upgrade my computer

[hbinded]

Hi y'all! I recently busted my friend's motherboard and had to give him mine (including the CPU), which pretty much leaves me in a funny situation; a PC without a motherboard, but with all the other hardware! So I've been thinking of making "the Big change" into AMD from Intel, but I don't know what board and/or CPU's are ok. Please give me some advice on what MoBo & Processor I can buy. It should not be very expensive, as I'm a student. I would also like to get a good PCI-Express card. Please note that I will be mainly getting the stuff online.

Maybe I should list some expectations:

should have at least 3 slots for RAM

Have support for PCI-e (Also need advice on that!)

and finally RAID support.

One final question, does Newegg ship to germany?

Thanks in advance

[prathapml]

And whats the budget?

Anyways, a minimum platform today, would consist of:

MoBo = MSI RS480M2-IL (based on ATi chipset & decent integrated graphics - you can upgrade later with a PCI-express gfx card; and this mobo satisfies all the other expectations too)

Proc = AMD Athlon64 3400+

I believe newegg does ship to germany.

[suryad]

Agree with above poster....how much are you willing to spend and AMD is definitely the right choice.

There is also another thread in this very forum a few threads below talking about the best socket 939 mobos that are available that you can check out. Hope that helps. Sorry for the dbl post!

[ripken204]

prathapml-he wont want a 3400 b/c the core would suck

get a venice 3200 with a dfi nf4 ultra-d, this will be an excellent combo. now what about your ram, if it is ddrII then your out of luck b/c amd only supports ddr.

as far as i know newegg doesnt ship to germany since they dont even ship to canada, but they may be shipping to canada sometime soon

Edited October 18, 2005 by ripken204

[suryad]

What is your budget? How much are you willing to spend?

[hbinded]

And whats the budget?

I'm willing to spend upto 500 Euros, thats about 600 Dollars. btw, the link you placed there gives a "no results search on some search engine", but a search on google gave me the named motherboard, it's exactly what I wanted. The only thing is: how good can I overclock it? ooh, ok, let me read some reviews first and see if I answer that question.

[hbinded]

And could you also help me out with a selecting a Grapic card for this motherboard? I've been juggling between MSI's Geforce 6600, 256MB DDR and ATI's Sapphire Radeon X550 256 MB DDR. Which one is better or is there a better card than these two (in the same price class)? Oh, and one more thing, I once saw thig dude who had a PSU that had some PCI-e power supply.......(sounds goofy though!) How is that possible? the 2 cards I've mentioned above dont require some external power supply.

p.s. found this CPU, is it ok? I've been an intel guy all the time

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...12476%26fvi%3D1

Edited October 19, 2005 by hbinded

[Thai3g_Eclipse]

I would highly recommend this CPU if you want the most of your money:

http://www.tritechcoa.com/product/562343.html

Yes, that is a server CPU, but don't be fooled by the name and core speed; that's an Athlon64 San Diego in disguise. If you want to overclock, I would get this. Considering it's for servers, it'll tolerate high overclocking and 24/7 operation a lot better. I've seen some of these overclocked as high as 2.9-3 GHz with air cooling.

Edited October 19, 2005 by Thai3g_Eclipse

[suryad]

For gpu I would go with nvidia than the ati you mention because the nvidia card is sm3.0 compliant whereas the ati radeon is not.

[XPerties]

What ever you do grab a few 10,000 RPM hard drives and run at LEAST 2 gig of ram.

[ripken204]

so what you need is a mobo,cpu, and gfx? DO U NEED ANY RAM?

mobo:dfi nf4 ultra-d 128$

cpu:opteron 144 -this is very sweet, overclocks like crazy 155$

gfx:sapphire x850xl 329$

these are prices here in the US

Edited October 19, 2005 by ripken204

[suryad]

The opteron is socket 940 no? Requires ECC ram?

[Thai3g_Eclipse]

The opteron is socket 940 no? Requires ECC ram?

This particular model is the newly released Socket 939 models and does not require ECC RAM like its Socket 940 brethren.

[hbinded]

so what you need is a mobo,cpu, and gfx? DO U NEED ANY RAM?

mobo:dfi nf4 ultra-d 128$

Yo, dude! that MoBo ROCKS!!!! I just finished reading this article; http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2322&p=1 and I think I will get that MoBo..................no, I'll get it! Thanks man!

[hbinded]

so what you need is a mobo,cpu, and gfx? DO U NEED ANY RAM?

mobo:dfi nf4 ultra-d 128$

cpu:opteron 144 -this is very sweet, overclocks like crazy 155$

gfx:sapphire x850xl 329$

these are prices here in the US

I already have 4 sticks of DDR400 RAM of 512 MB each, But I want to get four sticks with 1 GB each. any recommendations?

What do you think of this gfx card? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...%2509%26fvi%3D1

I'm kinda on a tight budget here, you know.................

p.s. I like the CPU you've recommended! it has some impressive values of overclocking! I have just got on from ebay.de Hope that by 1.11 I will have finished my "project"

Thanks!