"Modernizing" PC, got some specs critisism/suggestions wanted

Thenotsowyzewun

Hi I'm upgrading an old PC, its got a few bits I'm going to carry on using: Screen keyboard mouse scanner printer cdrw dvdrom case, so basically I'm just looking to buy the following:
CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Hard Drive
Graphics Card
PSU
Not sure I need a new PSU, new hardware seems to use alot more power tho (suggestions definetely welcome about this!).
I've set myself a budget of £350 but I want a fast machine so I could stretch to £400, so far I've found these parts:
CPU: Intel P4 3GHz socket 478 (prescott) £110 (all prices inc delivery and vat, and I might find cheaper on eBay or suggestions?)
RAM: DDR PC-2700 (333mhz) 512MB (x2) = approx £60
Advice wanted on this: I'm going to be mainly using the internet and playing games like the sims and age of empires occasionally (well not me actually, I'm building this for my fiance's family) - should I get more RAM or faster RAM? - I was going to get 512MB of PC-4200 (533mhz) for about £70, which is better for these purposes?
Motherboard:
How about this (its the cheapest on pricerunner that supports the RAM speed): MSI 865PE Neo2-V £51
Hard Drive:
Since I've got all this speedy stuff, how about: Western Digital Raptor 36GB/SATA 150 £77
It's very expensive for the size (I could get a 250GB IDE 7200RPM drive for £2 more!) but it's S-ATA and it's an extra 3000 (almost) RPM so presumably a lot faster then (and if they run out of space in a year or two they can buy another much cheaper!)
Lastly: Graphics Card
I picked this because it's cheap and they won't be playing really advanced games, but is it going to slow the machine down generally? I don't really have a clue, but I'd assume it'd be ok if they don't play games like Doom3!
Dabsvalue GeForce MX4000 128MB DDR/AGP/TV-OUT £26

Remember I said they wanted to spend £350 but were prepared to spend a bit more (and I might put a bit in) well that lot costs £326 (if I get the faster RAM) but I haven't got a PSU in the spec yet.

Please please give me suggestions/critisism cos it'd be really handy! Also no probs with the lack of warranty/installation, I'll handle that (won't say what I do for a job but I get alot of experience doing such things hehe).

TheChillPill

Have a look at using AMD processors, generally cheaper and as fast (if not faster) - comparible motherboards also cheaper.

Also, stay clear of ebay for components - you won't find any bargains on new stuff, if anything you'll pay more and have the hassles of ebay sellers to deal with too (especially if there is a problem further down the line).

Spend some money on a decent PSU too - these days it's becoming a very important part. Stay clear of the PSU's costing under £10, and spend £25-£35 on a good one.

culpepper

check that the motherboard will fit the original case.
I made that mistake when putting mine together.
We had an old case put away and I got all the other bits,got the case down from the cupboard and realised the motherboard wouldnt fit.
Also if the keyboard is old ,check the connector will fit a modern motherboard.

wolfman

I'd go in the direction of AMD. In fact my housemate wants me to spec something out for him for a similar price. I was looking at:

AMD Athlon64 3000+ - £100
Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Motherboard - £70
512mb PC3200 400Mhz Ram - £40
120gb hard drive (WD or Maxtor) - £53
Graphics card not sure, but a PCI-E card, something like a Geforce GF6200 - £60
Power Supply - Tagan 420W TG420-U01 - £52
Total £375

A few points to note. You should be looking at PC3200 Ram instead of PC2700 with such a spec. I'd also steer clear of the 10,000rpm SATA drives for now. You don't really need one, they're generally for extreme circumstances and servers.

All the above is from https://www.microdirect.co.uk

I don't know if you'd need a new power supply, what is your current one? Tagan's are very good though, I prefer them to Enermax. 420W should be more than enough to run the above.

Thenotsowyzewun

Hi I've taken your advice and reconsidered on the S-ATA 10000RPM drive, read about it on a few sites too who said it'd only be of benefit if you're constantly accessing the drive, e.g. encoding DiVX (so maybe I should get one instead!

I've chosen this because it does seem there's not much savings going on between 60-120GB (a few quid) but above this point the prices soar up again.


