New build, need help. (Good lord not anther noob)

[saturn]

OK I been out of the PC building game for quite some time. My last system I put together was a x58 setup and it's long gone. (sold it.)

Anyway I only use a PC once or twice a month to play a game or 2. Other then that it just sits.
The most demanding games I play are empire at war and age of empires 3. So I don't need that much power.
Right now my system (dual AMD MP setup) Plays everything fine but it's unreliable and needs replaced.


What I have.
Case (Noting nice but it will work.)
A good 650w PSU.
A copy of XP_64bit and Vista_64bit. (I don't mind both)
Some fans.
2 good hdds a good floppy drive (need that) and a junk ide dvd drive.
mouse/keyboard and a VGA monitor.
A tube of TIM.

So I want something reliable/cheep and it will not ever be online like most of my systems I build. in fact I would prefer it not to even have WiFi or a even Ethernet port. I also need a FDD port for some of my older games. But I can use a USB floppy drive if need be.

Budget.
The less is better. maybe 100$ plus what I make selling my system I have now. That would be about 200$ ish all said and done. Maybe 300$ if I'm super lucky.
I should be able to get a motherboard, CPU and ram for that, right? I don't need much. So long as it's reliable and plays the old games I like I'm OK with what ever it is. Also I have a VIA pci ide/sata card I can use until I get a sata dvd drive. I don't think motherboards sill have IDE. And it must have VGA.

My thought are to get a APU setup? I'm looking at what all out there, but things are so much different from what they once were back in 2009-10.
I guessing that a new system with a modern dual core cpu and 4gb of ddr3 ram along with a onbord GPU would be plenty, heck a new single core CPU would most likely do.
I guess this is what happens when you start buying office PCs for work and stop building your own PC's


Oh and by the way, this is going to be a sleeper system as my case, monitor and mouse/keyboard a are old.

 

[saturn]

Here is something I slapped together on newegg.
View attachment 173958

I'm sure I don't need the GPU and could drop it for a sata dvd drive and better CPU.

 

[Evil-Mobo]

Why not one of the AMD APU's?

 

[trents]

First, don't count on being able to sell your current setup. It has no market value to speak of apart from parting it out and making a very few bucks on ebay.

Why has your current system become "unreliable"? What kind of trouble shooting have you done? Is it a hardware or a software problem. Is the PSU failing? do you have a bad memory stick? Is the motherboard getting flakey?

Seems to me on your budget I would look first at running down the problem if possible rather than using the shotgun approach of replacing the whole system.

But if you really are determined to get new components it sounds like the AMD APU option is the way to go. You would need a mATX board, a (dual core APU) CPU and some DDR3 memory. You're looking at around $130.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157578

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113282

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231428

 

[saturn]

Why not one of the AMD APU's?

thats my thoughts.

First, don't count on being able to sell your current setup. It has no market value to speak of apart from parting it out and making a very few bucks on ebay.

I'm going to part it out on ebay or Amigabay.
It may take some time to sell, but I sold plenty of older parts online and have made stupid money off them.
I know I can get 40-50$ for the motherboard alone. 10-20$ on the cpu's and 5-10$ off the ram and 20$ for the gpu.

Why has your current system become "unreliable"? What kind of trouble shooting have you done? Is it a hardware or a software problem. Is the PSU failing? do you have a bad memory stick? Is the motherboard getting flakey?

Seems to me on your budget I would look first at running down the problem if possible rather than using the shotgun approach of replacing the whole system.

it's a funky PC from 2003 I'm nut putting any money into it.
As to what it wrong with the system. I need to reinstall windows and I don't have a 32bit OS that will work with the system. I need to recap the motherboard. I'm sure other gremlins are lucking too. I'm going to test etch piece of hardware and sell what works.
I'm not putting anymore time or money into it other then what it takes to sell.

 

[saturn]

Thinking of this.
View attachment 173984

 

[trents]

Doesn't the Kabini have built in GPU? Thought that was your whole reason for going with an APU. The video card is the most expensive item in your list. And will it give you better GPU performance than what's built into the Kabini? Those AMD APU GPU's are actually pretty good.

 

[saturn]

yeah I'm not sure on the gpu.
I thought Kabini cpu had a r3 gpu.

