New pc - any suggestions?

[dakta]

I remember talking to you guys about psu units for my current pc and was recommended an anetc since all the rest had blown up. Well the antec lived up to its name lasting 6 months compared to the record of 6 minutes, but nevertheless it too died.

So instead of spending days looking with a mag glass trying to find short circuits I think ill just save up for a new rig. Well, the core components of a new rig anyway.

Heres what ive been looking out for:
A processor
A mobo to match
A new graphics card (looking at a radeon 9600 256mb)
and another stick of 512mb ram.
Case and psu

Heres the spanner in the works, im trying to fit it in my budget of £350 which would be fine if i threw in any old processor, but im seriously looking at the amd 64 bit series, and if im careful I can acheive this. However before diving in and getting ready to buy I want to take this opportunity to gather feedback on whether anyone has had any experience with similar setups and what kind of performance gain could be had from say between a 3000 amd 64bit socket 754(?) from a 2.8ghz pentium4 processor.

Just looking for any general ideas and thoughts about the matter, I will be keeping the ide hard disk and cdrewriter because they kicked ass in my other pc and i had no complaints at all with them.

Cheers
Kris

 

[PZEROFGH]

you would need somethign cheap i would say s754 yeah with an AGP card. you wont be able to get much

MSI mobo valueselect ram. cheap case, and A NICE NICE PSU lol

 

[dakta]

lol yeah im looking no lower than 450watt

 

[Static_11]

i would help you, but i dunno euro's

 

[Blackmoore]

So were talking close to $450 U.S. Yeah, thats going to be a squeeze.

If your a gamer, which I assume you are I would keep the Pentium 4 2.8Ghz Chip, that chip is still plenty powerful for anything out right now, even though AMD is the better choice for gaming, it allows you the spend the money where its needed.

What I would do, is buy a new motherboard, PCI-E, nothing special, just something that will get the job done, and something that supports that chip, which I assume is Socket T. That will cost you anywhere from $50 to $75 U.S, E42-E62. That leaves you plenty of money to get another 512MB Stick of PC3200 DDR, assuming thats what your running, costing $50 U.S, E42. That leaves you at least nearly $300 U.S. E246 for a graphics card. I would get the eVGA 6800, great card at a great price. Much better than the Radeon 9600 you mentioned above, it wouldn't even compare. After the Video card, there is still plenty of money left over to buy a nice PSU, and a decent case, and maybe a couple of those nice accessories you have always wanted but never really needed. Like a decent keyboard Lol. You guys know what im talking about, people who are still using keyboards like this:

http://www.booizzy.com/archives/doorholder.jpg

and thats exactly what they should be used for.

In any event, if you feel your lacking in processor speed in the future, you can easily upgrade with that newer board, to a faster pentium chip, or you could decide to scrap both the board and the chip and move to AMD. Either way would be fine. But if you do move to AMD it will leave you a base for a new, old system. You can never have to many PC's lying around.

BTW a simple Google, will convert U.S. Dollars to Euro's, or back the other way.

 

[dakta]

cheers for the answer guys. To be honest i was hoping to acheive 64bit and use my old shell as a starting point for my parents who rely on pc's but only have a 1400xp. Anyway thanks for the reality check

 

[PZEROFGH]

$300 USD can buy you a 6800GT, why go for a 6800

 

[dakta]

dunno where that came from......
I was looking at a 9600 256 for around $100 usd ( very rough mind conversion lol)

The rest would go to psu chip and mobo, and if theres enough left some more ram but since i got some already its the least important.

 

[dakta]

changes

The changes in my circumstances are of follows:

My budget has risen from £350 to around £450.

Also taking advice of keeping my existing computer and just upgrading parts, i bought its 4th new psu today which spent a glorified 2 hours running before promptly exploding in my face.

The short circuit is within my second usb slot and as its part of the motherboard I might aswell go for the new computer.

 

[GuitarFreak1857]

you shoujld have went with a quality psu!!