I'm looking into upgrading my 2004 crapmobile

[nylax4]

Right now I have an AMD Athlon XP 3200+, 512mb of RAM, 160gb hard drive, and a dvd burner and cd drive.

I want to upgrade to a machine that can handle Photoshop 7.0, Firefox with many tabs open, and AIM at one time without a hiccup. And when I shut down these programs I want to be able to handle 2004-2006 games(Far Cry, Oblivion, HL2, Steam MP games).

I want to salvage the hard drive, dvd burner, cd drive, and the 512 stick from my current computer. I will probably sell the Athlon XP 3200+ on ebay seeing as they are going for $100-150 and that would easily take about half the chunk of my build. I'm trying to keep my budget at under $350.

Would you recommend getting a new PSU or could my rig actually handle the stock 350 because I'm trying to keep it as cheap as possible. Also is there a process that can wipe a hard drive clean? I still have my Windows XP disc, so I just pop that in and format the hard drive, then put that in my new PC? Also should I purchase fans from newegg to keep my PC cool? If so what do you recommend?

Would you recommend these products?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane 1.9GHz Socket AM2 Processor
Rosewill R103A ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with 350W Power Supply
BIOSTAR NF4UAM2G Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce4 AMD Motherboard
Foxconn FV-N76TM2D2 GeForce 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 GPU
G.SKILL Value 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) (I would also throw in my 512mb just for the **** of it to have 1.5GB of RAM)

These can all be had at newegg for about $325

 

[b1gapl]

Those parts look fine. I would recommend you get a new PSU, because PSUs included with cases, can't be really trusted. Of course you should get fans to keep the computer cool. Try to find a fan with low db and high cfm.

 

[nylax4]

What is the best value PSU?

 

[b1gapl]

Newegg.com - XClio 450BL ATX 450W Power Supply 115/230 V UL, CUL, TUV, CB - Retail

 

[nylax4]

I have a 32" Westinghouse LCD HDTV on the other side of the room as the computer. and my current computer is on a 17" Acer which is awesome but since the video card has VGA and DVI can I have a DVI to HDMI cable running through the wall to my TV. Is there a way to have the computer show up on both screens at the same with these connections?

 

[b1gapl]

I think you can but I'm not exactly sure on that.

 

[Ronnie]

i know with an nvidia card that once it detects the two monitors it asks you what you wanna do wether it be clone or span
just set it for clone and it will work

 

[Nagasama]

you wont be able to use your ddr ram with am2. it has to have ddr2.
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
these are decent for 74.00
also, you will likely want to run dual channel, so make sure you get two sticks(link above is a set of two 512 sticks).
if you're gonna get an nf4 mobo, i suggest:
Newegg.com - ABIT KN9 Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
only 'cos i own it, and it owns the 3600 brisbane that im testing out.

 

[rx7i2]

I don't think that 184pin ram is gonna fit that AM2 mobo, but there's some really good deals on newegg for 2gigs of ram for around $120

 

[nylax4]

XClio 450BL ATX 450W Power Supply
WINTEC AMPO 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit

Add these to the original

nagasama, is that mobo really worth the extra $20 bills I'm on a tight budget