Having been out of the custom build for some time, I'm just waaaay out of date on techs, so would appreciate some guidance.
the PC in question is for my old man. Currently, he has:
Abit KN9 SLI mobo
2x dual head PCIe graphics cards
2GB DDR2 RAM
AMD X2 3800+ (I think). Essentially, running at 2GHz
He's running a retail version of W7 HP, so would be re-using that if the hardware were to change.
His current set up has started to become tempremental. Just the other day, it looks like all of the USB ports on the rear connectors have died (although some are still producing 5V power), and one of the USB headers connected to a rear plate seems to have died too.
So he only has the second of the three USB headers working (connected to a dual USB port on the front of the case).
He's about to try the third USB header to see if that works, but my guess is it's the controller on its way out. He definately needs more than one USB header / two USB ports, and I'm not too keen on daisy chaning lots of devices via hubs.
So, short term solution, pick up a PCI USB2 controller card. £12 will give him 3/4 USB ports to play with.
However, it might just be time to upgrade the entire system. He doesn't need a good games platform, but does a fair amount of audio transcoding as he's a DJ. Graphics don't need to be good at 3D - we'd be re-using the existing two cards. But having an SLI mobo is good as it allows him to have four monitors should he need to.
Question is, is it worth getting another AM2 mobo, or upgrade to AM3. Are AM2 processors backwards compatible on AM3 mobos? (sorry for newbie question), etc. Or should we ditch everything and start again from scratch. Value for money is important and don't want to spend too much, but want something pretty zippy for multitasking office stuff + odd CPU intensive transcoding task.
What would you suggest?
Cheers