Help me figure out my upgrade woes..

[TallBill]

I've been out of the country and away from my pc for almost 8 months. So I'm coming home and its time to upgrade. I've searched a whole bunch of threads and this is what I've come up with so far.

Currently I have an nforce2 board(I forget which one), an athlon xp 2800+, with a radeon 9800xt and 2 sticks of corsair pc3200 memory.

I plan on purchasing an athlon 64 3500+ with an nforce4 board (not sure which one yet). I also plan on getting a new 24 pin psu. I cant seem distinguish which are which looking at zipzoomfly.com. How do I tell which is which. Keep in mind that I've never even heard of these 24 pin PSU's or SLI or PCIE untill yesterday!!

Switching over memory shouldn't be an issue should it? It should be the same sticks and same compatability since its a matched pair right? Any other issues I'm going to have to deal with?

Also, I plan on picking up a DVD burner since they seem to be so cheap these days. Where should I look to get a DVD-R or DVD+R (I have no clue what the differences is between these). I dont really need any RW capabilities.

Thanks!



- Tallbill

 

[stevty2889]

Your current PC3200 memory will be compatible. For the DVD burner I would recomend the NEC 3520(16x dual layer). Any recent dvd burner can do both DVD-R and DVD+R and RW capabilites, so that won't be an issue. If you do get a motherboard with PCIe your current video card won't work either, AGP and PCIe are not compatible. As for how to differntiate a 24 pin PSU from a 20pin..I am wondering the same thing myself..

 

[Alex]

what he said ^^^^

about the PSUs im just as clueless, but theres a stickied thread at the top of this section that u might want to check out... 🙂

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Your current PC3200 memory will be compatible. For the DVD burner I would recomend the NEC 3520(16x dual layer). Any recent dvd burner can do both DVD-R and DVD+R and RW capabilites, so that won't be an issue. If you do get a motherboard with PCIe your current video card won't work either, AGP and PCIe are not compatible. As for how to differntiate a 24 pin PSU from a 20pin..I am wondering the same thing myself..

Sweet, thanks. Gonna have to do me some more research now. I dont think I need a new video card just yet.

 

[TallBill]

So a Asus A8V-Deluxe Via K8T800Pro would be a much better solution for me then right?

 

[MrControversial]

Originally posted by: TallBill
I've been out of the country and away from my pc for almost 8 months. So I'm coming home and its time to upgrade. I've searched a whole bunch of threads and this is what I've come up with so far.

Currently I have an nforce2 board(I forget which one), an athlon xp 2800+, with a radeon 9800xt and 2 sticks of corsair pc3200 memory.

I plan on purchasing an athlon 64 3500+ with an nforce4 board (not sure which one yet). I also plan on getting a new 24 pin psu. I cant seem distinguish which are which looking at zipzoomfly.com. How do I tell which is which. Keep in mind that I've never even heard of these 24 pin PSU's or SLI or PCIE untill yesterday!!

Switching over memory shouldn't be an issue should it? It should be the same sticks and same compatability since its a matched pair right? Any other issues I'm going to have to deal with?

Also, I plan on picking up a DVD burner since they seem to be so cheap these days. Where should I look to get a DVD-R or DVD+R (I have no clue what the differences is between these). I dont really need any RW capabilities.

Thanks!



- Tallbill

Forget about SLI, it's all hype. As far as NForce motherboards go, you have a wide variety to choose from. Chaintech has a great NF4 Ultra board for about $110. I have that myself and so far I dig the features like onboard 7.1 sound SATA2, RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, etc.

Don't get to wound up about the 24 pin PSU issue. My NForce4 board has a 24 pin plug and I use an Antec 480W with a 20-24 pin adapter that you can get for like $5. So if you have a PSU over 400W, you can bring it over to the new NF4 boards.