Author Topic: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ... (Read 46167 times)

dk70 · « **Reply #25 on:** November 02, 2006, 02:57 PM »

Yep and VIA - Asus budget is more budget than Asrock. You will need 1 pci or sound card alone. Better than onboard even if you dont game. Those shops are busy with all the new stuff but since this is introduced about August Im sure it will pop up somewhere. More than a few think why buy new PCI-E when happy with AGP! Typical computer business, you need strange ULI chipset and less than famous brand to get more choices. Nvidia have bought ULI btw.

I would also prefer shop for this - or a smaller shopping/2nd hand community where people can be looked up in details. I generally dont trust so many online, others have used ebay with success

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #26 on:** November 02, 2006, 04:32 PM »

I need a minimum of 3 PCI slots (wireless card, sound card and TV card if I have to replace my AGP graphics) preferably more!

dk70 · « **Reply #27 on:** November 02, 2006, 05:11 PM »

You can get PCI-E based tv-cards - or PCI-E All-in-Wonder. More pci-e slots? Cant have it all but 3xpci, 1xagp, 2xpci-e should be enough for what you ask. Have to play along Asrock specs for this cheap solution. Not that they are bad.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #28 on:** November 03, 2006, 02:27 AM »

Any suggestions as to where to find these PCIe cards in the UK ?

Radeon AIW PCIe cards used to exist but I can't find anyone that sells them now and I haven't seen any PCIe cards other than graphics cards ???

f0dder · « **Reply #29 on:** November 03, 2006, 03:00 AM »

As for 32- vs 64-bit XP, I haven't yet seen any reason to install 64bit even though I have an AMD64x2 4400+. It's very little software that can take advantage of the additional address space, and the extra & wider registers don't help that much for much software. So unless you have some software you know can take advantage of 64bit, it isn't worth it yet imho.
-f0dder (November 02, 2006, 09:36 AM)

I was very disappointed to note that on my box which dual boots 32bit and 64bit XP that the 7zip internal benchmark ran faster under 32bit XP than under 64bit. In hindsight I should also have tested a 32bit exe running under 64bit XP, might do so later.

I never looked into this further, though it would be interesting to check out some other programs.
-Eóin (November 02, 2006, 09:45 AM)

Was this a 64bit version of 7zip (sounds like it)? And which compiler was used for compiling it? x86-64 is still pretty new, so not all compilers are very mature yet. Embarassing that performance is *worse*, considering the new registers etc.

I thought AGP was basically part of the PCI bus (which is going to be there anyway) but presumably you can BIOS disable what you aren't using. I take your point though - but if I don't have an AGP interface I have to buy a PCIe graphics card (and/or TV card if I want to retain functionality) which is going to be even more expense.
-Carol Haynes

Nope - the AGP is a separate bus, and it's like bolting on a bigger engine to an old car. And it's a relatively hacky architecture as well.

Btw, you can get PSUs that can work as both 20- and 24-pin, by detaching the extra 4 pins (and hell, if your motherboard has some spare room near the ATX power plug, detaching the pins isn't even necessary).

Oh, and for chipsets: there's only really two choices, intel and nvidia nforce. Stay away from everything else

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #30 on:** November 03, 2006, 05:03 AM »

Oh, and for chipsets: there's only really two choices, intel and nvidia nforce. Stay away from everything else
-f0dder (November 03, 2006, 03:00 AM)

What is wrong with VIA chipsets these days? Presumably the ATI chipsets are useful if you plan to use Radeon graphics - or is ATI suffering from its usual crap driver problem?

So are you suggesting AMD cpu + NVIDIA chipset + GEFORCE graphics is a better compbination these days than the Radeon cards. I haven't any experience with recent graphics cards - and my needs aren't great as I am not really into games, but I got the impression that ATI stuff was the leading graphics engine now?

f0dder · « **Reply #31 on:** November 03, 2006, 05:08 AM »

Well, there might not be problems with VIA and ATI chipsets these days, but I've been burnt too many times - only seriously (VIA chipset + data corruption - I think this was on a k6-2 with VIA) once, but minor stuff like sub-par performance other times.

AMD CPU + NForce chipset + GeForce is probably the best bang for the buck at the moment, although the radeons have somewhat better shader performance. But that won't matter as you aren't a gamer

. I'm not touching ATi for a while, because of my bad experience with their drivers.