Hi thanks for your advice about S-ATA and David vs Goliath (Intel vs AMD). I'm going to go with AMD (usually I don't even look at their kit!) after reading that they do 3 extra instructions per clock cycle and they have 1000MHz faster buses and 64bit technology, and I've seen them benchmarked outperforming the Intel P4 I picked out, so here's the AMD chip I'm going to get (unless someone can tell me there's something better at the price!) AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8GHz Socket 939 1800MHz bus for about £100.

As I said I've also reconsidered S-ATA and after looking at the performance differences on again various peoples benchmarks I've picked out this:
Western Digital Caviar SE 120Gb 8Mb Cache 7200RPM HDD OEM
Savastore seems to have to quite cheap (link )(have only checked pricerunner, I'll use Dealtime Priceguide Pricegrabber Kelkoo and of course Google before I buy it) it's £54.81 inc. delivery (saving me £22 and giving an extra 84GB or so space ).

Chosen this RAM because I've heard of OCZ, since I'm not overclocking this machine not sure how much it'll help buying better RAM tho: OCZ Premier 512MB PC-3200 for £40
By the way I would go with PC-4200 but I can't find a single AMD board supporting above DDR400.
Also with the lack of intensive game playing, should I spend another £40 on RAM or Graphics?

I'm looking at this as a motherboard at the moment, with the consideration that there's £155 left to spend (although this could stretch to £200, £250 even if it was really worth it), I don't have a clue about what chipsets are best for AMD chips but I've noticed the cheapest run at 1600mhz system bus and the more expensive are quoted at 2000mhz.
Here's one that caught my eye (it was only £15 more expensive than the cheapest 2000mhz and said ULTRA in the name, as opposed to LITE, still, there's an EXTREME for another £10 hehe) Gigabyte GA-K8V Ultra-939 for £65. It's got a Via chipset (which to be honest makes me assume its abit pants) but thats just me being stereotypical against chipset companies hehe.

So that'd leave £90 for graphics and PSU, I've got a Hiper PSU in my machine but it cost me £55 (its 500w) and despite letting me overclock 400mhz (it has 2 beefy fans) it can make alot of noise sometimes, so I've taken a look at PSU's and since link says I only need 260 watts for this configuration maybe I've already got a PSU lying around that could handle that load (I'm assuming a 300 watt supply would do, I've read about peak and average ratings though... whats the worst that could happen (thats a question not a rhetoric hehe).

Assuming I don't need to buy a PSU (that'd be great, but I don't want to be too hopeful yet) I've got £90 left to spend on graphics, I've had a look around this pricemark and seen lots of nVidia Geforce 6600's and lots of ATi X700 Pro's - I'm still quite sceptical about the need for PCI-X, is this being recommended for future-proofing purposes.
Also, I could just get a cheaper graphics card (remembering the lack of intensive gameplay) and spend another £50 or so on better RAM/processor, what's everyone's thoughts on this.

Here's the new spec so far:

Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 CPU £100
Western Digital Caviar SE 120Gb HDD £55
OCZ Premier 512MB PC-3200 DDR RAM £40
Gigabyte GA-K8V Ultra-939 motherboard £65
Graphics undecided
PSU undecided
Budget: £350-£400
Budget remaining: £90-£140

By the way, it's really handy being able to get everyone's criticisms and suggestions!

blinky

For memory go to www.crucial.com/uk

High quality and good prices.

I've got the Hiper Type R PSU (480W) and fin it's very quiet but it does have 1x120mm case fan (around £45 at PC World).

The socket 939 AMD's support dual channel memory, but it only adds about 5% to the performance.

Off the top of the head I don't know if that board is AGP or PCI-Express. I know that DFI state only to use a 24 pin PSU with their PCI-Express NForce 4 boards.

Graphics choice depends on what you want to use it for, but on what you have left from the budget probably a Geforce 6600, a Geforce 6600GT would be stretching it too far.

AMD 3000+ Winchester ADA3000DIK4B1 CBBID0502APMW
Thermalright XP-90 w/ Vantec Stealth 92mm
260 MHz HTT (CPU = 2340MHz)
DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D
2x512Mb Crucial PC3200 CL3 (CT6464Z40B)
@ 195/380 2.5-3-3-6-11
Gigabyte NX66T128VP (6600GT VIVO -500/1120 default clock)
Creative Audigy 2 Platinum
WD 1200JD 120Gb SATA HD (8Mb cache)
2x 160Gb Seagate 7200.7 SATA HD (8Mb cache)
Liteon 166S DVD (Pri Slave)
NEC 2500A DVDRW (Sec Master)
Liteon 52246S CDRW (Sec Slave)
WD 800JB 80Gb HD (IDE - as external USB2.0)
Hiper Type-R 480W True PSU (24 Pin)
LianLi Case
Dell 1901FP TFT
Trust 5.1 Headphones
MS Intellmouse + Internet Keyboard

