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#1 Jan 03 2007 at 6:42 PM Rating: Decent

bodhisattva

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Help (insert name here), you are my only hope!

My dell after two years is starting to show its age. I am looking to upgrade. My current plans are to cannabilize whatever I can off my current rig and buy new upgrades. That leaves me with a) 160gb HD b) 1gig of ram c) P4 3.4 ghz processor. Plus the ethernet, usb ports, dvd burner, dvd-rom, and all the other miscellaneous gear.

What I will need to replace is the Motherboard, Soundcard and a new Video Card, I will probably throw another gig of ram in. I have 300-500 dollars to spend. Not looking to have the most high end rig just something that will get the done job, so the cheaper the better.

So if you have free time and can peruse newegg for me and perhaps give me some ideas I would be very appreciative Smiley: wink

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#2 Jan 03 2007 at 7:12 PM Rating: Good

__DEL__1591806387468

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What socket type is the processor you have? (such as: 939, 940, F, AM2, etc.) What type of RAM is it? (DDR 667/800, 240 pin, etc.) And is your hard drive SATA or IDE?

If you intend to keep that stuff, you need to make sure that they fit in the new motherboard. Also, you probably wont need to buy a soundcard on its own. The stuff built into the current motherboards generally work just fine.

EDIT: Finally, what power supply do you have now? If you buy a brand spankin' new video card, it will probably require quite a bit of wattage. If your current power supply doesn't have enough, then you can expect to have quite a bit of trouble with your upgrades. Also, you intend to keep the case you have, right?

Edited, Jan 3rd 2007 10:11pm by DodoBird

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#3 Jan 03 2007 at 7:16 PM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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Leet Haxör

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Ok, A few things before we get started here. On the processor, is it a socket 478 or a socket 775 processor? (provide the dell model number and I can check on it), and is the ram DDR 1 or DDR2.

Assuming the processor is a socket 775 (as it most likely is), I would go with this as your board of choice.

$215.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131071
http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=337&model=1325&modelmenu=1

This is not the current top of the line, but it is close. SLI capable if you ever decided to go that route, Full 7.1 Srround sound card integrated (sounds quite good. not quite as good as the Soundblaster X-FI fatality edition I run in the main rig, but good enough, and you cna always upgrade to the X-FI later), Wifi, SATA and IDE drive slots, 4 ram slots, pretty much everything you will need.

In the event you cannot reuse your ram, new ram is cheap these days, Expect to spend around $130 for 4 512mb chips.

Video card, Nvidia is the way to go. You have three high end options at the moment. The Nvidia 8800 series that is more than $500, so outside your budget. The next step down would be the Geforce 7950gx2 dual core card. 2 seperate processors, so 2 of those would allow you to try Quad SLI. Those are around $350 at the moment, so your next best bet is the 7900. Here's one for $200.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150216

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#4 Jan 03 2007 at 7:30 PM Rating: Good

bodhisattva

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Sorry about missing the particulars.

Actually was a 3.2p4 DIM 4700,P4,540 (3.2GHZ),HT,INT SNDNICV

Dual ChannelDDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz on the Ram.

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#5 Jan 03 2007 at 7:42 PM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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That is a socket 775 processor, and the ram will work with the board specified.

The point about the power supply is a good one. if you dell power supply is lower than 400w I would replace it with something better. On your budget i'd go with a generic supply.

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#6 Jan 03 2007 at 8:01 PM Rating: Good

bodhisattva

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I went to dell and checked out the info on my comp, also brought up the original email with purchase info and neither has the specs on the power supply and I do not feel like cracking open my case this evening.

For now I think I will pick up the gig of ram. Every three months I get an expected 500-1,000 dollar bonus, the last one was for xmas but I might just pick this up on the CC and pay it off later.

Thanks for the info Kao and the relevant questions Dodo!

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#7 Jan 03 2007 at 8:15 PM Rating: Excellent

Snorre

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My wife has an nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX (256 MB) and it rocks for WoW. Even better than my ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition (256 MB). As much as I hate the idea of having to upgrade anything on a 2 year old pc, I've been thinking about picking up an 8800 GTS card when the price drops (and it will, at some point). My concern, though, is determining if my power supply can handle it or if I'll need to upgrade the power supply. Here's a quote from a CNET review of the 8800 GTS:

Quote:

To its advantage, the 8800 GTS card requires less power than the GTX. Nvidia recommends at least a 450-watt power supply for a single GTX card and 400 watts for the GTS. Another potentially big difference between the two cards, depending on your current power supply: The GTS requires only a single connection to your power supply; the GTX needs two. Lastly, the GTS is also shorter than the rather lengthy GTX.

