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Upgrade opinions please...

X

xbassman

Golden Member
Well...my daughter wants me to upgrade her comp for her birthday.
It's an old Celery 500@562 but she has a Radeon 7500 @ least.

I am trying to keep costs down though.....
Here's what I am looking @ right now. (I haven't done enough research to decide yet)

Shuttle AN35N-Ultra mobo
2 CRUCIAL MICRON 256MB 32x64 PC 2100 DDR RAM - OEM
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ Thoroughbred
Speeze CPU Fan Model 5F263B1M3
Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM

NewEgg can get this to me for about $285 shipped.

Gonna try to get away without replacing her PSU. I think it's an Enhance 300W, but I have a few others taking up space also.

A lot has changed since my last upgrade. Asus A7V266-E/ XP2000+ (hot running Bi@ch even w/AX-7)
These forums have always steered me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance!
🙂
 
looks like fun, only i usually try to get a high quality heatsink/fan since the cheap heatsinks always seem to bite me in the butt before long. If it's not in the form of bloody knuckles on install, it's a scraped CPU core or something equally unsavory, but hey that's just me.

At any rate, looks like a good good system.
 
Get her the retail 1800+ for $2.50 more which will come with a fan, won't it? I haven't ever purchased an AMD cpu except once, that was OEM, but Intel retail ones come with a fan.

If she plays any games, atleast get her an nfroce2 mobo with integrated gra phics, most I've seen have geforce4mx level graphics.

Also, that RAM you chose is $48 a stick! Thats quite pricy for PC2100, I payed $63 for a 256MB Corsair XMS PX3200! I'd get her 1 stick of Apacer 512MB DDR PC2100 RAM 32X8 Infineon Original Chipset CL=2 - OEM item # N82E16820145024

Thats $78 shipped so it should save you some money and some more money saved if the AMD cpu comes with a fan in the retail version. If you want to stick with Crucial, you save some more money getting the 512MB version of those sticks for $86 shipped. Item # N82E16820145005

As for the hard drive, its fine, but an 8mb cache version would be better, I have no clue how much more it will cost though.

 
Yeah.....I tend to agree. The main reason I am looking at going cheap there is to help justify the 2 sticks of ram. ($96)
Couldn't be worst than installing the Thermalright that's on my system though. (That dude really sucked to install!)
 
Originally posted by: AgaBooga
Get her the retail 1800+ for $2.50 more which will come with a fan, won't it? I haven't ever purchased an AMD cpu except once, that was OEM, but Intel retail ones come with a fan.

If she plays any games, atleast get her an nfroce2 mobo with integrated gra phics, most I've seen have geforce4mx level graphics.

Also, that RAM you chose is $48 a stick! Thats quite pricy for PC2100, I payed $63 for a 256MB Corsair XMS PX3200! I'd get her 1 stick of Apacer 512MB DDR PC2100 RAM 32X8 Infineon Original Chipset CL=2 - OEM item # N82E16820145024

Thats $78 shipped so it should save you some money and some more money saved if the AMD cpu comes with a fan in the retail version. If you want to stick with Crucial, you save some more money getting the 512MB version of those sticks for $86 shipped. Item # N82E16820145005

As for the hard drive, its fine, but an 8mb cache version would be better, I have no clue how much more it will cost though.
Click to expand...

Well...I have purchased retail AMD procs and the hsf's have always been suspect. (not sure if they still are though.
The reason for 2 sticks of ram is to get the benefit of dual channel memory operations. (Tom's Hardware review)
I have 2 sticks Corsair XMS PC 2700 in my PC right now, and am considering maybe transplanting it into hers and getting a single stick for mine though.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think her current video (64mb Radeon 7500) produces better video than Geforce 4 MX doesn't it?

I agree about drive cache also. WD special edition is more than I want to spend though. (I have one and love it!)
 
If she's going to be playing any kind of games a video upgrade would be good... say an 8500LE 64MB for ~$65 (still runs most games fine). Other than that, looks like a good basic use setup, just go for one 512MB stick (Corsair Value is only $78) and the retail 1800+ with the stock HSF.
 
Probably not considering you're using PC2100... since it's not a high-performance system I'd say just save the dough and get 1x512MB. The advantage of using dual-channel is far less than simply moving up to PC2700, for example.
 
that's where I am kinda stuck. I can see the advantage of pC 2700 is I can set it @ CAS 2. But PC 2100 is rated for the FSB the proc will be running.(266 DDR)

Here's a quote from THG.
"One of the main characteristics setting the nForce chipset apart from the VIA KT266A is its dual-channel DDR SDRAM interface. This means that two 64-bit DIMM modules are merged to create a 128-bit wide memory bus."

This bus reverts back to 64 bit in any other configuration than 2 modules. I may be Totally wrong, but in theory this looks like it would make more of a difference. (BTW- her PC runs UD 24/7)
 
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