Re: New components choice
I think in your position stick to AMD and perhaps the still slightly cheaper AM2+ variant. Possibly hampers upgrades later on but for intents and purposes they will run the same now.
If you were to go something like this.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150278 ~£60
or this if he doesnt need the decent IGP (still has a dvi out though)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...Board-VGA-HDCP
4GB of RAM is about £35 leaving £105 for your processor and HDD.
I would probably get this
AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz £65.65
as it's a very nice cpu in the budget sector, it's a shame you cant spend the full £105 though as that would have meant an X3 720 black edition which is a nice step up.
Re: New components choice
Cheers, yea he has my old ATI 800GTO graphics so he doesn't need on board.
He will be using his old nexus 300w power supply which i assume will be fine.
If he did go this route AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz £65.65 what motherboard would you recommend, also are you still able to use DDR2 with these?
Re: New components choice
if hes looking for decent latency for audio production i would make sure to get a decent sound card.
you can pick up a phenom 2 x2 550 black edition for £75 Phenom II x2 550 @ Scan
am3 motherboard £71 - AM3 Motherboard @ Scan
would stick to 32bit for the moment until audio software gets there, i know ableton have a 64bit version, not sure about cubase, with that in mind go for 3gb ram :)
my suggestions anyway.
--- edit ---
just looked at this review - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...lon-ii-x2.html
for your needs id probably stick to the athlon x2 as the performance difference is negligable
Re: New components choice
As above the 760G is more than capable enough of handling everything and at £45 it's a bit of a snip really.
It's always best to change PSU's when you can really but 300W is more than enough. great unit for £30 if he does want to
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166784
Re: New components choice
a 300w powersupply should power your system okay, if you upgrade the graphics card anytime then think about going up to 400w
Re: New components choice
Quote:
Originally Posted by
spiral out
Cheers, yea he has my old ATI 800GTO graphics so he doesn't need on board.
He will be using his old nexus 300w power supply which i assume will be fine.
If he did go this route AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz £65.65 what motherboard would you recommend, also are you still able to use DDR2 with these?
am3 boards at the moment only support ddr3 ram, to my understanding.
you could get an am2+ board as the new am3 chips are backwards compatible, which would then allow you to get ddr2 ram.
in regards to 4gb ram, heres a quote on the net -
Quote:
Windows XP Professional 32-bit is limited to 4GB of address space. If you have 4GB of RAM installed, it will not show 4GB within Windows. What you'll probably get is the size of your pagefile subtracted from the 4GB.
Some of this address space is reserved for hardware and the OS... so you'll never have access to the full 4GB anyway. If you want to access 4GB+ of RAM... your best solution is to pick up XP Pro 64-bit
someone correct me if im wrong.
Re: New components choice
This is what I would go for:
Phenom II X2 550 ~ £73
http://www.scan.co.uk/
The CPU is on offer on the Scan front page.
Asus M3A76-CM 760g motherboard ~ £45
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...Board-VGA-HDCP
4gb PC2-8500 DDR2 RAM ~ £36
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(...S-5-6-6-18-EPP
Samsung F1 320gb hard drive ~ £32
http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx
400w Silverpower SP-400P2C ~£28
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400w-...ed-cooling-fan
Silverpower is part of the same company as Tagan and they make decent budget power supplies. It is probably worth giving the old PSU a try but TBH if it is a few years old I would look at replacing it as things like capacitor ageing will affect the output of the PSU.
Using the free Scan postage the total comes to around £216.
Re: New components choice
Cheers for your replies guys.
He already has some super duper sound card i believe. Not sure what it is though.
So the cheaper of the 2 motherboards would that allow overclocking? I'm just curious as he's not in the slightest bothered by it but i seem to have to overclock everything i get my hands on. If not what other boards allow it?
I'll let him know about swapping power supply, the one linked to looks great for the price.
Re: New components choice
The X2 550 has an unlocked multiplier so it should be easier to overclock though than the X2 250. However you may need to factor in the cost of a new cooler if you are going to do any big overclocks.
Re: New components choice
ok thanks will check everything out properly and see what he decides.
Re: New components choice
as per cat-the-fifth, would not overclock with out aftermarket cooler.
what else would he want to be doing with it that would need an overclock?
Re: New components choice
Nah it's me who likes to overclock, i've overclcocked my last three computers current is a Q6600.
Any cheap quiet aftermarket coolers you can recommend never like the ones that come with the CPUs.
Re: New components choice