Upgrading PC

[Raj Mahal]

hey all...i've been doing small little upgrades over the past year or so and my power supply just shorted so i decided to do a bigger upgrade. I took out the parts I want to use in my new PC and checked that they are still in working condition. What i'm taking from my old PC is my ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card and my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card. I'm also taking my DiamondMax 80GB HD and another 20 GB HD that came with my old PC. Lastly, I'm taking my DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive. My new pc will be mostly for playing games, watching dvds, p2p, burning cds....regular college things (although I just graduated college this past May, woo hoo!).



I bought a Powmax case with a 450W power supply. I also purchased an ASUS AV8 Deluxe MOBO. Lastly, I purchased some Coolermaster fans. Basically I have a couple questions. I'm looking at AMD Athlon 64 chips and haven't been able to make a decision. The AMD Athlon 64 3000+ looks like it offers really good performance, great value and awesome overclocking potential. Does anyone have any suggestions on this? I'm looking to stay in the $200 price range for the CPU. Also, does anyone have any DDR400 RAM suggestions, how much and what kind? Next, I was thinking of consolidating all my files onto a huge HD, so any suggestions for a HD around 250GBs would be nice too. Lastly is my RAdeon 9600 Pro (128 MB) out of date with the rest of my system or is it still capable of holding up it's end of the boat. Any other suggestions and advice (is power enough, should i look into different cooling options etc) would be appreciated. THANKS!

 

[maxio098ui]

get a 3000 with a xp-90

 

[Flip-Mode]

First, there is no Asus AV8 board there is a A8V board.
Next step, get rid of that PSU before it fries your whole house, Powmax are considered one of the worst PSU's on the planet and have the habit of spontanius combustion.
You get get a Fortron 500 Blue storm from ewiz.com for around 75$, yeah I know you might think its expensive but 75$ now will save you alot of money when that PSU kills your memory or mobo or cpu.

Memory, you can get some good OCZ ram for around 120$ and here is a link.
Here is a great article about how memory timings and speed affect performance on the A64 platform, read it!

Video card, well it is "old" but it will hold its own just not very good.
If you give us your budget we can help you with tracking a good card.

HD, just take your pick but make sure you get good support and warrenty.

 

[Raj Mahal]

So....about my budget lol. I bought the Fortron AX500-A power supply, 3000+ venice CPU, 1 GB of OCZ Platinum Revision 2 DDR400 Ram, and a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA Hard Drive. It's all good, I put in over 90 hours in the past two weeks and get paid this thursday ($13.50/hr), and I finished my girlfriend birthday two weeks ago (so she won't be expecting anything soon lol). I guess my weak link now is my old school Radeon 9600Pro. Any suggestions? Since my A8V Deluxe is not PCI-E compatible I was thinking about just waiting until the PCI-E cards drop in price and then getting a new mobo and pci-e video card. I'm pretty sure I can make due with my video card until at least the end of the year.


Also, I have a Coolermaster Dual Storm (41 CFM) and two other 80mm fans (27 CFM). Should I think about more cooling? I'm not looking to blow my machine up, but a I'd like to over clock my venice to around 2.2 Ghz. Thanks everyone for all the advice and spending my money .

 

[Flip-Mode]

Actually most AGP cards are more expensive then PCIe because of the bridge chip that is added to some of them, there is a great deal on the ATI site for a refurb X850XT PE for something like 220$.

What kind of cooling do you plan for the cpu?

 

[attack]

Hmmm I disagree flip, I think AGP's are cheaper...atleast for the nvidia 6800 series atleast. That being said, your 9600p is no longer "in style" I'd say look into a 6800GT or X800 higher end card (XT? XL? who knows!)

 

[jnev_89]

i'd recomend just getting a pci-e mobo now rather than wasting money on a agp video card. a dfi ultra-d mobo and 6600gt would cost about $300 together, and later when you have more money it would be very easy to upgrade the video card, or if you want add another 6600gt for sli (if you do the sli mod on the mobo).

 

[Raj Mahal]

Thanks for all the advice fellas. I'm gonna wait til I get everything I've ordered so far and see how my radeon 9600pro performs with all the other new additions. If my PC doesn't run up to my standards (which I guess I should set lol) then I'll buy a new video card.

hey flip mode, sorry again for double posting, but what cooling options would you suggest?

EDIT: I bought a XP-90 and a delta triblade. So I have that and two other 80mm fans. Do you think this is enough cooling for my pc? Thanks.