My PC is about 5 years old:

AMD processor 2.0GHz
1 gig ram
raedeon 9600

I have a little bit of money to spend, and I want to bring the computer up to speed a bit. The case, power supply, monitor, sound card, network card, harddrive, and all the accessories are fine, so I wonder how much of a pain in the ass would it be to buy a motherboard/cpu combo or barebones system from newegg or tigerdirect and just throw all my old crap in there with it, or do I need to start from scratch?

Thanks.

10/24/2006 11:36:59 AM

you should go with a new hdd regardless, just b/c the newer ones are faster, plus you could re-format, not risk losing your data, etc

barebones is good, keep your vidcard if you dont play games, keep your sound/network/cdrw/dvd etc

new: powersupply, mobo/proc, ram

(case if you have to... but you dont need it...)

10/24/2006 11:43:25 AM

see if you can find a motherboard that will take a core 2 duo and let you reuse your ram and video card. fast, quiet, cheap.

10/24/2006 12:03:56 PM

I'm seriously considering updating from a machine that has about the same specs, and I've heard really good things about the E6300 Core 2 Duo proc.

10/24/2006 10:52:40 PM

i upgraded to a new amd x2 rig last month and am loving it! this thing flies and i have no regrets about it.

10/24/2006 11:55:40 PM

Not sure what your budget is, but I'd almost buy a second computer at this point. I'd use your current one either for a second OS (Linux?) or a multimedia PC you can hook up to your TV. Nothing wrong with upgrading your box, but a new video card / mobo / processor will run you $400-500, and I'd just as soon put that money into a new system rather than having spare parts lying around (or resold for lowball).

I'm not a huge Dell fan, but if you are patient, you can get barebones systems for around that price from them. Can then swap components between computers as needed.

10/25/2006 8:30:47 AM

Quote :

"see if you can find a motherboard that will take a core 2 duo Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core and let you reuse your ram and video card. fast, quiet, cheap."

10/25/2006 12:58:35 PM

I'm thinking of going with this motherboard/cpu combo from tigerdirect

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2509778

It's a lot faster than what I have, fits with my ram, and is AGP, so it fits with my video card, and it's a lot cheaper than any price I can find for something similar.

So what's wrong with it?

10/25/2006 6:20:25 PM

Requires a rebate

No heatsink

Warranty is iffy. Tiger claims a year from intel, but if you look at intel's site they say oem warranty is provided from the place you purchased.

10/25/2006 8:38:51 PM

well if I don't get that package, should I go with a Pentium D 2.8 or a Pentium 4 3.6?

10/25/2006 11:09:38 PM

So I ordered a new Mobo, CPU, some RAM, and a video card, but not a new harddrive. I may end up getting a new one, but it really is a pretty decent harddrive still.

My question, and I feel fairly retarded for asking this, but am I going to have to format the drive to make these upgrades, or can I just leave the drive alone and install it as-is?

Thanks.

10/26/2006 1:06:30 PM

leave the hdd alone, but be ready to install drivers when windows gets started.

10/26/2006 1:08:28 PM

ok thanks, that's perfect actually.

10/26/2006 1:09:19 PM

I'm wondering what to do about a system for my sig o.... She needs something that can run autocad and photoshop without being slow and underperforming. I know that just by running two major progs, dual core would be a better choice. But what processor should we go with? I'm trying to figure out if it would be cheaper to build a system from scratch, or would we be better off getting something prebuilt (dell/gateway/sony?)

10/29/2006 10:27:40 AM

Quote :

"should I go with a Pentium D 2.8 or a Pentium 4 3.6?"

Neither really, but too late I guess.

10/29/2006 11:28:54 AM

^^core 2 duo system from dell. get the better processor but get basic ram and hdd, then buy that seperately from some place like newegg. 2gb of ram and a 40gb sata hdd as a cache drive for ps and autocad will help a lot.

I had a hell of a time with memory and motherboard compatibility with the system I just built, going with a dell would have ended up costing the same and I'd have had a fully working computer in the same time.

