Advice on first build

[welshieman]

Hello all



Forgive my inexperience and asking somethig you guys have probably answered a thousand times before, I am planning to build my first PC and could do with some advice primarily to do with Motherboard/CPU choices.



I have a budget of around £300.



My main goal is a good processor and 2-4gb of RAM. I have a mid range graphics card which will do for now (I plan to upgrade this in a few months).



I would therefore greatly appreciate any advice or recommendations for the following:



Case/PSU

Motherboard/CPU

RAM (2-4gb)

HDD (100-200gb)

Soundcard

Anything else I have missed!



My main aim for now is just to have a faster running PC than my existing Dell, but I will invest in a better Graphics Card in the near future to be able to play FPS type games.



Thanks in advance for reading/replying to this post.

 

[bodhi]

Hi Welshieman,

Is the budget of £300 for everything? You have a graphics card at the moment? Do you also have monitor/keyboard/mouse/CD-DVD Drive??

Bodhi

 

[welshieman]

Sorry!

To clarify, I have a full setup at the moment which I bought from Dell about 3 years ago. This system is now out of date and runs very slowly when you have a few different applications running at the same time also i want to upgrade from XP to Vista which would grind everything to a halt due to the requirements of Vista.

I first thought about upgrading various parts of that PC but then i thought there may be compatability issues etc so i have decided to start from scratch.

I have looked at a few websites, I mainly use Microdirect for anything in the past,, but the choice available at the moment is far beyond what I expected so I just after a bit of advice as to where to invest my meagre budget!

Thanks for the reply

 

[welshieman]

Forgot to add, I bought a graphics card about 6 months ago which should suit my needs for the near future, I will look to upgrade that in the next few months but rather than pay £100 for a mid range card now, the coffers should be refilled soon so I can invest in something a little more powerfull.

 

[Abarbarian]

Can you tell us what the graphics card is , AGP or PCI-E and model . What sort of ram do you have DDR or DDR 2 ? What is your Dell machine ?
£300 is not much money for everything you are after but you should be able to get a decent rig but you may have to do without the sound card .

Getting an old case or using the one you have with moddifications will save you some money . Its only a tin box after all or in the case of my next buil a wooden box .

You will probably need a cpu cooler aswell .

 

[welshieman]

The graphics card is an ATI Radeon card (i think its model is 7600 or something) I bought it about a year ago for £80 ish. I Use my PS3 for Gaming at the moment so hopefully I can use this card in the future as it works fine on the PC I have at the moment which is a Dell 8250.

The problem with the Dell is that the memory is only 512mb which is probably the reason it runs so slowly. I would be looking to get a couple of 2gb sticks for the new PC which I have seen for around £30 each at Micro Direct.

I have an 500gb External HDD which hold my Movies and Music etc with plenty of space left so a large internal HDD is not essential (should be able to save here).

I have various other peripherals which I can use and i am not too bothered about the Sound Card.

I agree with you about the box, what I was thinking was that perhaps the PSU i have at the moment would not be in 100% condition and most cases come with one fitted.

I appreciate that the budget is tight but as you can see i can save in some areas, i do however want to invest in a decent motherboard/CPU as this is the backbone of reliability/performance etc.

Any suggestions as to which way to go would be greatly appreciated as the choice is overwhelming.

 

[welshieman]

The Graphics Card is an ATI Radeon (7600 i think?)

The Dell is an 8250 and ready for the bin, I can probably re-use the sound card and the graphics card which would more than meet my needs. Its mainly the RAM and Processor in that machine which is the problem.

I could probably re-use the case but I am not sure if the PSU is 100% as I am told they wear over time.

I have an External DVDR and HDD (500gb - 200gb still free) so I can save on these items.

I imagine that the Motherboard is well out of date so I am keen to replace that and also a new processor. These are the items I have no clue about, the last time I bought a PC it was a P4 2.6 and my basic understanding was the higher the number the faster the PC!

Now there are so many types and variables I am keen to ask the experts rather than pot luck!

If you think the budget is too tight then I may be able to add to it if that's what you suggest.

thanks again for your time

 

[TriplexDread]

Most new motherboards have built in sound so u dont really need to buy another.
The 7600....is that a PCI card?

If it is then i would suggest buying a new one straight off unless u dont mind using a PCI slot on ya new board

 

[Abarbarian]

Download this and run it , and then you can tell us exactly what graphics card you have and what the HDD is on the machine .
You'll need to say what sort of games you want to play . You won''t get a pc for £300 to play the latest games like Crysis but you will get a pc that will play a lot of games very well .

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Everest-Home-Edition.shtml

 

[welshieman]

Report as requested:

--------[ EVEREST Home Edition (c) 2003-2005 Lavalys, Inc. ]------------------------------------------------------------

Version EVEREST v2.20.405
Homepage http://www.lavalys.com/
Report Type Report Wizard
Computer GER_PC (PC)
Generator Ger
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.1.2600 (WinXP Retail)
Date 2008-01-09
Time 22:30


--------[ Summary ]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Computer:
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Service Pack Service Pack 2
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Computer Name GER_PC (PC)
User Name Ger

Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4, 2651 MHz (20 x 133)
Motherboard Name Dell Dimension 8250
Motherboard Chipset Intel Tehama i850(E)
System Memory 512 MB (PC1066 RDRAM)
BIOS Type Phoenix (10/22/02)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter ATI RADEON 9600 Series Secondary (256 MB)
Video Adapter ATI RADEON 9600 Series (256 MB)
3D Accelerator ATI Radeon 9600 XT (RV360)
Monitor Plug and Play Monitor [NoDB] (YG138655AD68)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter Intel 82801BA ICH2 - AC'97 Audio Controller [B-4]

Storage:
IDE Controller Intel(r) 82801BA Bus Master IDE Controller
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive ST380021A (80 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Disk Drive WD 2500JB External USB Device (232 GB, USB)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8481B (48x/24x/48x CD-RW)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GSA-2166D USB Device
Optical Drive LITEON DVD-ROM LTD163 (16x/48x DVD-ROM)
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 76269 MB (5082 MB free)
I: (FAT32) 238414 MB (85428 MB free)
Total Size 307.3 GB (88.4 GB free)

Input:
Keyboard Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
Mouse Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical

Network:
Network Adapter Intel(R) PRO/100 M Network Connection
Network Adapter WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface (213.40.108.167)
Modem BCM V.92 56K Voicemodem

Peripherals:
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB2 Controller VIA USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller
USB2 Controller VIA USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller
USB Device BT Voyager 105 ADSL Modem
USB Device Generic USB Hub
USB Device Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical
USB Device USB Mass Storage Device
USB Device USB Mass Storage Device

Problems & Suggestions:
Problem Disk free space is only 7% on drive C:.