My upgrade: Opinions?

Buying:

* CPU: Athlon XP 2500+ Barton (boxed+fan)
* RAM: 512 Mb PC3200
* MB: Abit NF7-S
* PSU: Q-Tec 450 Watt Dual Fan Gold

I plan to keep my old, ugly and DIY-silenced chassi (greyish ATX-box from '99), CD-RW, HDDs, GFX-card, floppy and monitor.

What do you think? Yay or nay? If anyone have other/better suggestions for my best-bang-for-buck upgrade, please post them.

Thanks in advance.

Looks decent to me. Good luck

yea looks good

how much is that psu gunna hit ya up for?

treepop,

Dont know if I understood your question (Im from Europe, english is not my first language). You asked about the price?

yeah hehe.....curious to the price of that psu

I guess the local currency is not intresting, but transferred to USD it would be 67.

To be honest I regret buying my true power 430w psu....I spent $110 on it!....I know I could have attained this psu online for $70 but I didn't feel like wating.....point of this is......I should have saved alot of money and just bought myself a nice fortron(sparkle) powersupply for $30-$50 which would have been as good or better....so if you can get a fortron or sparkle psu.....just my $.02.....if you can't in Europe then dont worry about it....but if you can I would suggest skimping there......

......also are you getting 2x256 megs of ram....and who makes it?
......do you have good speakers?.....if not then get the nf7 non S because the sata raid sucks anywho......if you need raid then buy an extra card for it......but if you want great sound and firewire then get the nf7-s.....

.....why are you getting the barton boxed with fan?.....do you plan on overclocking?.......if you dont then you might want to save some on the motherboard......and if you are you will need some better cooling

....just my opinion

Thanks for the reply treepop.

I havent decided on the memory brand yet. I will probably go with the best price. Any suggestions on good brands for an Athlon based system?

I will buy 2 sticks of 256. One stick of 512 will not enable dual channels, right?

Good suggestion about the sound. I actually dont use speakers at all, just headphones. Firewire would be nice though.

As for the boxed CPU-set: It was pretty much at the same price as the bulk CPU so theres not much money to be saved. And yes, I will overclock sooner or later, so I will probably have to get a heatsink of sorts. Suggestions?

Q-tec sucks, don't buy it if you want a decent overclock. You would be much better if you can find a Fortron/FSP/Sparkle or CWT/Channel well/Antec power supply for cheap.

2 sticks of 256 will allow dual channel, and you can't go wrong with the Abit NF7.

The heatsink that comes with AMD processors is not at all good, find a Thermalright SK7 - excellent performance and cheap too.

Thanks for the reply L337 M33P.

Of the PSU brands you mentioned, the only one I could find was Antec and it is at roughly double the price a the Q-Tec at the same Wattage. Would it really make a big differance if I would take a Q-Tec instead of an Antec? (Newb question, I suppose).

As for the heatsink, I couldnt find Thermalright over here, just Thermaltake. Would that be an ok choice?