Budget build with prospects

[burberryjam]

Hi all,

I currently have a really, really old system (socket A) and am looking to upgrade, but have a very low budget, say £150. Ill want to do a little bit of gaming, but am not fussy about playing the most recent games at super high resolution, and will be doing little to no hardcore audio/video editing. Open to OC'able hardware but not essential.

Im happy to retain my IDE drives till my wallet recovers, but if I upgrade my mobo I understand i'll be needing a bare minimum of new ram, cpu, and graphics card. Id like to buy spanking new memory, cpu and mobo, but the rest im fine with 2nd hand.

Current contenders for motherboards are:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R (around £70)
Asus P5PKL-AM (around £35)

Pair either of these with 1-2gb of ddr2 800mhz (£30)
CPU - any old P4 for about £40
Graphics card - will pick up any old PCI-e one off ebay.

I understand I can get by with my old 300W PSU, after buying an adapter to move it from 20 pin to 24 pin, so am not too fussed here, though might have to buy one.

Total it all up and I can get by on about 100 (plus 30-50 for gfx).

Please leave feedback on my choices and please throw me any recommendations - my main concern after price is how upgradeable any of this stuff is... id be keeping my socket A with sempron 2400+ if only I could go higher than an athlon xp 3000+ (£50).

Oh yes, the only sites I know of are ebuyer and scan, are these enough or is there a better one out there?

Sorry if I have waffled on, but I really would appreciate any advice!

Thanks

[MSIC]

For your budget it's actually quite hard to do something meaningful, but here goes:

Motherboard: Asus M4N78-AM with on-board 8200 graphics £46
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240 2.8Ghz Dual Core £43
RAM: 2 GB of 800 Mhz £25

The motherboard has an IDE connector, so in the shorter term you can re-use your hard drives. Truth be told however, hard drives have come on in leaps and bounds, and since they are the bottleneck to any system anyway you should be getting the fastest that you can afford.
This is £115, and comes with built in graphics to get you going, then spend around £50 minimum to make it worthwhile getting better graphics.
Do not buy an old P4, bad value for money.
As for re-using the old PSU, fine if it was a quality brand name, if not then spend the remaining budget on a modern PSU such as this:
Silverstone 350W £32.
It's not that wattage itself that matters, as much as its ability to reliably deliver it without frying your setup.

[burberryjam]

thanks for the reply, I was also considering AMD, but my main issue is being able to upgrade processors when they come down in price, and they have switched sockets too many times recently for comfort. Im not too bothered about keeping IDE drives, ill buy some SATA for cheap as only need small amounts of storage, can get by on 40gig even.

question now is, am i fine whatever I choose so long as its socket 775 or am2+? key factor is bang for buck here.

just for reference, to those who may be able to see how low im willing to go, I was playing FEAR with no qualms on this setup, only reason am upgrading is coz want to game a bit more:

Jetway V2DP
AMD Sempron 2400+
768MB 333Mhz Ram
5,600 IDE drive 40gb
Radeon 8500 64mb (just bought a PNY Verto 6600GT on the cheap as a stopgap till I get new setup)

[paulie111]

intel socket 775 is gonna give you more performance than the lower end am2 cpu's. plus theres alot more upgrade options available to socket 775, and the prices should be quite low atm

[MSIC]

But a socket 775 processor is being phased out now, so the current top-of-the-line 775 processors are not really going to come down in price. In fact, in about 12 to 18 months time, they may even be more expensive (i've seen it happen before) since they are the top of the ladder for a particular upgrade tree.
Nope, my advice is to buy now for what you want, or else save up some more pennies first.

[burberryjam]

Thanks for the feedback, I thought 775 would be better than AM2/3, but also had fears that they would all get phased out and become collectors items (like what is happening to me now)

Bottom line, is it worth buying a new system for 2-300 pounds now getting OK performance, or should I wait a year or two? Thing is, in a year or two, the same thing could be said of the now new technology.

Like I said im not very demanding and can live behind the times but Im not sure if my current setup will last another year or two.

[Vimeous]

ATM I'd go AMD unless I had the cash for a 1366 i7 setup.
1156 is too expensive for a new machine at present making it so close to 1366 it's almost pointless (only i5 750 worth a look IMHO).
That said as 775 disappears (as it no doubt will) this will change and AMD will have to really hustle to keep their budget/performance lead as 1156 prices drop.

Long term prospects for AMD maintaining AM3 look good so go for it and you'll have as good a long term prospect as there is announced at the present time.

[{S.G}Monkey]

I agree with Vimeous, and if i were you id try and save a little more if you want your pc to last a little longer.

Nothing is really future proof however, so id suggest going for AM3 or 1366 i7, and try and get a build cased on either socket type as cheap as you can

Obviously this isnt always practical, COS YOU WANT YOUR PC AS SOON AS YOU CAN!!!