I have a microcenter about 45 minutes away that I can go to. I am really thinking about getting a SSD. the MC brand one uses the sandfrce controller, it's 64gb and only $100 I believe. Plus maybe getting windows 7 for $100 while I am there.
Do you think a 64gb ssd would be enough as my only drive or would I need a new drive like a 320gb? I don't have squat for music maybe 3-5gb at the max, no movies at all either
I'd use the SSD as your boot drive then just put the old HDD from the Dell into the new system as your storage drive for movies and music and that kinda stuff. Whatever it is it sounds like it's big enough for your uses already.
But HDDs are so cheap now if you wanna buy some 1TB drive it's only gonna be like an extra $70 anyway so it's really up to you. Doesn't sound like you need much more though, so you can likely just get away with using whatever's in the Dell to bump the storage up.
A nice trick I've learned (since I have many SSD systems) is to symlink certain folders over to your hard drive for apps that are basically using your primary drive to keep large files. For example, iTunes likes to store backup copies of your entire iPod or iPhone, and that can eat up 30GB of space on your boot drive, so if you go into the hidden folder where it's storing all that junk you can copy/move it to the hard drive then put a symbolic link there so that iTunes still sees the files as being on the SSD even though it's really on the HDD. Makes it a lot easier to keep apps on the main SSD without hitting the limit.
On a side note about random accessories, if you wanna upgrade your burner they have a $17.99 LG DVD burner (22x SATA) as well as a $21.99 Lite-ON. I think the LG is only on sale until today for that price though I'm not sure if it's as good as the Lite-ON. Either way it's just a cheap thing to consider if you need a DVD burner drive (dunno if you already have one in the Dell or not). And for heatsinks the Thermaltake Contac30 is on sale for $19.99 after rebate. I've gone to Microcenter the last 2 days just buying stuff. Sitting here on a Phenom II X2 that I unlocked to 4 cores and overclocked to 4Ghz with the thermaltake (which is a pretty big heatsink, though it does fit in my antec sonata)...pretty great deal since I recycled my old DDR2 so it was a hella cheap upgrade.
On the off chance that you don't just wanna play flash games they also have the Palit Sonic 1GB GTX 460 for $129.99 after rebate (i think it's $30 rebate).
Oh and if you have any kids in college I'd try to see if they can buy Windows 7 for cheap. Bought ultimate for $12.95 from my school (I'm not in college but medical students can buy them too).
Anyways, $109.99 for the Phenom II X2 combo with a good mobo, plus $50 if you don't have DDR2 lying around (they have 4GB DDR3 for $50 there I think, though you can buy online for $45 or so if you wanna save another few bucks), $19.99-$29.99 for a heatsink, and $99 for an SSD and you should be up and running with a blazing fast system. Even if the cores don't unlock you can hit 4Ghz pretty easy with a good heatsink, and if they do unlock even better.
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