Help, I'm ignorant!

[RLusk]

Arg. It's been a while.

Anyway, I used to pay attention to hardware. I whole lot of attention. But, alas, that stopped, my poor computer is dead, and I need a replacement pronto.

However, my mind is still stranded in the land of the Voodoo2, 24x CD-ROM drives, ISA sound cards, AT motherboards, and the good old 68.5 mHz "Turbo" bus speed. More specifically, I have a V2, a 24x drive, and a fine Mtech R581-A, and just about everything needs to be replaced.

But I have no idea what's up today. I can name no chipsets, and I have no idea of who's the top dog in processing. Video cards-- heck, ATI's a player now? What?

So I'd really appreciate it if someone could rattle off a few motherboards/chipsets/etc for me to check out. One of the few things that I did remember was that anandtech forums was a place to go to get an answer-- heck, I posted around here back in the days of "Anand's Hardware Tech Page." I [used to] know my stuff. I'm not looking for a real expensive setup-- I am a student, after all-- but I do want something that will get me back up and running and will last me another few years. Thanks.

 

[BD231]

Well, let people know wether or not you want a Hot Rod system, or just something to get you by and that should help ALOT.

 

[RLusk]

Just something to get me by.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< Just something to get me by. >>


theres lots of choices, for a small budget, duron 1 Ghz's are like 35 bucks, 1.2's are 50 or something like that. p4 1.6's will almost always o/c to 2Ghz or more, they're not much over 100 bucks. if you don't wanna o/c a mid to high end athlon is also good for the money.

chipset/mobo wise you have lots of options....i wont even begin there

video cards....anywhere from low end cards at 50 bucks now, to pretty damn nice ones in the 100-200 dollar range

hard drives - there's seagate barracude IV's, my favorite, which are silent and still some of the fastest ide drives around.

CD burners are at 40x now.....cd-rom drives maxed out quite a while ago

shoot, thats all i can think of right now

 

[jcmkk]

CPUs: Athlon XP - Cheap and the fastest for the money at stock speeds (May want to wait for the Thoroubred core that should be out any day now. It has a die shrink and less heat dissipation)
P4 - Northwoods with 512k cache are fast, and can be the best bang for the buck if overclocked. (Namely the 1.6A)

Motherboards: AMD - VIA KT333 and KT266A chipsets. Good brands include Asus, Epox, Abit, and MSI(not great for overclocking though, and crappy audio)
Intel - i850 (RDRAM, this is the fastest, but not by much), i845 (DDR266, these are good overclockers and there is a lot of good motherboards to chose from), SIS645 (DDR333, the 166MHz Ram clock gives the P4 the memory bandwith it needs, but not as much as RDRAM. These are the best bang for the buck.) Good brands are identical to my AMD picks.

Ram: RDRAM (Rambus) - Samsung
DDR (Double Data Rate) - 133MHz is PC2100 or DDR266. 166MHz is PC2700 or DDR333. The good brands include Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, and Samsung. The best bang for the buck is Samsung PC2700.

Video Cards: GeForce 4 Ti series - The fastest cards around. These come include Ti4600, Ti4400, and soon to be Ti4200. Once the Ti4200 finally comes out, it will be a very good deal for the money ($179 for 64MB, $199 for 128MB, but 128MB version has a lower memory clock) Don't even look at the MX series of GeForce 4's.
GeForce 3 Ti 200 - Good bang for the buck especially if you don't care for ATI products.
Radeon 8500 - Great bang for the buck. Awesome 3D, and excelent 2D. The drivers are a little iffy, but if you play with them for long enough, you can get it running fine.

Hard Drives: Maxtor - Good access time and read speed.
Seagate - Almost silent, good access time and decent read speed.
Western Digital - I wouldn't really look here unless you want a 100GB or 120GB hard drive. The JB series (special edition with 8MB buffer instead of 2MB), is a real winner. They are the fastest IDE drives around. There will soon be an 80GB drive added to the JB series.

I think that's about it. Hope this cleared things up a little!

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Here's what I would propose for decent performance and a mid-range price (seeing as you don't seem to be too much into overclocking )

- Athlon XP 1800+ (I'd suggest OEM with an SVC GC-68 heatsink)
- Asus A7V333 motherboard
- 1x512 Crucial PC2100 (go for Corsair PC2700 if you like but it'll be noticeably more expensive and likely won't give you a huge boost without some FSB tweaking)
- GF4 Ti4200 or ATI Radeon 8500 (depending on if you want to buy now or wait a bit)
- Creative Labs Audigy OEM sound card
- Lite-On or Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM
- Lite-On or Plextor ~24x CD-RW, anything more than that is expensive for a negligeable speed boodt IMHO
- Antec Case (I have an SX635, and it's great comes with 350W PS)
- Linksys LAN card (I assume you have broadband Internet)
- Maxtor, WD, or Seagate 80 GB 7200 RPM HD

That should be a nice setup, and shouldn't be all that expensive.
- If you need speakers, the Logitech Z560s are supposed to be really nice, though I have not heard them personally.
- If you need a monitor, you can't go wrong with a 19" FD Trinitron. Dell has sales occasionally on theirs I have a Dell P992 and it is very nice.

