AGP Mobo + CPU + Memory needed for £300

[Chefuk]

Hi all. I now have £300 to spend on these 3 items. I know sticking with AGP is wrong but i have to. It will be more economical for me to just use this £300 to upgrade my AGP system to last another 18-24 months and then buy a brand new rig than to get PCi-e componants as upgrades to this rig now.

So Whats best for my money? Im assuming around £50 for mobo, £150 for CPU (and fan/cooler) and £100 for memory?

If it would be better to half the memory to £50 and add that to the CPU, i can make that back up from selling my existing memory,CPU, and mobo after i get these new upgrades and add the 2gb of ram with the sold funds.

Thanks in advance.

 

[MilkyJoe]

I'm not sure it WILL be more economical... what graphics card are you running?

 

[Blazer7]

Asrock has a good line of cheap mobos that support C2Duos and AGP, PCI-E, DDR & DDR2 memory. This is ideal for anybody that is looking to upgrade on cpu and still use the old AGP VGA and DDR memory and there is always the option for a 2nd upgrade to a newer PCI-E VGA and DDR2 memory in the future.

The downside to this is that you cannot build a very strong system around these mobos. You cannot use DDR & DDR2 together and this limits you to two mem slots for each config. These mobos support only 1 PCI-E for graphics so crossfire or SLI is out of the question too. More to this most of these boards if not all, sport VIA chipsets.

Still this is an option to consider if you are gonna stick with your old VGA and/or mem and don?t want to spend big.

 

[Lozzo]

If you do want to go the Asrock way (As I did, upgrading from my old XP3200 system in nice, cheap bitesize steps), and don't mind a mild overclock, the AsRock 4CoreDual board does not seem to be too bad.

Anyway, prices..

AsRock board, from OverclockersUK

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...rodid=MB-011-AK&tool=3

£43 quid

Intel C2D E4500 CPU £90.45 2.2Ghz@800FSB. Try running at 266FSB alongside some DDR2 memory for a 1:1 ratio and off you go. (I'm using Value DDR2/667 set at 533 in BIOS on mine alongside an E2160 CPU. Both stable at 290FSB, and using setfsb software it has ran up at 320FSB).

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...701&catid=6&subcat=793


2Gb GeIL Value DDR2/667Mhz (4-4-4-12) (2x1Gb) £41.44

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...t.php?prodid=MY-034-GL


All told, £174.



So, £125 left over. For that budget, you might as well get a better PCI-E board and a cheap(ish) gfx card to make up the rest. What AGP card have you got at the moment anyway?

Example, Abit IP35-E for £76
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...701&catid=5&subcat=913


An extra £25 or so over the price of that Asrock board, leaving you £100 for a decent PCIE video card.

ATI X1950Pro 256Mb for £70

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...t.php?prodid=GX-063-OK


And still £30 change for a couple of pints and a bag o' chips.

 

[Chefuk]

Sorry for not getting back. Graphics card is an Ati X1950XT.

I came here with only 45 mins left to order so had to go ahead and figure out what to get myself. I went for the Athlon 64 x2 6400+ at 3.2Ghz (with a Zalman CNPS9500-AM2 CPU Cooler), 2gb DDR2-800 Ballistic RAM, and the Asrock AM2NF3 mobo as it was the only AGP mobo i could find.

PC now runs nicely and i can put ET:QW on all high settings. The only problem i am having is the CPU is overheating when in game and the pc shuts down. I have resat the CPU cooler twice and have just rearranged the case fans so the airflow is better but the CPU sits at idle on 51c/124f and goes up to 60c within minutes before shutting down. Any idea whats causing it? Mobo temp is 33C/91F and HDD is 38C/100F

EDIT: Just created new thread regarding this problem in the CPU forum:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2104216&enterthread=y

 

[Blazer7]

A good cooler and some arctic silver 5 will improve heat dissipation from your cpu. This will help lower your idle temp by a few degrees.

You should also check your BIOS settings. Try and locate your PC health options. Most mobos have settings that deal with cpu temperatures and when the given cpu temp is reached then depending on the option selected, the BIOS either tells the cpu to throttle down or the machine to shutdown.

Maybe something in there is set so that your mobo shuts down when reaching 60/65 degrees. You should adjust any such settings having always in mind the tolerance of your cpu and how this will affect your system in the long term.