Looking for recommendations: Hardware upgrades
More power!
Thursday, September 6, 2007 by Bebi Bulma | Discussion: PC Hardware
Now that I have income, I'd like to give my computer a (long overdue) full upgrade. But since I'm no expert in hardware I'd like to get some recommendations from those of you who are.
Here are the bits I'll need to replace:
Keep in mind that I am *NOT* a gamer. I don't need super expensive, top-of-the-line parts. However, I also don't want to sacrifice quality or power (I am a tech geek after all).
I'd like to have 2GB of RAM, and I want to stick with AMD/ATI for the CPU (AMD has dual core?) and video card (PCI-E?). My current mobo only has 2 RAM slots, I'd like to try to have more slots so I can easily add more RAM if I choose to do so later on.
Although I'm still on XP Pro, I'd like to have everything Vista compatible and able to take advantage of everything Vista has to offer, once I am able to upgrade.
For a comparison, here's my current specs:
Samsung 245BW 24" widescreen LCD
Windows XP Pro SP2
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (T-Bred), 1.99 GHz
EPoX EP-8KRAIPRO Socket A (Socket 462) VIA KT880 ATX AMD Motherboard
ANTEC 400watt ATX12v SmartPower power supply
2x512MB Kingston DDR PC2700 RAM
XTASY Radeon 9600xt 256mb AGP 4x/8x
2x120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm <---gonna replace one of the 120's and the 250 with a 500gb SATA
1x250Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy (7.1) Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Beige IDE Model ND-3550A
SAMSUNG SM-352B IDE CD±R/DVDROM Combo Drive
Logitech® MediaPlay™ Cordless Mouse
Logitech® X-530 5.1 Configuration 70 Watts speakers
COOLER MASTER Mystique RC-632 Silver Computer Case
Thanks for all recommendations.
By the way, newegg.com is my best friend.
Here are the bits I'll need to replace:
- Motherboard
- CPU
- RAM
- Video card
- Power supply
Keep in mind that I am *NOT* a gamer. I don't need super expensive, top-of-the-line parts. However, I also don't want to sacrifice quality or power (I am a tech geek after all).
I'd like to have 2GB of RAM, and I want to stick with AMD/ATI for the CPU (AMD has dual core?) and video card (PCI-E?). My current mobo only has 2 RAM slots, I'd like to try to have more slots so I can easily add more RAM if I choose to do so later on.
Although I'm still on XP Pro, I'd like to have everything Vista compatible and able to take advantage of everything Vista has to offer, once I am able to upgrade.
For a comparison, here's my current specs:
Samsung 245BW 24" widescreen LCD
Windows XP Pro SP2
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (T-Bred), 1.99 GHz
EPoX EP-8KRAIPRO Socket A (Socket 462) VIA KT880 ATX AMD Motherboard
ANTEC 400watt ATX12v SmartPower power supply
2x512MB Kingston DDR PC2700 RAM
XTASY Radeon 9600xt 256mb AGP 4x/8x
2x120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm <---gonna replace one of the 120's and the 250 with a 500gb SATA
1x250Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy (7.1) Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Beige IDE Model ND-3550A
SAMSUNG SM-352B IDE CD±R/DVDROM Combo Drive
Logitech® MediaPlay™ Cordless Mouse
Logitech® X-530 5.1 Configuration 70 Watts speakers
COOLER MASTER Mystique RC-632 Silver Computer Case
Thanks for all recommendations.
By the way, newegg.com is my best friend.
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Reply #21 Friday, September 21, 2007 10:54 PM
MoBo looks good!
Any decent SATA cable should do for the new drive (assuming it is an SATA).
You should not need to configure the drive, just carefully connect it > boot to the BIOS settings to verify that it is being seen by the MoBo > boot to Windows and load the computer management applet (right-click 'My Computer > Manage > Disk Management') and verify that Windows sees the drive and it's full size.
Format the drive as needed (NTFS recommended).
That should it.
Have fun.