-Ice

PS: Welcome back

 

[RLusk]

Whee, this is a lot more fun now that I know where to start.

At least I finally put a last breath of life into this old piece of junk. Should be able to tackle at least one last midterm paper before I retire it. But let's just say that I'll be a heck of a lot more comfortable with parts in the mail-- then I might finally have a computer that I can turn off and fully expect to turn back on again. Believe me, that's been the goal for a while. But thanks, all.

 

[Muadib]

It might help if you gave a budget. Then we could give you the rough cost on each item.

 

[BreakApart]

Hope icecool doesn't mind i'm going to edit his list...

- Athlon XP 1800+ (any speed Athlon XP, let your budget decide)
- Asus A7V333 motherboard
- 256mb Crucial PC2100 (you don't appear to be a hardcore gamer, or into video editing, 256mb is fine)
- GF3 Ti200 (pick your brand $130, or go Geforce2 $50)
- Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card $60
- Lite-On or Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM
- Lite-On or Plextor ~24x CD-RW, anything more than that is expensive for a negligeable speed boodt IMHO
- Antec Case (SX635, SX830, SX1030 all great, plus you'll need the NEW power supply they include, your old one won't work)
- Linksys, Dlink, Netgear all great budget NICS
- Maxtor, WD, or Seagate 80 GB 7200 RPM HD (5400 if your not a hardcore gamer, save a few $$)

Intel Setup:
P4 1.6A $130
DDR chipset motherboard (RDRAM would add extra $$, but well worth it if the budget allows)
256mb DDR
All the rest same as above....

 

[FlippyBoy]

all great suggestions above. one thing: definitely get a 7200 rpm drive, whether you are going to game or not - it will make all your apps respond quicker.

 

[TonyB]

Id recommend you get this system, it'll last you a long time.

Intel pentium 4 - 2.4GHz retail box 478 pin
ASUS P4T-E i850 motherboard
512MB Samsung ECC RDRAM PC800
Visiontek Xtasy Ti4600 Geforce4 128MB graphics card
Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller card
Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP 36.7GB hard drive
Pioneer DVD-305S 10X Scsi DVD-ROM
Pioneer DVR-A04 DVD-R/RW EIDE
Plextor PlexWriter PX-4012TA 40/12/40 EIDE CD-RW
Midiman Delta Audiophile 2496 Sound card
3Com 3C905C-TXM ethernet Card
Antec SX635 Case w/350W PSU
MS Wireless Explorer mouse + MS office KB
Klipsch Promedia 5.1 speakers
Windows 2000 professional

 

[RLusk]

Thanks, everyone. I think that I undershot everyone's budget a bit, but, well, I should still be quadrupling my speed on this one upgrade, and I think that that's at least pretty good.

So, I guess that I should say Wot I Got:

Gigabyte KT333 mb
256 Mb PC2100
PCI ethernet card
Decent looking case + quiet Enermax P/S (I live in a closet-- my last was driving me up the wall)
Duron 1.0 Ghz.

I really had to talk myself into the duron-- then I realized a) exactly how tight my budget was, and b) that I actually wasn't doing too badly at 68.5x6. Don't worry, I'll get the 2200+ when they're down to $40, too. I bought my last board and case practically the week before AT and decidedly-non-super socket seven went out of style. This board actually has an upgrade path. Sorry that I didn't tell you that I had upgraded some components as need arose already, that I was just unfamiliar with the main parts:

60 Gb 60GXP replacing a wee little 4.3 Gb Diamondmax.
19" Samsung replacing a wee little 15" Pixie (good lord).
Klipsch v.2-400 replacing wee little Midiland S2/4030's replacing wee little generic junkers.
Soundblaster Live! replacing wee little Ensoniq PCI (do YOU have PCI sound? I was hip)
Yamaha 20x-10x-40x CD adding on to the wee little generic 24x (hooray for birthdays!).
K6-2/400 rep. K6/266 (and yes, at $40).
256Mb replacing 96Mb replacing 64Mb replacing wee wee wee little 32Mb.
V2 and STB Velocity 128 replacing wee little S3 ViRGE.

umm....

Nifty Microsoft optical trackball replacing wee little scruffy mouse.

ummmmmm....

ISA ethernet card replacing wee little broken ISA ethernet card.

Yeah, I'm keeping the video for now, although I'm still thinking hard about an upgrade to that one. See where I'm at cash-wise when I hit the old full-time job this summer. Definitely by the end of that.

But, thanks again.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

You know what might fit your needs perfectly is an nForce.

You'd get new (and real nice) sound, onboard video which'd be faster than the V2, ethernet depending on the board.. you could do this and the Duron for somewhere around $200. You could sell the V2 and the SBLive and the ethernet and make a little extra cash or something