$250 Buring a Hole In My Pocket.....

[Sammy5000]

Hey All...

I got the itch again, but don't know what to spend my money on? My rig runs nice right now, but if you ain't improving, you ain't trying. Here is my main rig:

P4 2.4Ghz (533fsb)
Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 Mobo
512 MB PC2700 Crucial (Micron) - running in dual channel mode (2x256)
ATI Radeon 9700Pro (Sapphire)
On-Board Realtek AL650 Codec Sound
Antec Smart Power 400W PSU
Lite-On 52x24x52 CD Burner
CanoScan N676U Scanner
Gravis GamePad Pro (USB)
Sony Dual Shock Controller (USB)
Logitech MX300 Optical Mouse
Standard Keyboard
Standard Floppy
80GB Maxtor HDD (7200/ATA133/2mb cache)
20GB Maxtor HDD (7200/ATA66/2mb cache)
Zip 250MB Drive (USB)
Netgear 10/100 NIC
Linksys 4-Port Etherfast Router (BEFSR41)

Now, I am not interested in changing the mobo/cpu at this time, but what can you upgrade for the amount that is available? Obviously, Audigy 2 first comes to mind, but I'm not that big of a sound guy. Also, my HDDs can use some upgrading...

Anywho, any comments, observations, thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[owensdj]

If you could add a little more to that $250, you could add a DVD-RW drive.

Another 512MB of memory might be good if the software you're running could make use of the extra memory.

Going with one of the 8MB cache Western Digital hard drives would give you better performance and more space too. The Western Digital WD2000JB is on the top of Storage Review's 7200RPM ATA drive list and would give you 200GB of space.

 

[mchammer187]

dvd-rw or speakers i recommend the megaworks 550Ds or audigy 2

 

[Sammy5000]

In regards to the DVD-RWs, is there any reason to beleive that games are going to take advantage of putting their games in DVD format?

I am not into watching DVDs on my pc, and want to contemplate the advantage of getting a DVD-rW.

 

[Markfw]

The only thing I could think of if you don't want a dvd burner would be a nice backup system, like a used DLT 7000 drive and a cheap SCSI card to run it.

 

[GnomeCop]

$250 bucks burning a hole in your pocket.... the only time feeling a burning sensation in that area is good.


oh yeah use it to get 512mb more ram and bigger HD.

but I would choose a nice sound card (something that utilizes less CPU cycles), and a nice set of speakers.

 

[tenoc]

Audio!

 

[Futher]

I'd def look for some Used Klipsch 5.1's or new 2.1's or something. Klipsch 5.1 = Insanity

 

[RaymondY]

get a dvd burner or a LCD

 

[Vonkhan]

i'd reccomend tht u invest in pc3200 RAM or higher

 

[Lonyo]

Get some games

 

[Pas2002]

if you dont neet a tone of more space (another 160 gigs of hard drive ) then get another 80GB Maxtor HDD (7200/ATA133/2mb cache) and put it into a raid 0 (stripping) array, this will make your computer a lot faster, and give you a lot more HDD space.
or get another 2x256 mem so you can run 1GB of ram (but only if you play very ram intinsive games (BF1942 for exaple) or like they said above get an audigy card, but since you dont do too much audio get a audigy MP3 or Audigy Gamer (whatever you do more of ) this will leave you with some money left over for another upgrade.