So I need to figure out what my power supply wattage is. Is there a way to check that besides simply opening up my case? I looked up my system specs on my Dell account:

Quote:

System Summary
Service Tag: 2W4J071
System Type: XPS/Dimension XPS Gen 4
Ship Date: 3/18/2005
Dell IBU: Americas
Quantity Parts # Part Description
1 149DF INFORMATION, PREPARATION MATERIAL, DEVIATION, PRECISION WORKSTATION, INCREASE, #2
1 5120P CORD, POWER, 125V, 6FT, SPT2, UNSHIELDED
1 702EX INFORMATION, PREPARATION MATERIAL, DEVIATION, PRECISION WORKSTATION, INCREASE, #1
1 W6580 PROCESSOR, 80547, PENTIUM 4 PRESCOTT DT, 3.73, 2, 1066, SOCKET
1 U7084 CARD (CIRCUIT), PLANAR (MOTHERBOARD), TRANSFORMER SKY DIVE MINITOWER, XPS-G4, MID-LIFE KICKER
1 4N454 KEYBOARD, 104, UNITED STATES, NMB, LOW COST, MIDNIGHT GRAY
1 F2854 KIT, MOUSE, PERSONAL SYSTEM 2, 2BTN, WHEEL, PRIMAX ELECTRONICS LTD
1 J2523 KIT, SPEAKER, 120V, DELL5650, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 J2427 DIGITAL VIDEO DISK DRIVE, 17G, 16X, I, 5.25" FORM FACTOR, LITEON, CHASSIS 2001, V5
1 P7665 CARD (CIRCUIT), MULTI-MEDIA, AUDIO, 1394, SB0358
1 Y4299 DISPLAY, FLAT PANEL DISPLAY, 17, DUAL VOLTAGE, 1704FPTT, MIDNIGHT GRAY, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 H8442 CARD (CIRCUIT), GRAPHICS, 256, X850, UHMGA12
1 5U692 FLOPPY DRIVE, 1.44M, 3.5" FORM FACTOR, 3MD, NO BEZEL, SAMSUNG, CHASSIS 2001
1 T7166 KIT, SOFTWARE, WP-PRDCT-STE12, ENGLAND/ENGLISH, V2
1 H8412 KIT, SOFTWARE, OVERPACK, WXPHSP2, COMPACT DISKETTE W/DOCUMENTATION, ENGLAND/ENGLISH
1 N8757 KIT, DOCUMENTATON ON FLOPPY DISK, SOFTWARE, POWERDVD, 5.3.1012
2 P2945 DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 1G, 533M, 128X64, 8, 240, 2RX8
1 7J597 HARD DRIVE, 160GB, Serial ATA, 7.2K, 8MB, NATIVE COMMAND QUEUEING, SEAGATE

When it cites the 1 5120P CORD, POWER, 125V, 6FT, SPT2, UNSHIELDED, that's just talking about the power cord, not the power supply, right? Or does it? If so, I imagine that would mean having to possibly upgrade the motherboard and such.

Please to edumacate me, Kao!

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#8 Jan 03 2007 at 8:22 PM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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Leet Haxör

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Yeah, that's jsut the cord. Most of the Gen 4 XPS cases came with a pretty generic 460w power suplpy. The newer Gen 5's come with a 650 watt. The 8800's are beasts though when it comes to power consumption. i wouldn't want to run one in a case with less than 500 available watts. if you ony run 1 DVD drive 1 HD and just a few 120mm fans you might be able to get away with it on a 460w.

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#9 Jan 03 2007 at 8:31 PM Rating: Excellent

Snorre

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Awesome, thanks for the info, Kao, much appreciated! If I did upgrade the power supply, can my pc handle a 650 watt (or minimum 500 watt) power supply? Or would that involve replacing other things like the motherboard? Sorry, I've been out of the tech support game for so long, I'm absolutely clueless.

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'Lo, there do I see, the line of my people, back to the beginning, 'lo do they call to me, they bid me take my place among them, in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave...may live...forever.

