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[Martin_1962]

Looking to rebuild my PC so firstly is this MB any good

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4CoreDual-VSTA

With one of these processors

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/cat/Processors-Intel/subcat/Core-2-Duo

keeping my current graphics card (256MB AGP jobbie ), case, D: as E: burner, FDD, C: as D:. USB card sound card ect but a 500GB SATA drive

[TheBoy]

ASRock are budget.
The VIA PT800 chipset is dire.

Dump the video card if its AGP, stick to PCIe now.  Don't compromise a new system with old junk. With things like HDD so cheap (1TB is £250), it is not worth ruining a good system just to reuse an old HDD or DVD writer (£20).

Why keep a USB card, all mobos have 8 or 10 USB 2.0 ports, often better implemented off the PCI bus (PCI is broken, cannot cope with the demands, unless in 133Mhz, 64bit guise), hence why PCIe is now standard.

[Martin_1962]

Well it looked like reusing my GFX card would be a good idea (well it was quite pricey), and would save around £100, as to reusing my IDE drives - easier than copying everything off them, and with plenty of ports it would be rude not to.

I thought most MBs were restricted to 4 or so USB ports and I have a printer, 2 USB HDDs, a card reader, 2 camera connectors, scanner, and I am sure there are a couple of others I can't remember.

[TheBoy]

Well it looked like reusing my GFX card would be a good idea (well it was quite pricey), and would save around £100, as to reusing my IDE drives - easier than copying everything off them, and with plenty of ports it would be rude not to.

I thought most MBs were restricted to 4 or so USB ports and I have a printer, 2 USB HDDs, a card reader, 2 camera connectors, scanner, and I am sure there are a couple of others I can't remember.

What gfx card you got. I think you will find an equivilent PCIe one to be reasonable value.

Most Mobos will have 6 or 8 or more USB 2.0 ports.

Most (uncompromised) mobos will probably only have 1 IDE port. SATA rules now. Old, slow, power hungry drives are old hat now...

[Joneyentee]

I agree with TB. AGP are pretty much out now. If you're going to upgrade the mobo then go PCI-e.

Personally I prefer AMD  processors to Intel, but each to their own.

MSI (Micro Star International) mobos are pretty good from what I've heard.

[Martin_1962]

My router crashed last night while replying to this post, took half an hour to get it working

My GFX card has 256MB of RAM and is quick. Can't see the point in wasting all my old drives, saves copying everytjhing off them!!

[AndersH]

I would suggest a reinstall of the operating system with a new MB and CPU anyway, seen people try it before and is often a lot more hassle...

[TheBoy]

My GFX card has 256MB of RAM and is quick. Can't see the point in wasting all my old drives, saves copying everytjhing off them!!

What card is it?  Being AGP, and being surprised if you paid £300 for it, I am guessing it was a low to mid range card about 3yrs ago.  So very dated now.

As to the drives, they are simply not worth using if they are PATA. Get a decent SATA.

Keep the old PC as is, give it to kids.  Simply not worth compromising a new machine with old parts, as that would throttle it badly. I mechanical terms, running a MV6 on an AR25 box - all that extra performance wasted.


Knowing you do video editting, probably best stick to Intel.  The very fastest Core Duos are capable. However, for this task, the fastest P4s are still worthwhile.  AMD's do well in benchmarks, but not so well in real world.

For Intel CPUs, Intel chipsets are hard to beat.

For AMD CPUs, Nvidia nForce chipsets are capable.

Hope that helps.

[Martin_1962]

It does help - I bought the GFX card last year when my original one conked out.

[Kevin Wood]

If the drives are more than a year or two old I'd replace them anyway. You're on borrowed time in this case judging by the way some modern drives seem to expire.

And rebuilding the system is a good opportunity for a clean out and will avoid the instability that often results from whipping out the hardware from under the OS and replacing with something completely different.

Kevin

[TheBoy]

It does help - I bought the GFX card last year when my original one conked out.

What model of card? I can then give you an idea of current equivilent, and you can see how much it costs...

[Martin_1962]

Winfast A7600 (NVidia chip set)

[Joneyentee]

Price-wise now that'd be £65.

For the same price you can get a 512Mb 8500 GT PCI-e.

[Martin_1962]

And I was drooling over some 750GB HDDs

[ians]

As a matter of interest, what is the budget for this compared to buying a new machine of the required spec?

[supermop]

New PC of good spec = around £400-600. Some pre-built systems often come in at around £300 but use entry level components.

That graphics card is pretty decent. While AGP is old tech, the top-end AGP cards are really rather meaty. Would be a shame to ditch it, but since the industry is using PCI-e as the standard, you dont have much of a choice if you want your PC to remain upgradable with new bits.

The motherboard you got listed there is from a budget manufacturer. It uses a pretty poor chipset (VIA's lower spec chipset range really does suck), however, it looks like it was DESIGNED to be a stop-gap board for people making the jump to the newer technology, meaning you can use your old RAM & Graphics board, and stick new stuff in when you can afford. If you cant spare the money at the time of buying, get that and upgrade at a later date.

As for CPU's, the E6600 looks the best bang for buck. The Core2's beat AMD on the majority of benchmarks, but AMD still hold their own when it comes to gaming, so you may want to consider an Athlon X2 (the X2 5600 is a good buy). Then again, if you do go AMD, you'll need a different board.

[TheBoy]

New PC of good spec = around £400-600. Some pre-built systems often come in at around £300 but use entry level components.

That graphics card is pretty decent. While AGP is old tech, the top-end AGP cards are really rather meaty. Would be a shame to ditch it, but since the industry is using PCI-e as the standard, you dont have much of a choice if you want your PC to remain upgradable with new bits.