It's my (non-quantified

) experience that intel tend to make the best chipsets (they have had some issues, but the last I heard about were several years back). I'm currently on AMD64x2 and NForce4, but I hope to get myself a core2duo and intel chipset before Q3 2007 (younger brother needs a new box, might as well inherit mine and give me an excuse for getting a new one

).

For my old P4 system, I got an... SIS, I think... chipset because it supported faster RAM. Funny enough, though, the intel chipset at the time that had slower ram support outperformed the system - and the onboard raid was unstable, giving data corruption when reaching high speeds on striping (only ~5 bytes in a gig of data, but that's bad enough).

Depending on your graphics needs, if you decide to get a new box, onboard graphics might be good enough for you - it's not as shabby as it used to be.

Eóin · « **Reply #32 on:** November 03, 2006, 05:24 AM »

Was this a 64bit version of 7zip (sounds like it)? And which compiler was used for compiling it? x86-64 is still pretty new, so not all compilers are very mature yet. Embarassing that performance is *worse*, considering the new registers etc.
-f0dder (November 03, 2006, 03:00 AM)

Yep 64bit exe on 64bit XP v 32bit exe on 32bit XP. It is possible that the newer version of 7zip are a bit better, I think I'll run the tests again when I get back to that box after the weekend, might post some results if they are interesting (don't worry not in this thread Carol, don't mean to bring things off topic

).

dk70 · « **Reply #33 on:** November 03, 2006, 03:24 PM »

You should separate "brands" into good buys or not so good buys instead of xxx is crap. Does not hold much water. Look at the whole range of products, then select and compare - find pros and cons. History is few months with these things. Nvidia hardware/drivers have one too. Even NF4. A major feature was hardware based firewall, yeah right. Speaking of useless drivers/software and corruption not much beat that. Rest is fine but nothing is perfect. NF2 also has history of data corruption btw. still the first really good chipset for AMD cpu and overclockers

Dont be loyal to brands or listen to old ATI or whatever stories (f0dders

) I loved old VIA chipset from KT133 to KT333 because they were so tweakable - also was nightmare for many not so interested in fiddling (about the time where Intel was boring but ever so "stable" as opposed to... - then came Nvidia and saved buyers/AMD). Go to Nvidias official forum and look for tears and sweat and find same stories you might read about ATI/VIA, ups and downs and it continues.

Seems to me all the big players share market between them while laughing

Conspiracy. When someone like ULI comes along and make much cheaper chipsets, but with competitive and unique features, they are quickly bought up by one of the oldies. Prefer fixed environment, not too much innovation. Small steps so not to disturb upgrade logic. They all want your money.

Also remember when it comes to motherboards much is decided by maker not only chipset provider. They select components, how much they will support before moving on etc. They get a reference bios but up to maker to adjust specific product - some spend more hours on that than others. Again you will see same pattern, some products nice - others only give problems. Asus, MSI, Abit or whoever dont really matter. Dont make sense to dismiss X or praise Z in general terms - none of them deserve that. There is only changing good and not so good buys.

Example from real life. My sister got a Nvidia 6600GT video card. On VIA KT600 chipset graphics are corrupted big time in 3D, but only in D3D - Opengl is fine. Look it up on Nvidia forum, 6600GT stories are not all positive even if a big seller for Nvidia. Too lazy to find link but the thread about 6600GT is 10 mile long... Well, nothing worked so I changed motherboard to NF2 and voila perfect 3D in all modes. Does that make VIA crap for the xx time? Do all 6600GT cards blow on that chipset? Not necessarily, get used to "issues"

f0dder · « **Reply #34 on:** November 05, 2006, 09:08 AM »

Hm yeah, the hardware firewall thing was extremely unstable - too bad, was a cute idea. Oh, and not only was it unstable, the it required a local install of the Apache web server for configuration - like, wtf?

And yes dk70, you're right about looking at specific products instead of a more coarse-grained blaime/praise thing. Personally, I just stay away from a few brands because I've had nasty problems with them... takes a while to regain trust, etc.