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#10 Jan 03 2007 at 9:19 PM Rating: Good

__DEL__1690762604546

Sage

16,160 posts

"My dell after two years is starting to show its age. I am looking to upgrade. My current plans are to cannabilize whatever I can off my current rig and buy new upgrades. That leaves me with a) 160gb HD b) 1gig of ram c) P4 3.4 ghz processor. Plus the ethernet, usb ports, dvd burner, dvd-rom, and all the other miscellaneous gear." --bhodi

So basically you own a doorstop. Give it to the Salvation Army, write it off on your taxes and go buy an Alienware rig.

Totem

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#11 Jan 03 2007 at 10:05 PM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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Generally the rule of thumb with power supplies is that the newer ones will usually work with the older boards, but the older power supplies will not necessarily work with newer boards.

When you are talking Pentium 4, including the socket 450's, 478's, and all variants of the 775, there are two things that have changed on motherboards / power supplies. The main power connector on most power supplies is now a 24 pin connector, composed of a 20 pin section and a 4 pin detachable section. Most newer boards use the 24 pin connector, the older ones use the 20 connector. There are some power supplies that ONLY have a 24 pin connector. those would be difficult to use on a 20 pin board.

the other more recent change is the 8 pin core voltage connector. THats the seperate connector that plugs in near the processor. Most boards still use the 4 pin conector, however a few of the newer high end boards are moving towards the 8 pin. All the power supplies that include the 8 pin connector I have seen so far have it in 2 sections, again a 4 pin plus an extra 4 pins attached. I suspect that later on we may see some solid 8 pin connectors.

If you stick with an antec or an enermax power supply you should have no problems finding one that will fit.

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#12 Jan 03 2007 at 10:30 PM Rating: Excellent

Snorre

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Cool thanks Kao!

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#13 Jan 04 2007 at 4:52 AM Rating: Good

Tare

YAY! Canaduhian

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Dread LÃ¶rd Kaolian wrote:

Video card, Nvidia is the way to go. You have three high end options at the moment. The Nvidia 8800 series that is more than $500, so outside your budget. The next step down would be the Geforce 7950gx2 dual core card. 2 seperate processors, so 2 of those would allow you to try Quad SLI. Those are around $350 at the moment, so your next best bet is the 7900. Here's one for $200.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150216

I just bought the 7900 on Kao's recommendation after my last one died at it is working beautifully. Runs EQ2 like a dream.

Thanks Kao!

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#14 Jan 04 2007 at 7:45 AM Rating: Excellent

Darqflame

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I am too tired to read all Kao's ramblings, but he may have forgotten to mention that if you have the extra $, buy completely new ram, as ram runs better when it is from the same company and even better when from the same batch.

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#15 Jan 04 2007 at 7:55 AM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592266717703

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My turn, my turn!

So, I think either my HD or my RAM is going out. The HD failed on me 7 months ago, reformatted and reinstalled windows XP, and haven't had problems with it until this past month- basically it will now randomly reboot, and on a couple of occasions, I've had a bsod, something to the effect of a "draw" error iirc (Basically, it would try to write to a corrupted sector somewhere and go "OMFGWTFBBQKITTENS" and reboot).

The RAM is newish (year or two) the HD is 5+ years old.

Any thoughts? (I'm @ work, so I can't get any sys info atm).

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#16 Jan 04 2007 at 8:57 AM Rating: Excellent

Darqflame

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Do a backup, go buy new HD, transfer info immediately and TRASH the other one, ASAP.

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#17 Jan 04 2007 at 9:16 AM Rating: Decent

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Kween Darqflame wrote:

Do a backup, go buy new HD, transfer info immediately and TRASH the other one, ASAP.

It's on its last legs?

Edit: Looking @ prices, I can quintuple my HD space for relatively cheap (go, go, gadget PATA!) All the more reason to replace it.

I really want to go home and check and see if my motherboard is SATA compatible >_> There's a SATA drive of equal size for sale at the same price as the PATA, but has a 3-year warranty as opposed to a 1 year. (Maxtor for both)

Edited, Jan 4th 2007 11:20am by Althrun

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#18 Jan 04 2007 at 9:23 AM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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Chances are if it failed once before it will do so again. Drives are cheap and easily replaceable. Your data isn't. Go pick up a new 100gb drive. you can find them on sale for between $50-80 easily enough. The msot common cause of drive failure is failed bearings. Once they sieze permanently, you are screwed.

