Got a Bargin PC: Now what to do!

My inlaw brought a new pc as he thought the old one was faulty. He let me have it for £20 (minus hdd/ram) as it needed a new mobo!

I went to PC world to pick up a cheep stick of DDR2 ram and the bloke there said there is a bug in vista which causes it to lose its IDE drives (Which this was doing) Apparntly theres a Reg patch he just installs from his pen drive!

Well I stuck my sata drive and cdrom in and booted from CDrom RESULT! installed vista to get a score ~(2.0, as using onboard VGA) and the CPU is better than mine! 4.8 as opposed to 4! SO now im going to stick all my gubbins into this unit!

SO for £50 I got

New MATX Case
300w PSU
Intel Pentium DCore 3gig
1GIG DDR2 Ram
Foxxcon Mobo with 4Sata GB Ethernet and 8usb, only one IDE Mind. :thumbsdown2:
Vista Premium Licence
Now do I


A) Sell my AMD 3700+, 1GIG Matched OCZ Ram, Mobo use money for new GPU, bearing my GPU is a 7600GS 512mb which I will then sale.

B) Keep it and convert to my server and sell the old server with a 40gb hdd and CD rom.

I also have an Athlon XP2600system with 512mb and no HDD (giving to fix, but told to dump needed new hdd, but has new case) to sale and a Duron 900mhz PC with IDE Zip that I use for my linux box.

My current server is an Athlon XP2200 with 512mb (maybe 1gig)

Decisions decisions

Definitely a bargain there. The motherboard is a good make so that is a good start, as is a dual core CPU. What model of CPU is is? Pentium D, or newer Core Duo?

Only one IDE channel isn't such an issue these days as HDs are SATA and most optical drives are too. Unless you are moving drives over from an older system then it is an issue.

There are a couple of issues though. A 300W PSU is very underpowered and is probably just about coping with the current setup. If you want to add a decent GPU then it would overload that PSU and you will need to upgrade. If you are looking to run current games in DX10 mode then you will need at least a 600W PSU to support the GPU needed.

Also ram. You only have 1GB and many new games now require 2GB is run perfectly.

Finally, if you did decide to upgrade the GPU there is currently only one suggestion to go for. An nVidia 8800GTS, or if you are feeling flush then the bigger brother of that card, the 8800GTX. And make sure it is at least a 512MB version and not the 312MB one as those struggle with some of the current DX10 games so won't do well at all come next year's releases.

Looked at the PSU in the HP and its only 280w. Maybe that's causing some of my stability issues?

Its the PD chip. not brill but it works better then mine i think

That could definitely be the issue. At least a 500W PSU for your AMD3700+ is really what you need.

And a 300W PSU in a PD system is way too small as those chips are quite power hungry. Manufacturers always cut costs on the PSU and put one in that just delivers enough power for the prebuild system.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harrison

That could definitely be the issue. At least a 500W PSU for your AMD3700+ is really what you need.

And a 300W PSU in a PD system is way too small as those chips are quite power hungry. Manufacturers always cut costs on the PSU and put one in that just delivers enough power for the prebuild system.

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Yea, plus I added an extra hard drive, sound blaster audigy plat pro, its got a ide card reader and a host of USB devices coming from it!

Ill get a bigger PSU from ebuyer with 2 gig of ram! should see change from £60 at the ram prices atm lol.

Sold my old mobo/mem/cpu/gfx for £90 to my mate and now have a nice 550w silent PSU with a 120mm neon fan lol, 8600GT 512mb GFX and 2gig matched Kingston RAM!

She flies like a beauty now. Crysis is nice at med settings, and COD 4 is ok with a few dropped frames at 1280x1024 HL2 is great on MAX with 2xAA and the computer is soo smoth.

Also for good measure brought another 120mm fan and bodged it in as the case wouldnt fit it, and moved the smaller to the front of the case!

Took the PCW RAM back and got a refund on that too! :thumbs:

Lucky lucky!

Sounds like a nice setup now and should definitely be more stable too. You can now enjoy some PC gaming again. :)