Oh, and while I'm not particularly pleased about the unstable ATi drivers, I do have to say that their multimonitor stuff is a bit better than nvidia - at least if you use rotation. When you enable rotation on a nvidia gpu, it feels as if the desktop that you rotate disables hardware acceleration...

dk70 · « **Reply #35 on:** November 05, 2006, 10:46 AM »

ATI pure drivers plus ATI Tray Tools is a wicked combination you would like but actually I like Nvidias approach to driver interface better. At least they are aware how people use desktop, have added some goodies/extras. Just the fact they keep updating that big pdf-file of changes give some points. Latest control gadget is on level with ATI .net panel I think. Both keep upgrading so none are perfect - these type of drivers can never be perfect, everything about them is non-static. Some games/game engines will look better with ATI, others run a little faster with Nvidia.

Ive read latest drivers fix some problems with Nvidia firewall - heard that before and hard to get over old ones. And very much too late if they really have made it stable. Like with Firefox memory usage I dont buy popular opinions unless gun in back but try "bsod nvidia firewall" or something in Google. Amazingly buggy feature/implementation. VIA would never get away with similar, shows how great NF4 is. To really make use of hardware firewall you have to enter ports/programs, default have zero entries so all is running off software! Good idea since problems multiply when hardware is activated... Interface way too complicated for most, geeky firewall it is. You can download fat userguide at Nvidia site, how many will read that? Well you can make a batch file for edting/stopping/starting services, no need for Apache and I think 1 more service unless you edit configuration - default is very scary. Dont work that great in Firefox either! Not surprisingly they have left out firewall in later chipsets

Guess real problem could not be solved through drivers. They should have warned against own product - not easy to fix in hardlock mode. When firewall mess up there will be problems, on level with disk/video drivers. Only general problem with NF4 I know of. Ive had tons of problems with my MSI motherboard but due to their crappy bios support not chipset. When major annoyances are known and people still have to wait months and several releases for obvious fundamental fixes support is no good. How it goes, may be Gigabyte or whowever is sleeping today. All the same to me - you cant even pay premium price and expect much better. Too many products too fast. If I was to buy new motherboard today I would hunt down some user forums and check severity/local relevance of problems and what is being done about them. Also goes for Asrock even if about only solution for this cheap upgrade. I guess NF4 motherboards have gone down in price but at the time of Asrock SATA2 release it cost like 50% of basically identical NF4 model. A bit weak on more than semi-overclocking/overvolting but rest is pretty good - more so if you have AGP card. May be even DDR1 ram though I know nothing about their AM2 add-on card. Board also support AM2 cpu of course

f0dder · « **Reply #36 on:** November 05, 2006, 03:17 PM »

If I was to buy new motherboard today I would hunt down some user forums and check severity/local relevance of problems and what is being done about them.
-dk70

Yeah, you have to do this

- I wish the motherboard makers would slow down a bit, have somewhat less products, but focus on stabilizing the stuff.

NVidia firewall was a good idea, but the implementation is horrible. I have no idea whether the problem is at the hardware level, or solely their drives. But drivers were certainly a mess - BSODs galore, ugly memory leaks, and then the "well, we'll install apache and keep it running for the config" - are some of the nvidia programmers on crack?

mwb1100 · « **Reply #37 on:** November 05, 2006, 04:37 PM »

and then the "well, we'll install apache and keep it running for the config" - are some of the nvidia programmers on crack?
-f0dder (November 05, 2006, 03:17 PM)

It's not just them. HP has been known to do the same thing for printer drivers.

Very annoying.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #38 on:** November 05, 2006, 07:32 PM »

Spent most of the weekend looking at goodies ... I have come up with two solutions:

1) Bite the bullet, dig out the credit card and go for it!

2) Patch up the existing system with minimal outlay (as far as I can see I could probably just replace the mobo and CPU and continue to use everything else - I have found a number of solutions from ASROCK and MSI that allow me to stick with AGP and PATA for the time being)

Trouble is that buying new gear that is on the edge of being dropped by the manufacturers doesn't feel right - whatever I buy I will probably be stuck with the for the next few years so I think I am coming to the conclusion that (1) is the way to go!

I'll post my shopping list to see what people think when my head stops spinning!

cranioscopical · « **Reply #39 on:** November 05, 2006, 09:48 PM »

1) Bite the bullet, dig out the credit card and go for it!