 

[trents]

Even so, if it meets your stated needs that's all that counts. Correct? You could always add the video card later if it didn't.

 

[saturn]

I was thinking about that. Is the R3 gpu used in the Kabini cpu that same R3 used back in 2002 ish? I cant see that being the case.


EDIT
nope that r300 not r3.

 

[trents]

I don't think so: http://www.fudzilla.com/25822-amd-28nm-sea-islands-official-successor-to-southern-islands

Looks like 2012-2013 debut for the 28nm version used in Kabini.

 

[Johan45]

I posted a pic in your Air cooling thread. The Kabini is a decent little chip for light tasks. Not sure what games you want to run but they sound pretty old so I doubt the iGPU will have any trouble handling it. Also I'd go for a single 4-8Gb stick of ram. This only runs single channel and a higher speed ram will help the iGPU since it uses the sys mem for it's processing

 

[saturn]

I posted a pic in your Air cooling thread. The Kabini is a decent little chip for light tasks. Not sure what games you want to run but they sound pretty old so I doubt the iGPU will have any trouble handling it. Also I'd go for a single 4-8Gb stick of ram. This only runs single channel and a higher speed ram will help the iGPU since it uses the sys mem for it's processing

Yeah, I was doing some reading on OC'oing them and they seem to OC better with one stick and faster ram. All my games are pre 2006, I may get a newer game or 2, but I can't see me buying anything new as I hate things like steam.
Most of the games require a 1Ghz PIII setup and a few take a P4 system.


View attachment 174022
Ok how does this look?
I'g go for 8gb of ram, but if I my using vista or xp I don't see why I should pay a lot more for 8gb, and if I'm not going to buy anything new I should not be needing 8gb.


EDIT:
Looks like GIGABYTE dose not have xp or vista support for their am1 motherboards, but asus and asrock do.
I'll have to change motherboards most likely.
I'm sure that the drivers for the asus and asrock board will work with the GIGABYTE board. But I don't want the system online and as such will be using the driver that came with the board. This could be tricky. I think I'll go with the ASRock AM1B-M.

EDIT:2
looks like asrock is the only company that has drivers for the IGPU for XP and vista. I have a lot of games that will not work in anything newer then XP and as such will try my best to use it. That and a new version of windows is not in the budget.

 

[trents]

Unless the motherboards in question share the same chip set the drivers will not be interchangeable.

And if you need other drivers can't you temporarily connect to the internet to get them. You don't have to stay online 24/7 to do this. Or you could download them to a thumb drive on another computer. Do you not have internet service at your house?

 

[saturn]

Unless the motherboards in question share the same chip set the drivers will not be interchangeable.

And if you need other drivers can't you temporarily connect to the internet to get them. You don't have to stay online 24/7 to do this. Or you could download them to a thumb drive on another computer. Do you not have internet service at your house?

Where I'm putting the PC I do not have internet service. I could run a line to it, but since I'm using XP on the system I would prefer not to. The thumb drive idea sounds grate, but... I just don't want anything sneaking onto the system.

I'd like to get the ASUS AM1M-A, but it has no xp_64bit drivers for the IGPU. It only has drivers for XP_32bit

 

[Johan45]

Check AMD directly for the GPU driver it may be there. If one place has them they came from somewhere. I have that ASUS board it's worked fine for me so far

 

[saturn]

Check AMD directly for the GPU driver it may be there. If one place has them they came from somewhere. I have that ASUS board it's worked fine for me so far

I did, but they don't have them. I took a look at there older drivers too and they don't have anything for the A-series APU's for XP. Just R-Series, E-Series and G-Series.
Aren't the AM1 apu's apart of the A-Series?

 

[saturn]

Well this is odd, I'm looking at the xp-64 bit drivers from asrock and they use the mobile Kabini drivers for XP_64. Now that is strange.

 

[Johan45]

Ye looks like AMD is ollowing pace, No Vista or XP support as far as I could see
That could be promising, let's see if AMD lists one of those.

I never followed the links but they had one listed. The GFX unit is the 8400 series just FYI

 

[saturn]

I took a look and they have xp driver for A-series APU's with a 8000G IGPU.
Given that both asrock and asus have both XP drivers and that asrock as full xp_64bit drivers I'm sure I can work something out. Even if I have to use a dedicated GPU.