Windows XP hardware

[DanceswithUnix]

My fathers PC seems to have a failing motherboard, so been looking at updates. He has an old Athlon XP so anything modern is an upgrade.

Anyone come across things to avoid in current motherboards if you want to run XP on them?

Is USB3 supported in XP?

Will be trying to keep the costs down, so trying to avoid a windows 7 upgrade.

[Pob255]

A core2duo setup is great for xp, esp the pentium dual core
I take it he's not playing games

still on IDE hard drive?

£200 for a complete base unit http://www.ebuyer.com/251310-zoostorm-desktop-7873-1036

edit: or cheaper go 2nd hand, any core2 you can get to around 2.5ghz or better, g31 or g41 motherboard 3gb ram(or 4 if cheaper)
Or a cheap p35 or p4x and a cheap graphics card

For basic internet/office work the core2 is still plenty powerful, some of the older ones are starting to show their ages slightly (sub 2ghz c2d) unless overclocked.

alternative is an athlonII x2 and a 785g or 880g motherboard

USB3 should work, I've not got any usb3 devices to test it, but the drives go in ok on xp (well after installing the drives on my motherboard cd I've got usb3 ports listed in device manager)

Having a motherboard with 2 separate sata controllers make it easy to get hard drives into AHCI mode, otherwise it can be a bit of hassle or live with the slightly slower ide compatibility mode.

[Dingo]

Still plenty of SKT 939 hardware around to be had at sensible prices and still able to run a lot of the modern games at decent FPS.............really comes down to how much you want to spend at the end of the day..............£50 should secure you an "upgrade" of mobo, ram and cpu..............if youi want the "newer" AM2, AM2+, AM3 you might need to double or triple that amount........just need to be clear what exactly he needs the system to do?.

If it's only browsing and e-mail then £50 should cover it.



T

[DanceswithUnix]

That zoostorm base unit looks interesting, don't think he would go for it but gives a good base line cost to compare against.

Trying to avoid second hand, given the point of this is stability. His current machine I believe has my old cast-off motherboard and I have moved on twice since then

Started looking at AMD kit as that is usually better value at the low end. Surprising lack of choice these days, specially at Scan who hardly seemed to have any low end CPUs in stock. The cheap end seems to be dual core llano which would be ideal for my dad if the motherboards were any good, but none of them had IDE ports.

Last motherboard I bought was a 785 chipset, they seem to be all gone these days. Quite a few 760g chipset boards around, and they look the most promising tbh. Some even come with a parallel port so he can use his old photo scanner hardware (which given film seems to be dying in the wake of digital photography I doubt there will ever be a modern replacement).

Will sometimes be used for light gaming (flight sims, WoW), there seem to be some GT430 bargains around that should cover that.

Time for another browse around ebuyer I think...

[DanceswithUnix]

This looks quite a nice buy:

http://www.ebuyer.com/269076-asus-m5...rd-m5a78l-usb3

IDE, parallel, and yet with USB3 and AM3+ cpu support.

[Pob255]

Do you need a case?

a gt430 really isn't much good for gaming, even "light" gaming (flight sims often require quite a bit of gpu power and even wow has upped it's graphics requirements with the latest expansion pack)
EDIT: the gt430 is well behind the old 9600gt it's even behind the old 4670 http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Z...GT_430/28.html it really is a media card only, it'll reduce cpu load for things like video and flash for which it'll be better than the 760g onboard graphics, but not much more than that.

you could go for a cheap 760g motherboard
eg http://www.ebuyer.com/290071-msi-760...-760gm-p23-fx- or http://www.ebuyer.com/269070-asus-m5...rd-m5a78l-m-lx
and a 6750 or 6770 graphics card
Actually ebuyer has a 6770 on super cheap atm http://www.ebuyer.com/266983-asus-hd...70-dc-2di-1gd5 less than the cost of a 6750
The 6750 is about the same power as a 4850/gts250/9800gtx+, the 6770 is basically a rebranded 5770 so about the same as a 4870/gtx260 216sp

Team that up with 4gb of ddr3 1333mhz or 1600mhz (which ever is cheaper) and an athlonII x2 or x3

If you go matx, which really isn't an issue for a single gpu and a couple of drives then have a look at the fractal design core 1000 http://www.ebuyer.com/270599-fractal...a-core-1000-bl it's probably the best cheap matx case around atm, not fault free but the next step up in matx is around the £60-70 mark.

Your big stumbling block is going to be hard drives, with the current prices, you're looking at £75 for a 500gb http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500gb...cache-89ms-ncq
And nearly £100 for a 1tb drive http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-s...cache-89ms-ncq
This is one area I'd really consider 2nd hand.

With that in mind how does that zoomstorm (with a 1tb hdd) look now for £200