Absolutely! FWIW, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the best action is to acquire a new machine and hope to get 2 (maybe 3) years out of it before a combination of obsolescence and desire for new toys moves it down the chain, to be replaced by another.
Thus, a brand new machine becomes my main machine; my main machine turns into reserve box 1; reserve box 1 goes to my wife (who has absolutely no interest in a machine for its own sake and wants only a minimal, stable platform); my wife's box turns into back-up machine; backup machine goes to wherever seems like a good idea at the time (as long as that's not the store-room that used to have about 10 others in it).
Despite this view, last year I made the mistake of upgrading parts of my wife's machine and wound up spending as much on subsequent piecemeal upgrades as I would have on building a modest new box to suit her needs. A new machine would have been better than what she ended up with and might even have cost less. In the end, I wound up stripping and junking the 'upgraded' machine and buying her an entirely new one -- you'll notice I couldn't quite bring myself simply to toss out the whole thing, sigh.
For me, things are moving too fast these days to make most upgrades cost effective. The pain of an intial purchase is a one-time thing. The pain from a 'Band-Aid' upgrade can last much longer.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #40 on:** November 06, 2006, 06:46 AM »

OK Been and gone and done it ....

.... anyone want to buy a tired old body to help finance it

This is what I have ordered ...

Antec NeoHE 550W Modular ATX2.0 PSU - looks kind of neat and quiet

Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - Deluxe version really because it came with all the cables and brackets - and has more external connectors.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939) - Retail (I was tempted by an X2 4600 but couldn't really justify doubling the price of the CPU - I can always upgrade later when the prices drop ...)

Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (mainly because this is what Overclockers recommended for this board)

To take advantage of the SATA2 interface ... (wasn't expensive - and I still have 4 PATA device connections so I can still use my old Caviar Drives)

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

Not the greatest and latest but looks good enough for someone who only occasionally plays games ...

OcUK GeForce 7300 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

I like to watch TV while I am working and so this will give me the options of Digital or Analogue TV signals ...

Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1100 Freeview TV Tuner

What do people think ...

All a bit scary now that I have done it! I was planning to go skiing but that has fallen through so I can use the money set aside for that!

f0dder · « **Reply #41 on:** November 06, 2006, 08:04 AM »

I recently got an Antec Neo HE550EC - quiet and neat, and I love that it's modular. The voltage readings in the BIOS are still not what they should optimally be, though, so I'm guessing the BIOS just can't do readings properly (my system is stable, probably wouldn't be if the voltages were wrong). And after switching to the Antec, they don't really fluctuate anymore.

Hm, you got yourself a socket 939 - that is being phased out in favour of their new AM2 socket, so it might be difficult to find a CPU if you want to upgrade later on. Since you got s939 and not AM2, that also means your ram is DDR and not DDR2.

That being said, the system is probably pretty good bang for the buck. I had a 3500+ before ugprading to a 4400+, and that was a fine machine. But I've become addicted to dualcore and the overall better system responsitivity. Of course price wasn't an issue when I bought that CPU (ouch).

So: pretty decent box, probably very good performance/price ratio, but don't have illusions that it will be easy to upgrade (when is that ever the case, though? >_<)

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

Seems like a good choice. The WD disks are pretty silent and performant, from what I can tell. Just, as with all harddisks, remember to keep them cool. I made a mistake in choosing a mini-atx casing for the fileserver I built for the museum, which lead to heat problems... and one of the two WD320 disks dropping dead within a month. Good thing I ran raid mirror.

My current system could probably last some years, but I hope to set enough money aside that I can get a core2duo by March or April; the greatly reduced power consumption would be nice, main reason is that my brothers need a new box. They can't afford a brand new one, so I want to sell them this one cheaply.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #42 on:** November 06, 2006, 08:28 AM »

I recently got an Antec Neo HE550EC - quiet and neat, and I love that it's modular. The voltage readings in the BIOS are still not what they should optimally be, though, so I'm guessing the BIOS just can't do readings properly (my system is stable, probably wouldn't be if the voltages were wrong). And after switching to the Antec, they don't really fluctuate anymore.

Hm, you got yourself a socket 939 - that is being phased out in favour of their new AM2 socket, so it might be difficult to find a CPU if you want to upgrade later on. Since you got s939 and not AM2, that also means your ram is DDR and not DDR2.
-f0dder (November 06, 2006, 08:04 AM)

Yes that's what I thought - but there still seems to be a lot of 939 stuff out there - and in a couple of months it probably won't worth upgrading anyway as by then everything will be 256 bit and octupal CPUs

That being said, the system is probably pretty good bang for the buck. I had a 3500+ before ugprading to a 4400+, and that was a fine machine. But I've become addicted to dualcore and the overall better system responsitivity. Of course price wasn't an issue when I bought that CPU (ouch).

