Help On a Budget Upgrade

[Paul Bearer]

EVGA 131-K8-NF44-AX Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2.2GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - Retail

I ended up choosing those two for the project I'm selecting. Tomorrow I'll double check the memory as well as the power supply connector to see if it can handle the necessary voltage.

 

[M733mhz]

Make sure your power supply is a 24 pin main connector and not a 20 pin.

 

[Paul Bearer]

Unfortunately it's a 20 pin connector Does that mean I need to replace my power supply?

I checked the ram one more time to make sure when I had the case open and it was a 512 mb DDR Dimm then below it said 64 WQD.

My last question is he said I'd need the operating system. Now as far as I know this is just a normal windows xp 32 bit professional system. With all of these changes do I need to get XP or Vista that is 64 bit or what?

 

[M733mhz]

You will need a new power supply. The reason I say you need the XP disk is because you can't just plop your hard drive in with new hardware and have it work, you'll need to reinstall windows, not just have it already on your hard drive.

 

[Paul Bearer]

Obviously I need to get an ATX power supply. The case is ATX btw. As long as when installing windows xp on this computer it will be able to handle everything, I shouldn't have much of a problem.

Outside of 24 pin connector for the hard drive. Is there anything else such as wattage that I need to make sure I have and how many fans on the power supply would be suitable for what I'm trying to do?

 

[M733mhz]

The 24 pin connector is for the motherboard not hard drive. Your system will handle things fine. How many fans your PSU has doesn't really matter, most have 2, one in and one out. Look at Hiper's line of modular PSUs, They're usually cheaper and perform extremely well.

 

[Paul Bearer]

Any specifications on the wattage amount I need for the new power supply?

 

[M733mhz]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817128001

That one would do just fine, They come in other colors too.

 

[Paul Bearer]

It looks pretty as can be but then it'll break my budget amount. I roughly have 20-30 left for this power supply change.

 

[M733mhz]

My advice to you, is DON'T skimp on the power supply, it's possibly the most important part of your system. If you buy a cheapo power supply and it goes down it could take all your parts with it.