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[wags]

Wags junior's PC is failing him badly. It's a MESH P3 500, but won't boot to Windows now...I think it's knackered.

It's an ATX case and I had wondered about buying a new Motherboard, CPU, Ram and HD and using this with my old FX5600 Ultra and the CD ROM. Overclockers have some nice bundles, with good quality components: Overclockers

However, I have also seen some very cheap bundles at :Novatech, but these seem almost too cheap, compared to Overclockers, and are mainly unbranded components, by the looks of things.

My question is, has anyone had experience of any of these 'bundles' and do you think that a 5 yr old ATX case is worth upgrading in this way ? Or should I buy a new case as well ?

Cheers chaps.

[PilchY]

Seems some good bundles...

They are good part's (Ok sempron) but hey is he going to need a latest all singing all dancing machine?

The case could eb a slight problem i think... older cases tend not to be designed for best air flow... plus maybe a new case with maybe a window and some lights could maybe be a little bonus! Lights and things can be got cheap now, i know i pay little thru a mate and make a boring case great!

[wags]

Cheers Pilchy.

I was wondering about getting an XP 2800+ click'ty click

What case would you recommend Pilchy ? Ebuyer have alot of really fancy looking ones at very reasonable prices - a new range apparently. :rolleyes:

[wags]

These look pretty cool: Spiderman case ... and this PSU looks good value PSU

This will be the first ever PC off the Wags production line....so do I need to spend alot more ie Antec case...or should this be OK for gaming/homework !?

[Besty]

www.novatech.co.uk look at the mobo bundles and www.ebuyer.co.uk look at the bundles as well

[gudgulf]

Check the rating of the power supply.........P3's were not very current hungry and you may find that you only have 200Watts or so.If you do you will need to budget for a decent psu. :thumb:

[Spook Tooth]

Yes, new PSU and case would probably be a good idea.

I know it sounds wrong in a sense, but what about essentially getting yourself a new mobo, memory and case etc? Reasoning is that this way you can pass down your current system sans new graphics card which I presume is AGP based and again, I'm assuming that it's also socket A.

Then you could go for a new Athlon 64bit processor with AGP support for your present graphics card.

Your current system (with old GF5600Ultra) is probably well spec'd enough for many a gamer that doesn't require uber-graphical performance. The newer A64 platform would mean a certain degree of future proofing for yourself and might disbar the need for yet again upgrading on a new mobo etc when you do decide that you yourself could do with an upgrade.

Catch my drift...>>> > ? ;)

[wags]

Ummm now there's a thought Spook ;)

Funnily enough, I had kind of thought of getting a new PC for myself... and yes, maybe that would ultimately be more sensible as a longer term solution. The 5600 Ultra was the original car fitted in my PC by Mesh and basically is a good medium spec card, which would be fine for my kids...(for now at least)...the rest of the PC spec is in my profile .

As you say, I could get some new kit for myself and use my GF 6800GT in a new rig... :thumb: I had better think this through..... :rolleyes:

[Spook Tooth]

Your spec is nearly identical to the one you had thought of buying by a rough look of things. Enviable it is too.

Kill 2 birds with one stone then provided the upgrades are what you need for yourself - my suggestion: socket 939/3500+ (maybe when it's a little cheaper perhaps - newcastle? check processor types).

Hmmmm....

[simonp1]

Wags. the new system im thinking about is

3500 64..will clock to 3800
Abit 3rd eye MD..has a good pci/agp lock
1 gig pc4000 ram
abtec 480 watts
coolmaster case

Thats will cost around £750...ok HD required and other bits you want..but for the money you have top machine..r u going to self build or buy..so i can give you some links to show

Just to throw a spanner in thr works..PCI..yes is it the time to move in thats direction,,as it seems that will be the future...makes you think dosnt it

[wags]

Spook, as you say, the spec. I was thinking of upgrading my son to, was very similar to my existing set up...so maybe I need to re-evaluate the whole thing.

Spook and Simonp1, we are thinking along exactly the same lines ! I was looking at the 3500 64 etc with 1 gig, or even 2gig corsair RAM, if I was to buy myself a ne PC.. :thumb:

I have never built my own PC before, but quite fancy giving it a go (especially with one of those fancy new cases) and in any event would want to re-use my GF6800 GT (AGP card) in a new system, as it is a monster of a card. It's not that difficult to build a PC is it guys ?

Alternatively, I could go back to MESH for a custom built base unit, but without a graphics card....and put my GF6800 GT in that system...or maybe Scan ...or ??

... any other thoughts/links would be appreciated guys.

[PilchY]

Sounds like a monster system to me mate...

The self build option is good, as long as you are confident in doing it. If it is your first time and you are nervous ask a mate to help you out. (You live in kent dont you?)

There are plenty of links on the net about buidling your own, so many at this moment in time www.buildyourown.org i think is one that comes to mind....

Just when you go to do it, Send the wife out shopping for the day with the kid's, grab a can of beer and take your time... remember, keep the beer away from the bits at all costs :w00t:

[DanMaggot]

Wags - I admit I've been tempted by the idea of a self build, just not yet tempted enough.

I've also wondered about buying a cheapish system with the fiddly bits done and then using that to pump up (you know how some of these systems start with 256ram (which is so ridiculout), adding in a good card here, some more ram there and so on.

re your 2gb ram. Can someone confirm for me whether WinXP is happy with 2gb. I'm sure I read somewhere that 1.5 is max , or at least max before you get a downside to the deal.

[gudgulf]

Both XP Pro and XP Home should support up to 4Gb of ram according to Microsoft.My own Pc has 1.5 Gb currently (recently upped from 1Gb to cope with Doom3 at maximum settings!).

My current pc is self built and I highly recommend doing just that in order to make sure it does exactly what you want of it and to include the sort of future upgrades that you think you might need into the equation.However my current pc is the second one I have built ,the first being a much more moderately specified machine that my kids now use.Thought it better to have a go on the cheap in order to make sure I could both built and configure one from scratch before making my current much more powerful pc.

[Spook Tooth]

Wags and Dan, building a PC is fairly straight forward and well recommended. Honestly, you'd be surprised at how relatively easy it is to assemble. And, there'd be plenty of help and advice for you here if you got stuck. Plus, you're both local according to Pilch, so there'd be help a drive away I guess if things necessitated which is unlikely.

The hardest part is when something goes wrong - might sound odd, but as an example, my first build wouldn't recognise my hard drive. It was only with some help at PC Ad that I finally sussed I had set the HDD pins wrong, and that was the only thing. Fitting the heatsink to the processor is the most fiddly thing, I found but can be made easier depending on the type of heatsink you buy (clipped or screwed down). Also, by following a site's instructions (as Pilch links a good site - they often have a how-2-do-it properly guide on such things).

Also, some motherboards are more simple to set up than others. My Asus A7V333 was my first board and all dip switch settings etc were hardware, ie, needed physical jumper settings set (not hard with the excellent documentation that came with that particular board). But others with different chipsets, like Abit (nforce 2) were dead easy with all settings pretty much controlled via the BIOS.

The only snag for you Wags, I guess, is tat the gfx card is AGP. Hence with the new board not supporting PCI-X, any future graphics card updates will likely require a new motherboard also. But that's not such a bad scenario as most boards for AMD don't support PCI-X anyhow and there are some nice ones out, and the gfx card itself being so much faster than the preceding generation of cards should last a good while before it's felt that a replacement is needed to play the then games...

Well, good luck. Myself, I think I'll wait for any upgrades though I'm tempted by all the new innovations out, socket 939, 4 ghz cpu, DDR2, GF6800... :wub: