Hi, Ive decided to upgrade my old pc's motherboard and processor so that I can use it as a gaming PC. I will be keeping the graphics card as I think it should be good enough for most games and it had been bought quite recently. As I dont really know exactly what hardware to purchase I was hoping somebody could help me. This is the hardware I would like to keep: Graphics Card - Sapphire HD 2600 Pro 512mb (PCI Express) Ram - 1GB (Will add more but would like to use this) Hard Drives - 80GB & 250GB (might swap the 80gb for another 250gb) DVD Reader/Writer - Sony I would like to build a computer using the above hardware as well as new hardware. I have a budget of around £250 to spend and I would rather spend most of it on the motherboard and procesor as I could alway spend money on things like hard drives and ram later on. I would be grateful if somebody could recommend hardware that I should buy. I will also list the hardware I was looking at and hopefully someone can say if it will work with my already owned hardware and run well enough for gaming. Hardware I was looking at: AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition (HD995ZXAGHBOX) ASUS M3N-HT CiT 8011-C4 ATX PC Case Thanks for reading (and hopefully answering) my questions Glennlh
Depends what games really, the HD2600 Pro is hopelessly outdated and outclassed to play high end games (it is a low-end budget card from 2007), but it will suffice for older titles. As for the hardware you've chosen: CPU: 1/10 - The most power hungry, and also the slowest quad core range out there. A pretty dire choice Motherboard: 4/10 - An nvidia chipset board from Asus, not a wise move. Case: 4/10 - poorly made, poorly cooled. Not up to housing a gaming PC Rather than waste £100 on an excessive and unreliable motherboard then skimp on the CPU, GPU and case, here's what you do: You haven't said what type your current RAM is, given the specs of the system I assume it is sufficiently old that it is either very slow RAM or incompatible with a new system, so I will budget for that as well: Given the restrictive budget, a quad core is inadvisable, and for a standard-fare gaming PC, a quad core isn't at all necessary: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Inte...GHz-1066MHz-FSB-2MB-Cache-7x-Ratio-65W-Retail http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Giga...k-775-PCI-E-(x16)-DDR2-667-800-SATA-3Gb-s-ATX http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/2GB-...800)-240-Pins-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-5-5-5-18 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512M...DDR2-GPU-600MHz-320-Cores-D-Sub-DL-DVI-I-HDTV http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Antec-Three-Hundred-Black-Midi-Tower-Case-w-o-PSU http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/350W...sive-PFC-V13-with-Dual-Fan-(OEM-Bulk-Packing) This lot is around £266. If you want it this side of £250, your best bet is to cut the graphics card and keep the existing one for now until you can afford to get a gaming card.
Thanks for the reply, I might just wait until i get more money as I was wanting a pc that would still be good enough to run new games in a few years time. I also have another pc that could be upgraded, if you dont mind could you read through the spec below and tell me if im better off upgrading this one. Computer Spec: Motherboard - Asus M2V Graphics Card - NVidia 7600 GT Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Ram - 1GB Hard Drive - 500GB (200GB & 300GB) DVD Reader/Writer - Sony Could you tell me if this graphics card is good enough for gaming. Also if I kept the motherboard and upgraded the processor would that be good enough to play games or am i better off waiting till I have more money. Thanks Glennlh
Well that card is even worse than the hd2600 pro, the CPU is fine, RAM is at least DDR2, what are the specs of the other PC?
If you mean the first computer I was talking about the spec is: Motherboard - ASRock P4i65G Graphics Card - Sapphire HD 2600 Pro (PCI Express) Processor - Intel Pentium 4 CPU 1.80GHz Ram - 1GB Hard Drive - 330GB (80GB & 250GB) DVD Reader/Writer - Sony Thanks For Helping
Ouch, yeah. Your best bet is to use the second PC (X2 3800+, M2V) and then shove the HD2600 Pro in it, if you're not going to get anything new for now. The motherboaerdis too old to support new, high tech CPUs, so use that until you can afford to get a replacement build, then use something similar to the list I provided.
You can stick the HD2600 straight in the M2V. As long as the PSU is at least 200W you can use that too. However, when you get a new graphics card, you may well need to upgrade the PSU then/