Thenotsowyzewun

Hi, just posted on buildyourown's forums to get some more opinions, alot of people have recommended Crucial memory to me in the past but I had a look and its around the same price as the OCZ memory I've already chosen so I'm going to stick with what I've got, I'm hoping to get away with using the existing PSU and I've had a look at those graphics cards and even though a fast machine is only as fast as the slowest component (apparently) I'm going to go for a cheaper graphics card and maybe meet the budget closer the £300 mark (basically get a bottom end card).
Here's a few cheap cards I've seen:
Dabsvalue GeForce MX4000 128MB DDR/AGP/TV-OUT £20
Hightech Radeon 9250 128MB DDR/AGP/DVI/TV-OUT £25

or would spending an extra £10 or so and getting something like this really boost performance?
ATI Radeon 9200 128MB £35
Club3D Radeon 9250 256MB £35

Anyone got grave doubts about this idea (buying a cheap graphics card) - will it really kill the speed?

Thenotsowyzewun

Just found a PSU via buildyourown, so here's latest spec:

Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 CPU £100
Western Digital Caviar SE 120Gb HDD £55
OCZ Premier 512MB PC-3200 DDR RAM £40
Gigabyte GA-K8V Ultra-939 motherboard £65
PSU: Scan 400W Silent ATX £15
Graphics undecided
Budget: £350-£400
Budget remaining: £75-£125

wolfman

If I were you I'd spend a little more on the PSU. Never under-estimate the importance of a decent PSU. I used to have a Hiper PSU too, a 420W, which was ok. The rails weren't as stable as I would have liked though, and it was noisey despite being a silent PSU. I wouldn't recommend Hiper. The chances of the one you mentioned running silently are slim too.

If you want a decent PSU look at Enermax, Tagan, and Antec. They'll have seperate 12v rails, SATA connectors etc... I've used Enermax and Tagan, and am currently with a Tagan. It's completely silent and very stable. I've currently only got a 380W Tagan, and it's managing to run an AMD64 3500, Radeon 9700Pro, two DVD-Rom's, two hard drives etc... I will be upgrading to a 480W version soon though. Any of the above 3 are very impressive. £50 would get you a 420W Tagan which would be more than enough power.

I think the board you mentioned is AGP, not PCI-E, so I'd go for something like a Radeon 9550 which retail at around £40-50. A Radeon 9250 is very budget, with the rest of the spec I'd just spend an extra £20 and get something a little more inline with everything else.

Increasing your Ram to 1gb would be great if you have the extra budget. I currently have 1gb of Ram, and run Windows without a swap file, so it's nice and quick. Ideally get 2x 512mb modules, matched if possible, then you can run the memory in dual channel. I went for the Geil memory on https://www.microdirect.co.uk, it's been fine more me, and is quite cheap.

Thenotsowyzewun

The reason I picked out that PSU was because not only was it cheap (the reason I've got a Hiper PSU is because I bought a crap one first from PCWorld for around this price and my system restarted after being turned on about 20 mins!) but it was supposed to be decent too - link

Since the 2 who recommend it are quite senior I thought it'd be OK (here's hoping!).

As for getting a GB of RAM and a decent graphics card, hmm ok then, did feel abit dumb going half-c*cked.

Here's the new spec, with the PSU staying (unless someone has personal greviences with it):

Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 CPU £100
Western Digital Caviar SE 120Gb HDD £55
Geil Value 1Gb PC3200 DDR 512MB (2x Kit) £70
Gigabyte GA-K8V Ultra-939 motherboard £65
PSU: Scan 400W Silent ATX £15
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon 9550 256MB DDR £50
Budget: £350
Budget remaining: £-5

Right on budget, and a great sounding system too

blinky

Crucial 512Mb PC3200 is £32.89 at the moment, free delivery. Though it's labelled as CAS3 I've found it will run at CAS 2.5 no problem.

I've heard mixed things about Geil.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/PartSpecs.asp?imodule=CT6464Z40B&cat=RAM

Would help shave a few pounds off the price.