Help with rebuild of old computer

[ruefy13]

Hi Everyone,

First some info on an old PC i built for the rents.

Asus A7N8C-E board
AMD 2500XP
2 x 512MB Crucial Ballistix 3200 RAM
ATI AIW 9800Pro 128mb
Have DVD drive, floppy, Antec Truepower 400W PS, and 1 WD SATA 120GB hardrive.


Now here's the fun part. Rents recently got a new HD hardrive based camcorder and need the PC for some video editing as well as lots of photoshop work and so. No gaming at all on this PC (at least nothing heavy). I would like the PC to be able to run Adobe Premier Pro(processor is below minimum spec currently) and also preform well with photoshop and encoding. It doesnt need to be ultra fast though as price will play some factor. Hoping to do this upgrade in the $500-600 range...maybe a little more to future proof it if needed.

What are your suggestions for this? I'm assuming new board, cpu, and RAM, and add a huge HD...not sure on the vid card. Unfortunately i've been out of the building scene for 2 years so i'm really not sure what is all out there. Thanks for any help!

 

[ruefy13]

anyone have any suggestions? Would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[razor2025]

If you want to play tech support for your parents, you can easily go this route:

E7200, 4GB, P35 Board (or if you prefer on-board video a G33/35), 500GB HDD, and a new $60 power supply. Any cheap video card should work for you, try to find one that's fanless, so it's one less thing to worry about. That's about $500. For $600, you can afford to put a quad-core Q6600 which should help well with video editing.

If you want don't want to be tech for you parents, you can easily do a Dell deal. For $600, you can nab

Q6600, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and decent warranty. Look around hot deals sites for coupons or sale.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Phenom 9550 Agena 2.2GHz: $195.00

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI mATX: $97
The fullsize ATX - GA-MA78G-DS3H - is the same price

Antec Earthwatts 430W ATX12V v2.0: $60
With a $30 rebate total cost: $30

Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) KVR800D2N5K2/4G DDR2 800: $95

HITACHI Deskstar 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive: $42
For your OS/Apps drive

Seagate Barracuda 500GB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive: $90
For your data drive

$579 - $30mir = $549


Use the MainConcept encoder with your Premiere. The 780g IGP does hardware acceleration of h264/vc1 video (BluRay-HDDVD) and should work well for light gaming.

Enjoy!

 

[Denithor]

If building a non-gaming system from scratch, it's hard to argue against HHBB's suggestion of a 780G setup. Waaay better performance than any Intel integrated solutions available.

But for general photo editing and lite video encoding, you should be fine with a dual core instead of a quad core processor. I would suggest either the X2 4850e (2.5GHz, 45W) or the slightly warmer but faster X2 5400+ (2.8GHz, 65W) which are both $87.

I wouldn't use two hard drives, go with a (WD 640MB) for $100 because a single drive is cooler and doesn't put as much strain on your powersupply. Also note this is one of the quietest, coolest drives on the market today with about the best $/gigabyte ratio available.

And this Corsair 2x2GB DDR2-800 is only $66.50 AR.

Here you're looking at ~$400 if you use the motherboard and powersupply HHBB recommended.

***

However, there is something to be said for razor's suggestion of just buying them a Dell/HP/etc and letting someone else handle tech support.

 

[0roo0roo]

egads,the software is worth more than the pc

 

[heyheybooboo]

^^^ heh heh

Especially if you knock a couple hundred bucks off of it I've got an X2 5400+ that does an excellent job.

If he does go lower that leaves room for a Silverstone LC13. They're $120 bucks at the Egg but he can most likely find one for $20 less shipped.

If he goes with the Phenom he should seriously consider DDR2 1066 - even if he has to drop back to 2Gb.

And I know he wouldn't want to pull one over on Mom & Dad but the Egg had a combo for an X2 4600+ and a HD4850 for $240. Thankfully I think it's gone - wouldn't want to tempt him too much - lol

 

[0roo0roo]

he's overspending on cpu/mb.
even low end core2's are good for photoshop/video editing these days. drive space is cheap so is non factor.
spend more on screen, less on cpu/mb. ram is also so cheap that 2-4gb=non factor
money better spent on a larger lcd. they'd appreciate that more. older people navigate gui better with larger wider screens.

 

[razor2025]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
he's overspending on cpu/mb.
even low end core2's are good for photoshop/video editing these days. drive space is cheap so is non factor.
spend more on screen, less on cpu/mb. ram is also so cheap that 2-4gb=non factor
money better spent on a larger lcd. they'd appreciate that more. older people navigate gui better with larger wider screens.

++ I couldn't agree more. Whenever I helped anyone over the age of 40, their resolution on their screen was ungodly low. After turning it to my comfortable setting, they were amazed at how I can see the small icons and text.

 

[ruefy13]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I'm debating telling them to get a Dell also as the deals out there are amazing with large lcd's included. I might just reuse some of the parts in this old computer for my own new build....but doesnt really seem that i can use much except for the harddrives. hmmmm...

 

[Old Hippie]

It took me this long just to figure what "rents" were!

This means, that not only is my vision going, it looks like my brain isn't far behind! :laugh: