£350 to Upgrade CPU,m/b and Ram - Help!

[remoh2003]

Hi,

I have a budget of £350 to upgrade my current PC and I am looking for suggestions. My current PC is as follows;

1.2Ghz Duron, Jetway m/b with 256 pc133 RAM, 80Gb-2700spin HDD, 32Mb NVidia GeForce 2, Pioneer 107 DVD RW etc....

I have a requirement for at least 1Gb of RAM and 4 usb2.0 ports. I have no sway towards AMD or Intel but I am told that AMD is better value for money. My main use for the pc is downloading large files, movie manipulation, burning etc. it is never used for games so I do not see the need to invest in a better graphics card, although I am open to reasoning. In the very near future I would like to have a wireless network with my childrens pc, with the intention of sharing my broadband connection to allow for online gaming.

Heres the tricky part, my budget can only be spent at ballicom.co.uk, so I need to ensure that any of the components recommended can be purchased there.

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

Remoh

 

[bodhi]

Take it your hard drive is 7200rpm not 2700rpm?!! Also, sorry to change subject slightly, what does everyone think of jetway boards?

 

[ChristopherP]

Heres what i say.

Asus P4P800 Motherboard @ £79.90
Intel P4 3.0GHz S478P 800fsb Retail with Cooler @ £131.06
2x 512Mb DDR400 Memory @ £45.77 each = £91.54
Leadtek A340 T 128L GEFORCE FX5200 128MB DDR 4X/8X @ £38.78

Total = £341.58... YOU HAVE CHANGE!

All prices included VAT

Ok, reasons. After studying your requirements i came up with the above components because:

Why the Asus P4P800? Because there is no denying it - it is a very, very good board! Even though its only springdale, it will beat its canterwood couterpart hands down in any test, thats why i use it when building computers for clients. I think it also has a slot specially for WIFI access - just plug in the asus aerial into the dedicated slot on the board and you can connect to a wireless network!

Why intel? Well, I have always found Pentium 4 systems to be faster in general tasks such as movie encoding etc, Hyperthreading is also a good thing to have when doing these things. AMD are generally better for gaming in my opinion, so even though intel is a tad more expensive, i believe it suits your needs better.

Why 2 sticks of memory? Because your motherboard is a high end one, it supports dual channelling of your memory. It increases bandwidth and makes memory intensive things happen faster.

Why a graphics card, even though you didnt want one? Because it's sensible to have something that isnt totally obsolete... If you ever want to run any 3D tasks such as games then this should suit your needs. Its a good card at a good price, it hardly dents your budget and i think it is most definatly something you should go for.

Well that is my suggestion, if it's worth anything!

one thing i want to add is im concerned whether your PSU would be able to hack all these new components. I would suggest a good 350w or a fairly standard 400w for the above components.

Anyway i'll stop there...
Regards,
Chris

 

[floppybootstomp]

OK, cobbled this together very quickly, just one idea, I must stress that it isn’t my ideal choice were I able to purchase components from other sites, particularly the Generic RAM and the CPU cooler. But I’ve stuck to items available at the ballicom site.

Gigabyte GA7N400 Pro 2 Motherboard - £75.00
Athlon XP3200 OEM CPU - £100.00
2 x 512Mb DDR PC3200 Generic Memory - £92.00
Coolermaster AERO7 CPU Cooler - £17.00

Total: £284.00

Or, with Asus A7N8XX Motherboard (£45.00) – Total £254.00

But the Gigabyte board has dual memory facility and is a much better board.

Another option is to buy the retail version of the XP3200, which comes with it’s own cooler and carries a three year warranty. Then you wouldn’t have to buy the aero7 cooler. Total extra for that option would be another £40.00 making grand total £324.00

 

[ChristopherP]

Comparing the two, i'm sure the intel option would outperform the AMD option, and looking at the prices, theres not much in it - £324 vs £341 - with one containing a shiny new graphics card.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Whether the Intel would outperform the AMD is a matter of opinion

I, of course, would disagree. Ghz isn't everything.

And, were the OEM CPU & Aero7 cooler option taken, that would leave £66.00 for a Graphics card.

For which you could buy (at Ballicom) a Radeon 9600 with 128Mb memory (£67.00). A much better choice than an Nvidia FX5200, that is a dire card. In my opinion I know, I've used one, and the Ultra version as well, which wasn't a great deal better.

 

[ChristopherP]

Again, i would have to disagree (sorry flops). Besides, gaming is not a key task of the system in question so all thats needed is a basic DX9 card that would run the odd game of whatever on higher than absolute minimal setings.

After doing some research i have found the following...

