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Need advice on upgrade

F

Fjive

Senior member
So my abit be6-2 went dead awhile ago, was running a p3 550e on it. I guess its time for an upgrade now, budget will be tight. Here's what i have in mind

AMD Barton 2500+
Abit NF7S or Gigabyte GA-7N400 ( Gigabyte is much cheaper ) do i really need SATA and 1394 ??
1 x 512mb PC 3200 Kingston Value Ram ( Another stick when i have the $$ )
Enlight 300w Casing
Liteon or Sony 16x DVD-Rom


while the rest of the stuffs...i'm gonna use the old ones...
Maxtor 40 gb hdd (7200rpm)
Elsa Gefore 2 Ti 64mb
Sony CDRW
Linksys NIC
Floppy Drive


so... which mobo and DVD-rom should i get eh? oh...i wont be playing much games on this machine...using it mainly for surfing...mp3s....nothing much CPU or memory intensive..so yeah...value rig...
thanks !
 
Well, IMO, the NF7-S is the best Socket A nforce2 board out right now. Firewire and SATA you might not need now, but you may in the future. Also, the sound on the NF7-S is full soundstorm, and is worth the price difference alone over a non MCP-T nForce2 board, but it's your call.

Personally, I would avoid the Gigasuck, but that has more to do with my past experiences with them. If you really need to save some money, I would go with the Shuttle AN35-Ultra for about $55 shipped. It has the normal MCP, just has normal AC'97 5.1 sound (Realtek), has no SATA or Firewire, but does have onboard LAN. However, like I said before, if you have the money, I would go with the NF7-S.

Now, on the DVD-ROM, I would get whatever is cheaper. There is not a whole lot of performance difference nowadays across the 16X DVD-ROM's, and the Sony's are just rebadged Lite-On's anyhow. I usually go with the Sony's because I prefer their faceplate a bit more, but otherwise they are the same. One thing to consider, depending on how fast you current CDRW is, you can probably get the Sony (Lite-On) 52X32X52x16XDVD combo drive for a little more...IIRC it was about $40. You won't need your Linksys NIC with either the NF7-S or the Shuttle as they both have onboard 10/100 LAN that should perform fine.

Good luck. 🙂
 
well ok...so there's a NF7-S v2....and also this

Three 184-pin DIMM sockets
Supports 3 DIMM DDR 200/266/333 (Max. 3 GB)
Supports 2 DIMM DDR 400 (Max. 2 GB)

which means if i decided to get DDR 400 ram...my upgrade is gonna be limited....only 2 slots usable...
hmmm....so do i go with DDR 333 and leave more head room for upgrade ? or go with DDR 400 ?

and also...how well can a 2500+ go...with stock cooling....can it easily reach 2800+ speed ? dont plan to overclock now....just curious...
 
My mobile 2400+ with a falconrock is running at ~2ghz just fine with a $10 falconrock. I could probably go higher, but I've been short on time.

I'm using an ASUS A7V600-X though, not an nVidia based board.
 
With the newest versions of the desktop XP2500, they all seem to be topping out at/near XP2800 speeds. If that's all you're looking for, then you won't be disappointed.
 
Quote:
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"I really like my Shuttle AN35N Ultra. "
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2nd that opinion, I've had one running for 1 yr now, not a single problem..
 
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