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Anandtech faithful...help me out.

B

Black Market Baby

Junior Member
First post. Hello everyone.

I'm in the process of upgrading my wifes computer (Athlon 1.2 gig T-Bird wi 512mb ram).

So I know almost exactly what I want.

Memory - 2Gb of memory (Crucial, OCZ, or other quality memory)
PSU - Corsair HX520
Harddrive - 500Gb of SATA Hard drive (or 2 250's)
Optical - 2 X Samsung S182D
Video Card - A cheaper PCI-E video card, she doesn't play games
Sound Card - possible only if she doesn't have good onboard sound.

So my first inclination was to get the E6420 with the Gigabyte DS3 rev 3.3 but at the same time I'm wondering how the new AMD line coming up later this year will do. I like the option of buying an AM2+ board that will be compatible with the newer chip (less large scale overhaul later). As you can see, it's been a while since she's had a new computer. Usually I trade out the guts of mine when I upgrade, but I'm not exactly ready to take the leap on a new computer for me yet.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Hi, and welcome to AT!

What is the PC used for? Just general stuff, nothing industrial strength?

If so, I would strongly consider the less expensive AM2 chips. The higher price for Intel's performance isn't likely to be justified in this case. Not bad for $70, and light years better than the old chip. The "experience" will be identical to an Intel chip 95% of the time.

2x1GB DDR2 800 $115

I'm a fan of Samsung HDDs, my 500GB is 10C cooler than others and whisper quiet. I suggest getting a smaller (Samsung) HDD for C: and keep the media and info on 500GB D:

What's up with the 2 optical drives? Unless you have an eyepatch and a parrot, stick to 1 drive. linky

GIGABYTE GV-NX85T256H GeForce 8500GT
This will last the life of the machine, $100

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page4.html
500 Watts? Not on it's worst day. Look for a quality 350 - 400W model. Corsair is made by Seasonic, spendy but good.

If you want an Intel build, I'd pick E4300 + DS3.
 
Originally posted by: The Boston Dangler
Hi, and welcome to AT!


What's up with the 2 optical drives? Unless you have an eyepatch and a parrot, stick to 1 drive.
Click to expand...


Oh, that was good! 😀
 
thanks for the info. Yeah this is just a general surf, burn, listen to music etc computer.

I already bought the psu. I got it for 70$ (after mir) so I figure it's a good deal.

The two optical drives...AAARRRGGHH. No seriously, her current computer has two drives already, neither work particularly well. She's a creature of habit and they were 29 bucks a piece. I got one for myself and I'm happy with it. If I only install one for her, I'd keep the other for a backup.
 
Originally posted by: moonsite
If she doesn't play any game, get a motherboard with integrated video will do as well.
Click to expand...

What about HD video? 8500/600 has built in decoding, and HD video will be a breeze (It will be a breeze without card, too 😛)
 
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