LARGE upgrade

UnSeEn

UnSeEn

Mayor McCheese
Hey all. Well, my computer has finally hit the dust. This morning, it wouldn't boot, and kept on restarting itself the second I power it up. Dad and I suspect a hardware issue, and so we're thinking of buying some new hardware for it. It was in need of a tune-up anyway, but this is just a wake-up call, I guess. Wondering if you all can help me out. Here's what my specs are now:

Pentium 4 1.9ghz
GeForce 6800 GT
1 GB RAM
Sound Blaster Live sound card
2 hard drives - 150 GB and 40 GB

I was looking on the internet/magazines for some stuff, and I found these:

BK CHROME 601 POWMAX Gaming PC Case ATX Mid Tower 450W - case
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939 AMD DUAL CORE - motherboard
AG 480w 480 watt ATX computer power supply - power supply
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ - processor

Sticking with my current video card, RAM, hard drives, and sound card, how do you think this new system will run with these new components, or will it run at all? I'm great with software related stuff, but hardware really isn't my expertise. Thanks for the help!
 
By the looks of your system, your 6800GT is not PCIe, bummer :(
Your going to have to buy a new card aswell. A nice 7600GT would do good in that system.
Other than that, i'd choose the 3200+ over that 3000+ if you can afford it.
 
AsRock do a motherboard that supports AGP and PCIe :-

ebuyer.com - Components » Motherboards » Socket 939 Athlon & 940 Opteron » Product details

I know this is a UK site but its just so you can see it. You could keep your video card and upgrade later if you need to. I've got the same motherboard and its great performance for the money.

I would also look at the PSU, i've not heard of AG (they might be fine) but its important that you get this right. I always use Antec as i've never had a problem with them.

Lastly you need to check that your RAM is compatible with a socket 939 motherboard, I could be wrong but I thought older Pentium CPU's used Rambus rather than DDR2. I could be talking rubbish here though.
 
Yup, that's one good point. As a general rule, avoid any motherboard that has an AGP and PCIe x16 slot on it. Most of these boards have the AGP slot running off the PCI bus, which will pretty much kill the performance of that video card. The exception would be if it's running a ULI chipset, I believe the M1687 is the only one that is the exception (it's a ULI chipset for sure). Another is that I don't know anything about AG brand power supplies, and thus, I would strongly advise not going with them. Get a Tagan or Hiper brand if you're on a tight budget. A 480W from either of those will do the job. If you can swing it, get an Antec or Enermax.
 
Wow sorry to hear that dude, I know what it's like. For the record I still haven't done anything about my wreck of a rig.
As for the upgrade a budget would be helpful just to get a good idea of how far to go.
As for the ram, yeah you probably won't have any luck keeping that, and if you did I think you'd notice bottlenecks as, you're really shooting for at least PC3200/DDR400 or better, and if you've got legacy Rambus ram or PC2100 or less it's not really worth it.
As for the Powersupply, you don't want to skimp in that area. There's a lot of cheap junk out there, and BigB can attest for that. Good names to concider are OCz (personal fav), Thermaltake, and, as BB pointed out, Antec, Targan, Hiper, and Enermax are good too.
The motherboard presents a difficult choice, if you're upgrading now, in my opinion you should stay as current as you can. AMD has recently upped it's line up CPU's and the motherboard line that will house them.
Here's a real nice one: ABIT KN9 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail at Newegg.com
With that mobo this processor is a steal, far faster than the AMD 3000 (which I have): AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2000MHz HT Socket AM2 Processor - Retail at Newegg.com
For the ram this is a good place to start, trusted brand, great price.
G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM System Memory - Retail at Newegg.com
here's a slick PSU, I've worked with the 450wt version and it's excellent:
OCZ ModStream OCZ52012U 620W Power Supply - Retail at Newegg.com
The graphics card is a real screamer, especially for the price: eVGA Geforce 7600GT 256-P2-N553-AX Video Card - Retail at Newegg.com

I hope this all helps give you an idea of the costs and components available. It's your call how far to go and I'll be happy to adjust for what kind of budget you're looking at.
 
If you want to 'upgrade' your existing rig, it'd be very wise to thoroughly test any components which will be grandfathered into your new system.
 
Thanks for all your help! I guess my Dad has gone out and bought me a barebones system (Asus A8N SLI Deluxe Socket 939 Barebone Kit / AMD Athlon 64 3500+ OEM / CPU Fan / ATX Mid-Tower / 500 Watt Power Supply). Pretty good in all. Plus, he's buying me a GeForce 6800 PCIe version and 1 GB of DDR ram so that I'm thoroughly compatable! Sounds pretty good, and from what I can make of it, it was worth my power supply busting. I'm getting a much nicer computer overall, plus the case is quite nice :)
 
Make sure the power supply is good enough for your new rig, or you'll have two dead systems instead of one. :swt: If the PSU came with the chassis, it's a pretty strong indicator that you need a new one immediately.
 
Agreed. It does seem that most PSU's bundeled with cases are the crappiest units available. Antec is about the only exception, but I don't think they use anything past 450W, which has it's limitations---even from Antec.
 
Indeed! I figure that I've had my computer for about 6 years, and I've just continued to upgrade it until it was actually pretty good. The PSU has been in there for a long time, and I have no idea what its actual wattage is, but I guess it just couldn't handle the strain and gave out. Funny that it only just gave out, though. I haven't made an upgrade in about a year...

But yeah, the new case comes with a 500W PSU, which should be good enough to handle what I currently have and more. One can only hope...
 
Congrats man, it really did work out better for you in the end. But about that power supply. Contrary to popular belief wattage is not an indication of a power supply's quality and potential stability. They are unfortunately not created equal brand for brand in the least. If you could let us know what the make and model is for the power supply that's coming in the barebone rig that'd be great.
There's a perfectly good chance that it'll do alright and keep your rig running for years. But it's not worth the risk of it taking out your entire rig due to crap quality. I nearly went down that road myself. Sure dropping another $80 on a nice powersupply seems eccessive but it's a nice insurance and sure beats the $1000+ put into the computer that could be lost. It's a key component that's easy to overlook.
 
Looks good man, can't say I've seen too many raving reviews for Ultra's products in the past. It's got a good feature set and Viperlair apparently thought it was great, holding it's own against a beefy enermax unit. The 12v rails are pretty low on the amps but the out put still seems pretty good. I'll be waiting to see what BigB or another member has to say though.
 
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