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How would you approach this "upgrade"?

G

Galactical

Junior Member
Long story short: Previous PC's motherboard (Gigabyte GA-7VRXP) crapped out, and now I'm looking for the best way to still use the two PATA hard drives and PCI sound card I have with a new updated motherboard.

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
  • General
    Internet browsing
    No gaming
    Document writing
    Listening to music.
2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
  • Less than $300, would stretch to $400
3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
  • United States
4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.

  • No brand preferences
5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
  • A few PATA Hard drives
    PCI Santa Cruz sound card
    CD-ROM drive
    ATX Case, keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers
6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
  • Default system settings
8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
  • ASAP (replacing an older system)

So I gather I still need:


Now the barrage of questions:
  1. Will this combination work?
    What PSU and Video card should I get?
    Will that RAID card allow me to still use the PATA hard drives I have now?
    If so, can I do an XP repair on the PATA drive so I can boot with it on the new hardware?
    Or would it be better just to clone and repair to a SATA drive?

Any advice is much appreciated.
 
The Rosewill will work fine. You might need to put your boot / OS drive on the one IDE port on the motherboard, and share it with your IDE DVD drive.

Since you're not gaming, you could also look for a microATX motherboard with nv 6100 or better graphics, and save the $25-50 a video card will cost. Otherwise just do a $25-50 price search at newegg, something like an nv 8200 - 8400 or ATI 3450.

I'd only do a repair if I needed to get access to data files before doing a clean install, but that's me.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
The Rosewill will work fine. You might need to put your boot / OS drive on the one IDE port on the motherboard, and share it with your IDE DVD drive.

Since you're not gaming, you could also look for a microATX motherboard with nv 6100 or better graphics, and save the $25-50 a video card will cost. Otherwise just do a $25-50 price search at newegg, something like an nv 8200 - 8400 or ATI 3450.

I'd only do a repair if I needed to get access to data files before doing a clean install, but that's me.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Dave. Onboard graphics is a good idea.

I've got a Lian-Li ATX case, there shouldn't be any problem fitting the smaller microATX motherboard into it, right?

Is there any particular reason you recommend looking for a microATX vs. standard ATX motherboard? I assume it might be because onboard graphics are more common on the microATX.

Besides that, I see for PSUs that 500W seems to be the most recommended. But with a smaller motherboard, is there anything in particular that I should be looking for?

 
 
I've got a Lian-Li ATX case, there shouldn't be any problem fitting the smaller microATX motherboard into it, right?
Click to expand...
Right. There will just be empty space in the case where the bottom 2 slots would be on a normal atx board.

Is there any particular reason you recommend looking for a microATX vs. standard ATX motherboard? I assume it might be because onboard graphics are more common on the microATX.
Click to expand...
Right again, also they tend to be cheaper (but not always).
 
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