Suggestions for new mobo and cpu

[smatthews34]

Hi all. My comp recently crapped out on me. Froze overnight and when I power it back up I get all the fans and drives spinning and that's it. No post beep, no picture, nothing. I have fairly new RAM, so that's probably not it. I think it's the mobo, and since that and the cpu are 5-6 yrs old, I've decided to upgrade. I've been out of the loop for a while now and don't know what's hot or the best buys for the money. FYI my cpu is a athlon 2400xp and my mobo an asus a7n8x.

I'm looking to get some decent speed (2-3 ghz). I'd like to stay with AMD. Also I'd like to select a cpu/mobo combo that's built to last a few years, maybe another 5-6 if possible. I game often, but I don't need peak performance, I'm not that hardcore about it. Other than games, I just do general comp stuff, no bigtime photoshopping or any of that business. I do run autoCAD 2006, so I guess that would have to work on this new setup. It works fine on my current comp. I'm not crazy about owning vista any time soon, am pretty content with win xp. I'd like to keep my budget for the combo under 300 if possible.

Things I have in my system that I'd like to roll over:
New (3 month old) geforce 7600gs vid card (AGP)
new (6 month old) 500 watt power supply
512mb pc3200 ram
512mb ddr ram (I'm not averse to upgrading to 2 gigs of something, I don't konw much about ram these days anymore either)
DVD Rom drive
DVD RW drive
1-60 gig hard drive
1-120 gig hard drive

Thanks all in advance, I'd really appreciate any suggestions you can bring to the table.

steve

 

[chazzzer]

The new power supply should have the 24-pin power connector that all of the new motherboards require, so you should be good there. I assume that all four drives are PATA, which could be an issue with some motherboards that only support two PATA drives.

The AGP card is the real killer here. If you can find one, the ideal motherboard to go with in your situation is the ASRock 939Dual-VSTA (or the slightly older 939Dual-SATA2, which is pretty much identical). It has an 8x AGP slot that will work with any AGP card (a number of boards that have an AGP slot these days have a limited AGP compatibility), plus it has a PCI-E x16 slot too so that your next video card won't cause you upgrade problems like your current one. Because it's Socket-939, it'll take your DDR RAM, and it supports 4 PATA drives as well as 3 SATA. And the really cool thing is that it has a CPU upgrade slot; for $30-$35 you can get a card that upgrades it to take an AM2 CPU and DDR2 RAM. The problem is that the supply on these is drying up fast; ASRock recently discontinued it. Also, Socket-939 CPU prices are significantly more than Socket-AM2, because they don't make them anymore and they are charging a premium for them.

Or, you could go retro and get an older Socket-754 motherboard, like the Foxconn K8S755A-6EKRS/6ELRS, BIOSTAR K8M800-M7A or the MSI K8MM3-V. The advantages are than they are cheap (~$45), the Socket-754 CPUs are cheap ($36 for an Athlon64 3200+ @ 2.2GHz) and they'll take your DDR memory. The disadvantages are that you can't get a dual-core CPU in Socket-754, and just like the AM2's you'll have to replace the motherboard to get a new video card...but this time you'll also have to replace the CPU and RAM too, unless you 'upgrade' to a PCI-E Socket-754 motherboard (which probably won't be available much longer). Still, it's a fairly cheap way to keep using your AGP card and RAM, and the total motherboard/CPU price is less than a lot of current motherboards alone.

The other option is Socket-AM2, like the Biostar K8M800 Micro AM2 motherboard ($38 after $10 MIR). The problem here is that this requires DDR2 memory, and it doesn't have a PCI-E slot for future expansion. That means that you'll need to replace the motherboard the next time you need to upgrade your video card, as nobody is making AGP cards anymore.

If you were going the AM2 route, I think you'd be better off just biting the bullet and getting a new PCI-E video card so that you can go with a current CPU & motherboard. You can get a 7600GS for as low as $80, then sell your AGP card to someone else that's looking for an upgrade (you'd probably break even or even make a few bucks, as powerful AGP cards are priced higher than their PCI-E counterparts). Of course, you'd still be looking at a motherboard, CPU and DDR2 RAM if you went with Socket-AM2. One nice thing about DDR2 is that you can get 1GB (2x512MB) of DDR2-667 for as little as $38 these days, and DDR2-800 is only about $5 more. This is the best route to get a system that will last you for many years without doing forklift upgrades. You can get a dual-core 1.9 or 2.0GHz Athlon64 X2 CPU with heatsink for $70, a JetWay M2A692-GHG-PB motherboard for $75 and the memory I listed above for a total of ~$185. That doesn't count the new video card, but like I said you should at least break even on that. If you think you'll need more CPU power than that for gaming, a couple of good deals are the 2.4GHz X2 4600+ for $115 or the 5600+ 2.8GHz with 2x1MB cache for $179.

I hope this helps. You've got to decide if you really want a system that will last you for a lot of years, or just want to spend a small amount of money to get you through the next two (until you need a better graphics card for gaming). By the way, all of the prices I mentioned are for in-stock items at Newegg.com (except for the 939Dual motherboards). The 7600GS price ($80) was after a $10 rebate, but you can get a couple of others for $85 with no rebate. All of the motherboards I listed support 4 PATA drives plus at least two SATA.

 

[smatthews34]

hey, solid! thanks for all the info man, i really appreciate it. I think at any other time I would probably do a full upgrade, but my wife is leaving her job and needs to buy a laptop, so money's tight right now. Those are some excellent solutions you posted for getting my system working again for short money.

I still may just wait on it. I could use the new laptop and wait for prices on some new x2's and mobo's to come down and retool everything later on in the year. nonetheless, I sincerely appreciate all your help.