Nearly 3GB/sec buffered. The P4 does better here but due to the design of the processor it couldn't fail to be better.

The MMX and general media encoding performance of the P4 is one of its undoubted strengths and this benchmark does very little to shake that. It's all about the MHz here and 3000 of them beats 2200 in this benchmark. This benchmark could be optimised in the Athlon's favour I fear, but not in the tested configuration.

An entire album to high quality MP3 in around 3 minutes is pretty good however, no matter what platform gets used.

Pictures and text courtesy of Hexus.net - Review of AMD Athlon XP3200+ by Ryszard written in May 2003.

 

[floppybootstomp]

3D Mark 2001SE? May 2003?

I'm not denying the Intel system is good, it's just a personal preference thing on my part. And I dare say if I searched around enough, I could probably find a set of tests in the Athlon's favour. But I can't be bothered

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one Chris, at least remoh2003 has two choices so far.

 

[ChristopherP]

3D Mark 2001SE? May 2003?

3DMark 2001 is better in this instance because it is not so heavily reliant on the graphics card. The tests vary more with this program depending on what CPU/Memory you have. 2003 is very dependant on high end graphics cards for a high score.

I'm not denying the Intel system is good, it's just a personal preference thing on my part.

I'm not denying that the AMD system is good, it's just an educated choice on my part - Benchmarks show that the P4's are better for media applications, and i would assume that remoh would want the system that best fits the task description...

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one

Oky Doky

 

[remoh2003]

Thanks for the suggestions Chris and Floppy, both systems seem to be more than capable of meeting my requirements, although I am being drawn towards the intel system as gaming is really of no interest to me. I purposely built a computer for my children last christmas to take the gaming burden away from my computer. I've taken on board the need for a new psu am considering the Qtec 400w PSU Twin Fan for £14.52, good choice or not(limited choices at Ballicom!)? or should I consider purchasing a psu from another outlet?

Thanks

 

[remoh2003]

Chris,

If I could find an extra £30 for my budget to upgrade your gfx selection, what would you be tempted to buy? or would you stick with the leadtek?

remoh

 

[ChristopherP]

Remoh,

I have heard very bad things about Qtec. What i can reccoment however is one of these - the power supplies are generally very reliable and fairly quiet. I have used loads of them. Comes with a well built case too, whether you use that or not is up to you but i like them!

If you could find another £30 for the graphics? I would then go with Floppies suggestion of the ATI Radeon 9600 - it is a good card for the money, i fitted a 9600XT with my parents computer.

The leadtek one would do you for general everyday use and the odd game of pretty much anything going, although not on high settings. The 9600 would make things run generally nicer and smoother,

Hope this helps,
Chris

 

[floppybootstomp]

OK, I'll stop being bloody-minded and admit that in this instance, considering the machine won't be used for gaming, the Intel system is probably the better option.

(gawd, that hurt..... )

Steer clear of Qtec, they're bad news.

I favour Antec PSU's, Enermax are good too. With PSU's, in my experience, you really do get what you pay for. I reckon any quality PSU of 350 Watts or over will meet your needs here remoh.

 

[ChristopherP]

OK, I'll stop being bloody-minded and admit that in this instance, considering the machine won't be used for gaming, the Intel system is probably the better option.

(gawd, that hurt..... )

Aww... I'm touched...

As with the PSU's - yes, i would reccomend an Antec or similar, but you pay for them. In my experience the one in the link i posted in my previous thread should do you just fine providing you dont overclock. I actually built a computer for my Tech Teacher at school using that exact PSU, Case, Motherboard, CPU and Graphics card and it worked just fine.

Choosing an Antec will give you the peace of mind you have bought a PSU from one of the best brands in the world, but that with a Radeon 9600 will push the budget.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Hush up

I just tried to look at the Ballicom site to see what PSU's they supply, but can't seem to access it. Hmm.

 

[ChristopherP]

Ballicom will not load on my computer right now, it wont even get to the homepage.

May i be nosey and enquire as to why you must use ballicom?

 

[remoh2003]

I've also had problems recently accessing the Ballicom site, thought it was something to do with my end!!!
Sorry I cant divulge the reason for having to use Ballicom, but it is a genuine reason.

Thanks for all your help on this matter, I think I am going to stretch the budget a little bit and upgrade the gfx card to a Radeon 9600.

Remoh

 

[ChristopherP]

Fair enough...

Yeah the 9600 should do you fine - handle most of todays stuff on max settings, the rest on good settings. Make sure you upgrade that PSU aswell though - you cant use your components with your current one if its anything below a 350 - it will just die.

Chosen kit should do you good.

Chris