I might build a new PC

[Harrison]

MicroATX motherboards fit ATX cases. They use the same holes, but only use the 6 pointing points towards the back of the case, instead of the full 9 of a full sized ATX board.

Oh, and yes that was a typo.

The main difference between an e5300 and e5400 is the clock speed. Retail boxed Intel or AMD processors come with a bundled fan which is perfectly adequate for the CPU at stock temps. You would only need to consider a third party cooling fan/heatsink if you wanted to overclock.

If you did want to buy a new case then you can find good ones starting as low as £30, but it depends on what you would want. It is better to get a case with at least 1 120mm fan at the front and 1 120mm fan at the rear. The larger size keeps noise down and still shifts more air than an 80mm fan can at faster speeds. I personally like Thermaltake cases, but they do cost a bit more, starting around £55.

Never buy a case with a PSU included as they will generally be a budget PSU that is not good quality and is more likely to die at some point and take some of the components with it.

Most graphics cards can easily do HD video these days. Even the budget end of the graphics card range such as the card I recommended above. On board video might also be able to handle it with the dual core CPU and 2GB of ram. Should handle it fine.

[Stephen Coates]

Is the fact that my current case does not have any fans likely to cause problems? (I could probably add some if neccesary)

Will any LGA775 motherboard work with any LGA775 processor? I read some specifications for other LGA775 motherboard and there was no mention of the Pentium e5xxx, but I only read them briefly. I am looking at different motherboards as Firewire and a floppy drive controller would be quite useful if it is possible to have them. Extra PCI/PCIe slots would also come in handy I'm sure.

[Harrison]

You won't find many motherboards these days with more than 2 PCI slots because they are slowly being phased out in favour of the much smaller PCI-E x1 slots for network and sound cards.

Not all LGA775 motherboards are the same, but all should work with the e5xxx CPUs because they are basically the last of the dual core Pentium's, before the Core range starts.

The main different between motherboards will be the chipsets being used. Some chipsets offer more things like firewire, more sata ports etc, Plus supporting quad core processors, and different front side bus speeds, for CPU FSB and Ram type and speed. For the e5xxx CPUs you are only going to need 800MHz FSB and DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz ram.

If you didn't mind spending a bit more then there are motherboards with 3 PCI slots and a floppy port, such as:

Gigabyte GA-P31-ES3G Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £46.99

Gigabyte are also a pretty good motherboard maker.

[Stephen Coates]

I did consider the Asus P5KPL/EPU as that has extra PCI slots. The fact that it doesn't have integrated graphics doesn't matter as I have decided to get a graphics card.

However, the Gigabyte one is tempting since it has a floppy controller. The floppy controller will be useful, but I'm sure I could cope with a USB drive (I don't intend using the new system with MS-DOS).

[Stephen Coates]

I have ordered the following:

Gigabyte GA-P31-ES3G iP31 Socket 775 5.1 channel audio ATX Motherboard - £47.17 inc postage from Ebuyer

Gigabyte GV-R455D3-512I Radeon HD 4550 512MB ATX DVI-i Graphics Card - £29.28 from Amazon

OCZ-S400 OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
SG-712S500 Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB 16MB Cache Hard Drive SATA II 300MB/s 11ms 7200rpm - OEM
IL-CE6300 Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 2 x 2.8Ghz 2MB Cache 1066 FSB Dual Core Processor
CRU-B642GK Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit
£187.27 inc postage from Novatech

So the total has come to £263.72.

I only ordered one hard drive. I would like to have two but I can always get another one in the future when I have more money. I will be reusing harrison's old CDRW drive which is currently in my PC. I guess if I end up having to use DVDs I will use my 10 year old Hitachi DVDROM. Will also be reusing the floppy drive and case.

I'm not sure whether I will keep my 120GB Maxtor IDE hard disk will the old Dell stuff or whether I will put it in this new system. That would mean I can't have the DVDROM, but I am thinking about possibly getting a Blu Ray drive at some point in the future and that would be SATA, so this isn't a concern in the long term.

Hopefully this will all work nicely. It should all be delivered before friday.

Now for the hard part, deciding what Operating Systems to install and how to partition the disks.

[Harrison]

You should have a very nice PC once built Steve. If you need any advice or have questions when building it please let me know.

The hardest bit is fitting the stock Intel heatsink's to the motherboard/processor. Follow the instrustions that come with it exactly and it should be fine. Make sure you align the processor correctly with the motherboard socket before seating it with the lever, and when putting the heatsink on, make sure the 4 catches on the feet which clip through the motherboard are rotated correctly. It can be worth looking at a couple of videos on how to install them on the Intel site, and also on youtube, just so you get an idea. It looks easy but can be a right bitch to actually get into place and secure.

I find it best to fit the PSU into the case first before the motherboard or anything else. And to fit the processor, heatsink and ram before you install the motherboard into the case. But make sure you do this on a flat non static surface. I have a large coffee table with the glass top I use for this, and also a large wooden desk. Both great for antistatic environments.

[Stephen Coates]

I will definately take care with the heatsink. And don't worry, I won't use any sellotape .

I thought first, before assembling it in a case I could connect it all up on the table and test that it works, kind of like my A1200T was before I finally manage to get a tower, but I'm not sure this would be a good idea.

I am wondering how well it will all fit into this case, with it being a Dell one. The case does have a fan (probably an 80mm one) situated next to the Pentium III's heatsink. This is clearly part of the case and not the heatsink unit, but there is a piece of plastic covering these bits up so the fan will only suck warm air away from the pentium III and not from the rest of the case. I expect this fan could remain in place and possibly be replaced with a bigger one.

Hopefully I will be able to install Linux and Windows onto the same hard disk. Last time I attempted that I had trouble setting GRUB up.