10/29/2006 11:48:08 AM

Quote :

" Neither really, but too late I guess."

actually, after I nixed getting a new hdd, I had the budget to go ahead with an athlon x2.

10/29/2006 12:29:19 PM

x2's are great, specially now that they are so freakin cheap. Core 2 Duo's are also great and even their e6300, budget cpu can beat AMD's FX series cpu's. Amd has the advantage of having a lot more motherboard choices and you can find them avaliable in multiple flavors and price ranges, while the Core 2 Duo's are still limited, but are expanding a lot more since their release. When Core 2 Duo's came out, only a small handful of mobo's could take them and they were atleast 150 each. Specially the SLI systems, only had one mobo at the time of release and that was a cool 280.

10/29/2006 8:06:11 PM

I thought that if we were going to go with a core 2 duo, we would go with the 64 or 66 before settling with the 63, but we don't know how to configure the system to do the best for those two main progs.

10/29/2006 10:01:11 PM

so my ram came in the mail today, and I noticed that while I thought I ordered another stick of kvr400/512r, I actually got kvr400x64c3a/512.

They are both PC3200 DDR 400 ram, is there any reason they wouldn't work together??

10/30/2006 3:50:16 PM

they should work fine as long as the timing are the same or similar. Just plug them in and try them. Only way to find out.

10/30/2006 9:11:29 PM

So everything came today, I hooked it all up, and then, no video output. Blank screen, nothing.

Checked the video card, the fan on it turns on, the monitor was fine this morning, and there is no onboard graphics.

Where do I go from here?

11/2/2006 3:27:16 PM

and also, there is no beep when the computer starts with the vid card in, there is one single beep when it starts without it in.

11/2/2006 3:54:38 PM

Quote :

"you should go with a new hdd regardless, just b/c the newer ones are faster"

that was going to be the first thing I was going to say too. The hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in any computer, and if you really want more performance consider getting a Raptor (or similar performing drive) for ~$100...its probably a MUCH faster drive than you have currently.

Quote :

"My question, and I feel fairly retarded for asking this, but am I going to have to format the drive to make these upgrades, or can I just leave the drive alone and install it as-is"

Quote :

"leave the hdd alone, but be ready to install drivers when windows gets started. "

That doesn't sound kosher to me. Has anyone actually swapped out motherboards and not reinstalled the OS?

And overall, a transition time like this is a perfect time to get a different hard drive. Get a newer faster drive, and install a fresh copy of windows on it. keep the second drive to pull data off as needed and use a backup/storage drive.

11/2/2006 4:19:28 PM

Quote :

"So everything came today, I hooked it all up, and then, no video output. Blank screen, nothing. Checked the video card, the fan on it turns on, the monitor was fine this morning, and there is no onboard graphics. Where do I go from here?"

I assume your video card is AGP? Maybe get a PCI (or a different AGP) video card from someone to put in for troubleshooting. Are you sure you connected everything properly? Have you ever built a PC before (aka do you have any experience in hooking up motherboards?)


But a good basic step is to only plug in the power supply, video card, hard drive, and one stick of memory into the system and see if the same thing happens. also concerning the beeps there should be a motherboard manual on a cd or online that tells you what the beep codes mean.


[Edited on November 2, 2006 at 4:24 PM. Reason : ]

11/2/2006 4:22:15 PM

Quote :

"and also, there is no beep when the computer starts with the vid card in, there is one single beep when it starts without it in."

hahaha, exact shit I had. Check the ram with another computer. At least for me it was the ram that was bad. Had no beeps with the card in and it wouldn't display anything.

11/2/2006 5:09:27 PM

Still no luck, and I know for a fact that it isn't the ram. I have a little bit of experience putting a machine together, I know where everything goes atleast. My real problem is that I don't have another computer to test this PCI-e video card in, or another video card to test in the system. That would probably show the problem.

11/2/2006 9:46:38 PM

i'll throw you a video card or two for testing if you want, pm me if you wanna borrow them

11/2/2006 9:49:24 PM