Re-building my desktop... need some advice.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well, it's been 3.5 years since I had a new rig built, and a lot has changed since then. Dual core was not a feasable option then to start with.

I have £750 to play with and I'm going to need to replace everything except the DVD, maybe the sound card and the tower itself.

So, who would by kind enough to re-educate me?

[Lemur]

It would be a big help if you could list the parts you currently have, especially the power supply, tower make, RAM type, anything that might be reusable.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

You really don't need more than a Core 2 Duo or the similar AMD alternatives unless you're fond of playing very shiny and ultra demanding games, which have the structure to deal with these machines. Most, including ETW, don't even support Dual Core, so your best bet for a cost effective thing is to stay in that line.

Video Card: Depends. M2TW runs fine with a 8500GT, which is what I had for cheap.

RAM: At least 4GB recommended. More than that, and you'll need an x64 system.

And so on...

[Furunculus]

www.scan.co.uk

LN19237
Item in stock. 520W Coolermaster Real Power M520 Modular PSU 2xPCI-E >80% Efficiency 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £58.69 £67.49

LN24880
Item in stock. 4GB (2x2GB) CorsairTwinX XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £46.10 £53.02

LN25871
Item in stock. 1TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B, 3.5", SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, HDD 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £52.37 £60.23

LN26170
Item in stock. 24" Iiyama PLE2407HDS-B1 Widescreen LCD, 1920 x 1080, 2ms, DVI/HDMI/VGA - 1080p HD Ready, PC/MAC 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £161.97 £186.27

LN26292
Item currently awaiting an ETA. Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P, AMD 790X, AM3, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 1666(OC), SATA 3Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £93.79 £107.86

LN26421
Item in stock. AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition, Sok AM3, 2.8GHz, 7.5MB Total Cache, 95W, Retail 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £96.99 £111.54

LN26836
Item in stock. 1GB XFX HD 4890, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), Mem 3900MHz, GDDR5, GPU 850MHz, Cores 800, 2x DL DVI-I/HDTV 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £149.49 £171.91

Net Total £659.40

Carriage £10.89

VAT £100.54

Total £770.83

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Hmm, been ruminating on this.

Def. don't need new speakers, peripherals or monitor.

My current case has a 350 watt power supply, the DVD drive is only about 1.5 years old, I'm obviously keeping the hard-disk and the only other bit that might be worth salvaging is the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card.

I might as well go for a whole new machine though.

[Lemur]

Is the hard drive ATA or Serial ATA? This will matter.



Top is an SATA cable, bottom is ATA. They should be easy to tell apart ...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It's ATA.

[Lemur]

Then it prolly won't work with a modern mobo. Sorry.