time to upgrade? (.com mirror)

fyrephlie · Post by **fyrephlie** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:07 am

me on dbb .com wrote:all the recent talk i have been seeing has left me with the impression that i must upgrade one of my boxes....

as i think i have said before, i have a lot of computers running, however all but one is sub 3 ghz (or sub 3000+ in AMD terms...) anyhoo... i am really excited as i have a littleextra capital to do some upgrading ... i am going to upgrade one of my main boxes, which is an athlon xp 1600+...

i don't want to go full boar though, i am thinking about doing an athlon 64 3500+ venice, 1 gb ddr (2 x 512 for price...), i am sticking with AGP in honor of the fact that i don't feel like upgrading the vid card, and a new PSU.

i am looking for opinions on a few things, i would like to try and keep everything from one source to 'save on shipping', newegg if possible with the good luck i have had with them in the past, i could also go through d&h if they have everything availiable:

first, the processor seems easy, but if you think i can do better on something without more than a $20 - 40 budge, lemme know.

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice (1ghz fsb socket 939) retail

the motherboard i am almost clueless on because i want to go agp, 2 IDE channels (p/ata), sound on board, lan on board... but no video on board...

here is all i found in my 20 minutes of looking:

Gigabyte

unfortunately its got some OBVIOUS drawbacks...

1gb ddr pc3200

GeIL memory?

i have never used this, as a matter of fact i have always been a corsair / kingston guy, does anyone know anything about this 'brand'? (i will be honest, i really dig the blue heat spreaders lol)

i would like to go from the cheap 480w psu to something around 580w. i am running red and blue led fans throughout the case, so i wouldn't mind something lit.

i am also curious about peopls opinions on current amd heatsink fan combos... should i look into something better, or stick with the current 6 case fans, psu fan and what the boxed cpu comes with. (i've got a box of artic silver tubes collecting dust from when i used to put these bastards together every day...)

my goal is to keep the whole kittin' kaboodle $500, as under $500 as possible...

please let me know what y'all think

sorry for the mirror, but i am looking for EVERYONE's opinion...

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:00 am

My brothers gigabyte board had both it's onboard LAN chips fail after a few months, if you don't plan overclocking much get an Asus, they should be easy to set up and reliable.

Also, sticking to AGP right now is a horrible mistake, unless you absolutely have to keep the video card you already have, get a PCIe system.

fyrephlie · Post by **fyrephlie** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:58 am

hehe i didn't expect the replies to be mirrored too... but thanks krom for making me feel noticed.

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:30 pm

I also recommend picking a board capable of supporting an AMD X2 processor. No need to clamp off upgrade possibilities if you can avoid it.

fyrephlie · Post by **fyrephlie** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 1:26 pm

yeah the board i was looking at supported X2 as well... but as krom pointed out.. they suck monkey things.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:39 pm

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9