The motherboard you got listed there is from a budget manufacturer. It uses a pretty poor chipset (VIA's lower spec chipset range really does suck), however, it looks like it was DESIGNED to be a stop-gap board for people making the jump to the newer technology, meaning you can use your old RAM & Graphics board, and stick new stuff in when you can afford. If you cant spare the money at the time of buying, get that and upgrade at a later date.

As for CPU's, the E6600 looks the best bang for buck. The Core2's beat AMD on the majority of benchmarks, but AMD still hold their own when it comes to gaming, so you may want to consider an Athlon X2 (the X2 5600 is a good buy). Then again, if you do go AMD, you'll need a different board.

I agree with above, except the part about reusing AGP.  Putting on an AGP slot now does mean budget upgrade, which, alas, means compromising badly.

Ditch the card. It falls into the 'good budget' category.  You can still pick up ATI X600 for similar/less, which is possibly a better card anyway (Supermop can confirm if good for games).  That way, no compromise on the system board.

Don't forget other components you may need - some boards coming with nothing but usb - no ps/2, serial,parallel etc.  Memory will now be DDR2. HDD's now SATA2.

Advantage of self build is your choice of components.  Disadvantage is cost and noise. Self build for the last few years costs more than prebuilt, and tends to be quieter.

If noise is an issue, check out Dell's E520 and 9200 - these use the BTX chassis format, and are extremely quiet.

[Robin Hood]

And I was drooling over some 750GB HDDs

Is this machine to be used for video editing then?  

[TheBoy]

And I was drooling over some 750GB HDDs

Is this machine to be used for video editing then?  

In that case, 1Tb drives are under £250....

And further to what I said earlier about DVD writers, I see 18x DVD writers are under £13. Crazy price...

[Martin_1962]

Window shopping currently, but must be built by January due to O/S requirements (the O/S I would use for a replacement rather than update what I have and use current licence - OK Vista avoidance XP Pro is pretty good except for the file open dialogue).

However there is the room aspect, do we have room for 2 PCs?

Our current one will be 4 years old in November.

After repairing ours I am happier with self builds, and I am looking at medium quality bits.

[Martin_1962]

Branded DVD writers are cheap too.

A04 was nearly £200 the 111 was under £30

[TheBoy]

Window shopping currently, but must be built by January due to O/S requirements (the O/S I would use for a replacement rather than update what I have and use current licence - OK Vista avoidance XP Pro is pretty good except for the file open dialogue).

However there is the room aspect, do we have room for 2 PCs?

Our current one will be 4 years old in November.

After repairing ours I am happier with self builds, and I am looking at medium quality bits.

IIRC, you had an OEM licence? If so, NOT transferrable.

Its new yet, but don't be too harsh on Vista. Don't believe too much of the trash computer mags scare tactics of DRM. DRM existed in XP and W2K. Did it get in your way then? Unlikely.  The difference is DRM is implemented deeper into OS, should applications care to use it. This is far safer/robust than the apps doing it themselves - remember the Sony mess a year or 2 ago?


As said, though you are perfectly capable of building a PC, as is every single person on this forum^*, it may be cheaper to buy prebuilt, so don't rule it out. Unless you want to have the 'fun' of building (I have built far too many to call it 'fun' now).

^* Virtually anyone can build a PC so it works. Very few do it properly, including PC shops. How many make the HDD cables the correct length?  How many lace the troublesome power cables properly?  Specialist tools required for that.  And how many use ESP stuff? Virtually none - "Oh I touch the case occasionally" doesn't work

[supermop]

New PC of good spec = around £400-600. Some pre-built systems often come in at around £300 but use entry level components.

That graphics card is pretty decent. While AGP is old tech, the top-end AGP cards are really rather meaty. Would be a shame to ditch it, but since the industry is using PCI-e as the standard, you dont have much of a choice if you want your PC to remain upgradable with new bits.

The motherboard you got listed there is from a budget manufacturer. It uses a pretty poor chipset (VIA's lower spec chipset range really does suck), however, it looks like it was DESIGNED to be a stop-gap board for people making the jump to the newer technology, meaning you can use your old RAM & Graphics board, and stick new stuff in when you can afford. If you cant spare the money at the time of buying, get that and upgrade at a later date.

As for CPU's, the E6600 looks the best bang for buck. The Core2's beat AMD on the majority of benchmarks, but AMD still hold their own when it comes to gaming, so you may want to consider an Athlon X2 (the X2 5600 is a good buy). Then again, if you do go AMD, you'll need a different board.

I agree with above, except the part about reusing AGP.  Putting on an AGP slot now does mean budget upgrade, which, alas, means compromising badly.

Ditch the card. It falls into the 'good budget' category.  You can still pick up ATI X600 for similar/less, which is possibly a better card anyway (Supermop can confirm if good for games).  That way, no compromise on the system board.

Don't forget other components you may need - some boards coming with nothing but usb - no ps/2, serial,parallel etc.  Memory will now be DDR2. HDD's now SATA2.

Advantage of self build is your choice of components.  Disadvantage is cost and noise. Self build for the last few years costs more than prebuilt, and tends to be quieter.

If noise is an issue, check out Dell's E520 and 9200 - these use the BTX chassis format, and are extremely quiet.

I was getting at the fact the board hes linked to has DDR and DDR2 slots, as well as AGP and PCI-e graphics slots. Ideal for a stop-gap temporary board as it uses LGA775.

The nVidia 7600 is better than an x600 in virtually all areas (i used to have an x700 and the 7600 is even better than that). The GeForce 7x00 series is one generation above those ATI x00 series.