That being said the error you describe is probably a directdraw bluescreen error. Which would indicate either a bad directx installation (unlikely but easy to fix) A bad video driver installation (possible, easy to fix) Or a bad card / card that is experiancing overheat issues.

It would be very helpful to have the exact error message. Also, what model card are you running in your computer, how many case fans do you have, how long on average wil it run before it BSOD's, and is the fan on the card itself still working?

Edited, Jan 4th 2007 9:18am by Kaolian

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#19 Jan 04 2007 at 9:30 AM Rating: Good

__DEL__1695601009560

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Joph insists my computer is on its last legs, but with all the car drama I have lately, it's hard to give a damn. I suppose I should back up my files, though.

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#20 Jan 04 2007 at 9:37 AM Rating: Decent

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Looks like I'm gonna have to wait until I get home for those answers Kao- I bought the vid card awhile ago, and I forget *exactly* what it is. I know it's a radeon, but the suffix I forget.

Insofar as the BSODs, they are really really random (no common factor causes it to do that- some nights it'll reboot once and no further issues for the night, some nights it'll freeze on the BSOD, and other nights it just won't do anything wrong.) and I can't force it to happen. I will mark it so that the system doesn't auto-reboot on those errors, so if/when it happens again, I'll be able to write it down.

The fans..... I know the CPU has one on top of the heatsink, and I think there's one or two more floating around, but I forget where (I've not needed to crack the case open in almost a year, so I'm a bit fuzzy on that).

Will update later today! I think I'm gonna check the motherboard for SATA compatability then hit Fry's tonight for whichever one I can use.

speaking of which, SATA > PATA, right?

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#21 Jan 04 2007 at 10:24 AM Rating: Decent

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Kao that board you linked has 3 PCI-E x16 slots. Is there currently anything other than video cards using PCI-E? I can see having 2 for SLI but whi the 3rd?

What uses PCI-E x1?

Edits in BOLD

Edited, Jan 4th 2007 10:23am by BloodwolfeX

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#22 Jan 04 2007 at 10:38 AM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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Some PCI express 16x devices are slated to come out in a few months here, at the moment it's nto really useful. The only ones I'm aware of at the moment are some SATA cards and a SCSI card.

Devices that use PCI express 1x include TV tuner cards, a few sound cards, some network cards, and a few SATA / SCSI cards. The TV tuner is the only really interesting one I think bevcause thats one of the few ways you can fit a TV tuner in a SLI rig.

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#23 Jan 04 2007 at 10:43 AM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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Althrun wrote:

speaking of which, SATA > PATA, right?

For the most part, yes, with caveats. SATA is capable of faster data transmission than IDE, but no drives on the planet at the moment are capable of saturating either interface. The spin speed of the drive itself is the limiting factor. The advantages SATA does give you over PATA IDE is the native command Queing, and the smaller, less air restrictive cable. That and there are no 10k rpm IDE drives. Aside from the controller circuit board, IDE and SATA drives are pretty much identical.

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#24 Jan 04 2007 at 12:38 PM Rating: Decent

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Dread LÃ¶rd Kaolian wrote:

Althrun wrote:

speaking of which, SATA > PATA, right?

For the most part, yes, with caveats. SATA is capable of faster data transmission than IDE, but no drives on the planet at the moment are capable of saturating either interface. The spin speed of the drive itself is the limiting factor. The advantages SATA does give you over PATA IDE is the native command Queing, and the smaller, less air restrictive cable. That and there are no 10k rpm IDE drives. Aside from the controller circuit board, IDE and SATA drives are pretty much identical.

So, I don't need to bother spending $$ on an adapter of sorts if my motherboard isn't SATA friendly, unless I want to.

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#25 Jan 04 2007 at 12:45 PM Rating: Excellent

Kaolian

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An adaptor will give you no real advantages.

Chances are if your board is old enough that it lacks SATA connectors, it really should be upgraded anyways though.

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#26 Jan 04 2007 at 12:53 PM Rating: Decent

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now you're going to make me look up the socket size on my CPU when I get home so I can look at prices!

J00 *******!

Looking at the facts, I believe I bought my mobo before SATA existed, so more likely than not, no SATA HD for me. I'll have to postpone this a few days so I can total up the costs of getting the HD and mobo upgraded.

Edited, Jan 4th 2007 2:58pm by Althrun

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