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Rebuild drama - what would you do?

S

swbsam

Platinum Member
Here's the scenario:

1) I want a media playing/hook up to my 1080p LCD TV deal
2) I don't want to spend a lot of money

I originally started this as a project to rebuild my dad's old Pentium D system - old school, agp and DDR 1 memory sorta beast

I already ordered a cheapy (350w rosewill) case and power supply and finally just opened up my dad's old computer, to start the transplant.

His CPU fan is obviously broken (broken fins) and another purchase awaits me.

What would you do?

1) Buy the $21 fan, and hope that nothing else is broken

or
2) Screw it and just salvage the hard drive and dvdrom, purchasing $10 ram, $40 cpu, and a $45 motherboard (whatever I can buy at that level, there are options)...


I have a pci-e video card lying around, if that changes anything..

 
First thing i would do is throw the PSU that came with that case in the trash. Its not a good PSU and will likely damage the system within the first 8 to 12 months of use. First rule of thumb is to never trust a cheap case that has a PSU bundled with it. In general those PSUs are crap and much older models not suited for most decent systems. On top of that Rosewill is one of the top 5 worst PSU manufactures on the market.

A replacment CPU cooler shouldn't set you back much but if the fan has been damaged and the system wasn't working before then the CPU has likely been damaged due to overheating. You may want to just build a whole new system.
 
Do you have a good reason to believe that the CPU fan is the only thing wrong with the system? If so, you could just replace that, but I'm not sure that system is even capable of delivering 1080P content smoothly.
 
X2 5000+ $50
Biostar TA780G $60AR
Crucial 2x1GB $15[/quote]

That's $125AR for innards that will have no problem showing 1080p content on your HDTV.

If your PCIe video card is new enough to have video decoding capability (HD2xxx/3xxx/4xxx or GeForce 8xxx/9xxx) you could knock off another $20 by going with this Foxconn A74MX-K motherboard (740G chipset, $40AR).

Finally, here's a OCZ 500W PSU ($25AR) that will be much better than the cheapo generic included in your Rosewill case.
 
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