That's why I went for it. The mobo looks good and seems to have solid reviews. From my point of view it allowed a certain amount of backward compatability with hard discs etc. that I have and has 3 PCI cards which allows me to plugin the things I need - I might even try it for a while with the onboard surround sound ....

I am still wondering whether to ring up and go for the X2 processor - but can I really justify nearly £100 extra - probably not.

So: pretty decent box, probably very good performance/price ratio, but don't have illusions that it will be easy to upgrade (when is that ever the case, though? >_<)

Quite that is prceisely why I have ended up buying a new system effectively - not that it will look any different from the outside

but I couldn't justify new monitors, keyboard, case etc.

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Seems like a good choice. The WD disks are pretty silent and performant, from what I can tell. Just, as with all harddisks, remember to keep them cool. I made a mistake in choosing a mini-atx casing for the fileserver I built for the museum, which lead to heat problems... and one of the two WD320 disks dropping dead within a month. Good thing I ran raid mirror.

My current system could probably last some years, but I hope to set enough money aside that I can get a core2duo by March or April; the greatly reduced power consumption would be nice, main reason is that my brothers need a new box. They can't afford a brand new one, so I want to sell them this one cheaply.

I have 4 WD Caviar drives in my box now and I have been very please with them - a good reason to stick with WD but obviously this will be my first foray into SATA. The two biggest discs will stay in the box and the smaller pair (120Gb each) will be used for external storage.

My system is now going to have to last for at least 3-4 years now! The current one has served me well for the last 5 years so it doesn't really owe me anything.

One extra goodie I have bought is a Netgear network storage unit. I have a couple of WD Caviar drives which won't fit in the new box (without PATA->SATA adapters) so I thought I would share them on my network for backup and data storage - possibly music/video too. The Netgear box takes two IDE drives of any size and plugs into the router so with the new Netgear 11n wireless network I have just installed they could prove pretty useful

f0dder · « **Reply #43 on:** November 06, 2006, 08:36 AM »

I am still wondering whether to ring up and go for the X2 processor - but can I really justify nearly £100 extra - probably not.

Well, it depends. Even if you only use single-threaded applications, you should notice a general improvement in system performance/responsitivity when the system is under load. If you use applications that support threading, then you might get some really nice speedups here and there; I think some photoshop filters support threading? Many 3D rendering programs do. And with recent versions, WinRAR added threading support for compression, giving a decent speed boost.

But whether you can justify it depends on how much pressure and pain you put your computer under, and how often

daddyman · « **Reply #44 on:** November 06, 2006, 09:33 AM »

Hi Carol,
I have a ASUS mobo that I got as a replacement for a bad mobo. It has never been installed but it is new. I think it would be a good replacement for your bad mobo. You would need to get a new cpu but other than that you should be set. Let me know if you are interested and I will get the specs for you. I would only ask that you pay for shipping.

dk70 · « **Reply #45 on:** November 06, 2006, 01:06 PM »

Hmm, with your very new and changed budget

there just got to be room for dual-core. And even if you dont plan to upgrade it is "wrong" to buy DDR1 today, at least when price is about the same. Both Intel and AMD are going DDR2 so cant argue. AM2 might also offer a bit extra speed, a little. More about doing the right thing!

So I would cut down on power supply, ram and motherboard for a dual core cpu. If you go AM2 you see wider selection of X2 cpus - overclockers UK shop? and extra cost is only 45£ for a 3800. Should be easy to find. Good idea to pay a little extra for passive cooled motherboard, 125 might be over the top though? Model you picked is overkill with some features. Not like you are going to enjoy 8 phase power design or ADVANCED passive cooling prepared for water cooling and what not, dual core you will notice

Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe for AM2 has a simple heatpipe and almost allow dual core cpu. Why have such a hefty power supply? Very easy to find more than adequate alternative and the last £ for dual core. DDR2 should cost about the same.

Well Intel cpus are ahead right now so if you go for most value/speed for money I guess you should compare with Intel setup, based on one of these beast http://www.overclock...ntium_Core_Duo2.html

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #46 on:** November 06, 2006, 02:24 PM »

What you say makes sense - but at the back of mind I really don't want to be using all new absolutely latest gear - I'd rather have a set of components that have been used (at least for a while). When I built my current machine I bought everything at the 'bleeding edge' - even though it now looks pretty feeble - but there were lots of issues with hardware incompatibilities - esp. DDR memory modules - I don't want to be going down that line again. I notice that you can't even buy AM2 heatsinks and fans yet (according to overclockers) unless you buy a retail pack which comes with an AMD HS/Fan included.

