Upgrades This Year

[shoxzy]

I intend (by intend, I mean hope that I get enough money as I'm 15) to upgrade my outdated rig. Not a total overhaul or rebuild but enough changes to make a significant difference. Specs:

AMD Athlon 3200+ @ 2.1ghz / A very loud Taisol 70MM Cooler
MSI K8N SLI Platinum with built in sound blaster.
256MB Nvidia 7600GT
1GB Unbranded RAM
450W Unbranded PSU
Which is being displayed on a 19inch Monitor.

Obviously outdated. I also have an Flashed Xbox 360 running in HD on a 32' tv as a comparison to the pc. Obviously I don't need a pc that can run xbox games but atleast upto Call of Duty 5 or 6 would be nice!

Any help muchly appreciated!

[diluzio91]

how much do you wanna spend? I mean.....if you are planning to drop in anything new that PSU should probably be replaced, the processor could probably be swapped out for a newer AM2/AM2+ chip, maybe even AM3 if your mobo can support it, Ram would be a huge boost, and at the moment its very inexpensive. A new graphics card would be a good bet too, a 5770 can be found on ebay for about 90-130 on ebay, or 130 on newegg, and that and ram would give a enormous performance boost. Also if noise is an issue, the coolermaster Hyper 212+ would be a nice and quiet option, assuming your case can fit it as it's rather large. Its available for $30

[Kayin]

That board can only do 939 chips, and it's DDR1 only. That's NOT that cheap on Ebay.

There are some decent bundle deals that might do you some good, but honestly, to get anywhere near today, pretty much all of it needs to get a replacement. However, lemme see what i can dig up decent on the 'net...

http://www.newegg.com/Special/Combo....=search&Page=2

Hexacores in the 450 dollar range, add a video card.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...rboard-Bundle&

A decent range of prices, and the setups are normally pretty reliable.

[DynamoNED]

After giving a quick glance over your motherboard's specs on NewEgg, your upgrade options may be awfully limited. For example, your board only supports up to DDR400 RAM & AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors, both of which you might find for cheap, but are pretty much obsolete. Honestly, in your position, I'd save my money a little while & see if I could purchase one of NewEgg's or TigerDirect's budget barebone kits. Sure, they are budget builds, but they would still be a huge performance upgrade for you. A good example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboB...t=Combo.591896 Add a decent video card (AMD/ATI 5770 or nVidia GTS450), & you'll have a gaming rig on a budget.
Just my $0.02

EDIT: Well, appears Kayin beat me to the punch. Still, I concur with his assessment.

[shoxzy]

Cheers! I'd be willing to spend around £200-250 on this. I was thinking buy another 7600GT and SLI it since I already have one and another would only be around £50 whereas a 7900GT would be 100+

y/n?

Edit: The PC will mostly be used for some gaming, 480p camera footage editing and occasional music production.

Also, I think the reason it is slow-ish so much is because it's all in a Galaxy 3 Case with little airflow. 1 80mm fan on the side window and the 70mm cpu fan even though theres space for a 120mm in the back and 2 80's in the front.

DO NOT BUY THIS. Trust me.

[Munty]

If it's any good to you I bought 2x2gb sticks of Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM which I've never been able to get working in my current setup (I'm blaming the mobo I guess) Anyway I'm looking to upgrade everything as soon as I can so I'll possibly move up to DDR3 (cos it'll be some time till I do this anyway!) In the meantime this RAM is useless to me but it's definitely good as I bought it new. Let me know if it fits in with your plans and I may be able to help you out. It does owe me obviously but we're all here to help each other out aren't we

[shoxzy]

Unfortunately my rig only supports DDR! aha. Thanks for the offer though!

[diluzio91]

if its running slow you could try reinstalling the OS, but start with the motherboard and work outwards? you can pick up some cheap AM2+ boards and a x3 processor that would give you a large boost in speed

[Munty]

Are you not looking to change the mobo then shoxzy? Seems life it would probably be a good idea if you can find the money somewhere Oh and it doesn't matter how old you are by the way, you'll never have enough money lol

[diluzio91]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...050&CatId=3681 - CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157226 - mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220396 - ram

that would bring you to about $150

maybe this too
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371016 - PSU

but a little more for a newer GPU would go a long way too