation.

Look around, don't just stick to ebay because most people rip others off on there. I'd stick to commerical sites like Novatech, Ebuyer, and local computer stores etc.

Lil306

Just as a note, you can get a good gaming system capable of running nearly all games for around 300-400.

For the latest games out (Call of Duty etc) you can expect to pay upwards of £800 if you want blistering performance