Realistically I am not be going to spend loads upgrading CPUs, memory etc. as I have spent more than I can afford so it will have to do now until I build a new machine in 3 or 4 years time - by which time AM2 sockets and DDR2 will be old hat so it probably won't make much difference to me in the long run. I have no intention of upgrading to VISTA or XP 64 so 2Gb of RAM is probably more than enough for my needs and can't be usefully expanded much further under 32-bit Windows anyway.

The hefty power supply was for two reasons - I liked the modular build (and reasonable price for what you get) and I wanted something that was future proofed (if I add more Drives, another SLi graphic adapter etc) - plus power consumption generally seems to go up with new gear and I had problems in the past with a PSU struggling with all the crap I throw at it!

Basically I am going to have a much nicer and faster machine than the one I have now and if I upgrade at all it will probably be to buy a matched pair of SLi graphics cards and dual LCD monitors (which would make the biggest practical difference to me).

f0dder · « **Reply #47 on:** November 06, 2006, 05:17 PM »

Also keep in mind that, even though it added DDR2 support etc., initial reports on socket AM2 was that it was slightly *slower* when running with a CPU at the same clockspeed - dunno if they fixed that problem now, but it was a bit embarassing.

Core2Duo might seem a bit pricey, but it is pretty kickass, and ~35W lower power consumption than a similar AMD64x2.

The machine you've picked will probably suit you fine (even if you should consider dualcore a bit more

), but you won't be upgrading it - by the time you might want to add a SLI card, a card identical to the one you bought might be hard to find. Same goes for CPU, and DDR prices may very well rise above DDR2 prices soon.

But you're probably not going to need/want an upgrade for the next "x" years anyway - and there's no telling if both intel and AMD have moved to new sockets and DDR3 by then anyway. In my experience, buying for upgradability only works if you upgrade every few months...

Btw, no reason for SLI just to run dual monitors, get a graphics card with two (DVI) outputs. Works like a charm.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #48 on:** November 06, 2006, 05:58 PM »

by the time you might want to add a SLI card, a card identical to the one you bought might be hard to find.
-f0dder (November 06, 2006, 05:17 PM)

I realise that - one of the reasons I bought a relatively economic model - if I want dual SLi I will buy a matched pair when the time comes!

Btw, no reason for SLI just to run dual monitors, get a graphics card with two (DVI) outputs. Works like a charm.

Yep - I know. I also like the idea of the Matrox breakout box I mentioned above which allows you to treat 3 LCD screens as a single large widescreen monitor with any graphics card.

dk70 · « **Reply #49 on:** November 06, 2006, 07:56 PM »

Yeah well problem is shop dont have many 939 X2 cpus right? Could buy X2 3800 elsewhere. You like to watch TV, perhaps also video while working = more reason to buy dual. Ive had dual for some time now but can still remember the one core stutter while fiddling about. Went all bad when I got 2 monitors. Dual can have big effect with regular desktop work. With your budget it must fit in. 8 phase power circuit is not more important

I did not mean to cut down on quality or specs when suggesting cheaper power supply/mohterboard - finding those extra 45-50£ for dual core cpu is possible without suffering. Motherboard is top model, too much unless very interested. Best to spend where output is recognized.

FSP Sparkle FSP400-60 Blue Storm 400W ATX2.0 PSU (CA-004-SK) for under half price of Antec is an example. Enermax Noisetaker 535W for 25 less another.

You could recycle your old memory? Idea is to have 2 working computers I guess. But as a temporarily solution to get dual it would work.

Special offer on your heavy duty motherboard http://www.microdire...551&GroupID=1088 Save 25£ - they also have X3800 for 939 socket. Not to make you nervous but while oc shop looks nice they dont have the best reputation. Good at sending out items, bad with RMA/service. Might be worth a Google search, some I trust have had bad experiences - you find them every where but at some point there are too many.

Might have to spend a bit more on video card then. Good find that 7300GT since it have DDR3 memory = higher mhz than DDR2. Be sure you check if card has DDR3 or DDR2, ocuk version is really cheap. OEM/reference card but not so important. Getting close to a 7600GS instead judging from a quick look...