Need a cheap upgrade from NF7

The time has come for me to think about upgrading my rig (no thanks to my oldest trashing the install....and if I have to build the O/S - hell I might as well do a cheapie upgrade!)

Basic system is this:-

Socket A AMD Athlon XP2500 (@1830MHz)
Abit NF7 (of some description!)
GeForce4 Ti 4200
1 Gig of Ram
Power supply - I think - its 500W

Im on a small budget, so could potentially be looking at S/H items.
P/C is used for a building personal websites (badly), general office/internet use and gaming - but as Ive found out recently, it turns its nose up at the latest and greatest games.

So......cheapest way to get a bit more use, without breaking the bank, im guessing new motherboard,ram,cpu, graphics (hence thinking S/H).
Something to also consider, I now no longer overclock, much prefer to just get on with what I have to do without running around in the BIOS and/or running benchmarks!

Thanks for any help

Iain

Motherboard GA-P35-DS3R <&#163;70
2GB PC5400 4-4-4-12 <&#163;30
8800GT/HD3780 &#163;130-170
CPU E2180 &#163;50 10x200 2Ghz (overclock 9x333 3Ghz)
Scythe CPU cooler <&#163;25

It will cost you more for a better CPU... E6750 4mb cache maybe &#163;110. It's a shame not to overclock el-cheapo CPU and wait for a nice 45nm Quad.

Looks like I invented a new ATI card - should be good or maybe I just transposed some digits.

Fast cheap quiet single platter HDDs

Samsung HD250HJ
Seagate ST3250410AS

250GB single platters - same performance & platter density as 1TB drives only costs &#163;40

If you can spend around 300 quid you can get the following from Ebuyer:

Sapphire HD 3850 256MB GDDR3 Dual DVI TVO PCI-E Graphics Card 135726 68 in stock £89.09 £89.09

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.5GHz) Socket AM2 Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Cache Retail Boxed Processor 125203 86 in stock £52.26 £52.26

ECS KA3 MVP (V1.0A) 580X CrossFire Socket AM2 UDMA133 Serial ATA-300 (RAID) 8 channel High Definition Audio ATX Motherboard 132327 29 in stock £36.13 £36.13

Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 675MHz/PC2-5400 XMS Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4(4-4-4-12) Heat Spreader Lifetime Warranty 098708 468 overdue £22.97 £22.97

Western Digital WD1600JS Caviar SE 160GB 7200RPM SATAII/300 8MB Cache - OEM 094406 36 in stock £25.79 £25.79

Corsair VX450WUK 450W PSU 131052 27 in stock £38.17 £38.17

Cart Total: £264.41
Cart Weight: 5.42Kg Order usually ships in 1 days

*FREE SHIPPING ON THIS ORDER» Shipping Charge:
Subtotal:
VAT:£46.30
Total: £310.71

If your budget is nearer to 200 quid this system will also have a decent performance boost:

Sapphire HD 3850 256MB GDDR3 Dual DVI TVO PCI-E Graphics Card 135726 68 in stock £89.09 £89.09

Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 675MHz/PC2-5400 XMS Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4(4-4-4-12) Heat Spreader Lifetime Warranty 098708 468 overdue £22.97 £22.97

Arctic Cooling (AC-ALP-64) Alpine 64 CPU Cooler 105995 203 in stock £4.81 £4.81

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (2GHz) Socket AM2 1MB L2 Cache OEM Processor 135800 51 in stock £31.48 £31.48

ECS NFORCE6M-A V2.0 nForce 520LE Socket AM2 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard 133066 177 in stock £23.12 £23.12

Antec EarthWatts 380W 80%+ Efficiency PSU - 80mm Fan 4x SATA PCI-E 120375 46 in stock £24.86 £24.86

Cart Total: £196.33
Cart Weight: 4.62Kg Order usually ships in 1 days

*FREE SHIPPING ON THIS ORDER» Shipping Charge:
Subtotal:
VAT:£34.39
Total: £230.72

The HD3850 is an excellent card for the money but if the cost still too high you can substitute it for a Nvidia 7900GT(which is slower but costs 70 quid from Ebuyer) and the cost will be under 200 quid total for everything!! :)

Supersaver postage is free for orders over £49.99!!

Thanks peeps :)
Gives me something to look into, have also been watching the For Sale section to see if there is anything interesting coming up in there.
Cheers

Yes I cannot see any of the bits you listed as being eaisly salvageable/brought across.

The PSU may be, depend on make and power numbers, however I doubt it as as it's probably a couple of years old and new systems rely far more on the +12v load than older systems which where more reliant on +3.3v and the +5v (which is why good make&model older PSU's cannot really cope with newer pc systems)

I'd bet that your current cd/dvd and hard drives are IDE, so check the motherboard carefully as most new motherboards only have 1 IDE connector on them now (so no more than 2 IDE devices)
If you have 2 decent sized IDE hard drives currently then I'd consider getting a SATA DVDrw, as it'll cost around £17 and a 250gb SATA hard drive will cost around £40

And someone is currently selling a nice system for £350 atm although you probably be best off replaceing the 7600GT with something better ;) (don't forget to haggle :mrgreen: )
A 7600gt will still be a big step up from your current gf4ti but it'll struggle with some of the newer games, there's a couple of 79xx cards being sold off atm which would be a better bet ;) and well under the £100 mark.

If you def. don't want to OC then go AMD. I don't have any personal experience with AM2, but in the bargain, non-OC market it's a clear winner. OTOH if you realise how easy OC'ing is with C2D then there are plenty of good value C2D chips. In either case 2x1Gb DDR2 chips @ 6400 is the sweet spot, and you can usually get then for pennies more than decent 5400 memory.

PSU - your current PSU will probably not cope if it was bought on a price basis. Also the connectors have changed for both mobos and GFX. If you're absolutely caned on price FSP is good, but most of us here would recommend a Corsair at the "value but not too cheap" end.

Graphics is the hardest part. You really do get what you pay for at this point. In terms of value, then Ebay a 2nd hand NV 7900 series or maybe an ATI 1950. These will cope with any modern game that doesn't require DX10 at reasonable resolutions and good speeds. You probably can't afford a decent DX10 card because they are around 200 squids and going 2-hand is not going to save enough to be worthwhile.

Utterly cheapest upgrade path...

ASROCK 4 CORE VSTA (or whatever iteration it is on now SATA2 i think)
+E2140 - total &#163;80

Has AGP and PCI-E, and supports DDR and DDR II

YOu could then add each more modern bit at your own pace.

I would of sugested the good old ASRock board, it is a good low cost stepping up platform, provided
1 you've got a decent agp card
2 you've got two sticks of good ddr memory

while Eazieb has not said how many stick of memory he's useing I know from my own experence that dropping from 1.5gb 512x3 I had in my old athlon xp system to 1gb 512x2 was a major hit in games performance (esp MMO's which seem to be more memory hungery than most other games)
Also that GF4 really need replaceing.
So all told I wouldn't say this would be a good route to go, if he had a 6800 or 7600 or x1650 then it would be a differnt story.