Well i'm in the process of buying tires, i managed to get the tires for $137/tire instead of $199/tire so i figure since i'm saving all this money i can buy something else (i dunno how i figure i have extra money but anyways).

I've got a killer celeron 400 which...well works fine, but i've wanted to upgrade the processor which means upgrading the motherboard, which means upgrading the memory, which means a new case would be a good idea since mine is partially missing, which also means the idea of a decent power supply is smart.

Currently running:
celeron 400mhz
288mb pc100
80gb hd
60gb hd
16x dvd-rom
48x24x48 cdrw
decent sound card (can't remember what)
hercules 32mb vard w/tv out (does the job)

what i'm lookin at replacing:

Case - ANTEC SONATA QUIET CHASSIS ATX 3X5.25 6X3.5 PIANO BLACK 380W TRUEPOWER $151.13
Heat Sink of some sort - i know jack about them~$19.88 to $30ish
- Processor-AMD ATHLON XP 2500+ 512K 333FSB SOCKET A BARTON RETAIL BOX 3YR MFR WAR $127.29
- Motherboard-SOLTEK 75FRN2-L NFORCE2 SOCKETA DUAL DDR AGP8X 5PCI ATA133 SOUND LAN $98.77
- Memory OCZ DUAL CHANNEL OPTIMIZED 2X256MB DDR PC3200 CAS2 W/ COPPER HEAT ER $209.01

TOTAL: $631.07


Any large mistakes or things you guys would do differently? I'm try'n to be fairly cost effective and would like to stick with amd over a pentium processor. There will generally be no overclocking of the new system, as i don't time/money to mess with that sutff currenlty.

[ June 25, 2004, 12:16 AM: Message edited by: Hardcore Rock Superstar ]

i've always been told celeron processors are half the power of what they should produce [img]graemlins/dunno.gif[/img] I stick to the AMD chips, so smart choice with the AMD 2500+ chip :D . [img]graemlins/thumb.gif[/img] just my two cents.

And DO NOT buy a compaq. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Celrons run way slower then a p4 so if you can upgrade to AMD 2800 or higher. ALso you said you have a 400 MHZ celron and it's killer? You must be joking.

But so far system looks good!

I you wanna play any new games expect to spend over $200 for a good video card. I just bought a new entry level PC thinking I could play new games on it. Wrong. I just $300 on a Radeon 9800 Pro, but it's gonna be sweeeeet. Are you sure that chip supports dual channel memory? If it doesn't you might as well save a few bucks and go with a single 512Mb

Good choices. I would stick away from a celeron unless you are strickly using the machine for word proccessing and internet browsing. Any other application such as gaming the CPU's lack the cache and Instruction set of the P4 and Athlon XP's.

hah, yeah i was kidding about the celeron being killer. The pc was originally bought for our business back in 95, it had 32mb ram, win 95 i think and a 4gb hard drive i believe.

Yeah, that board supports duan channel memory. Why do you say go with the 2800 over the 2500? I only ask cause i'm try'n to be cost effective and thats another $60.

And no i don't plan to do any real gaming...i've never really had the option in the past, no online gaming, it'd be nice to be able throw a game in here n there but i can always buy a video card when i grow another money tree.

Just cause the 2500+ is almost instinct. that was the first CPU with the barton core as well. Still will work very well. Still reliable. 2800+ just gives you a bit more speed but if you are on a tighter budget the 2500+ will work great for what you are using it for.

http://www.canadiancaraudio.com/ubb/...c;f=2;t=005642

go for that MB it's about the best amd board IMO
the onboard sound is top notch

I just bought myself a shuttle sn45G and it uses the Nforce400 chipset, I'm very happy with it it


I got my mom a shuttle sn41g with a barton 2600 and 512mb ram, it has onboard geforce4 video and it plays call of duty just fine (mind you I set the shared memeory at 128mb)


the sonota is a very nice case ...... it was on my short list for cases before I decided to go the Small form factor rought.

thats the motherboard i originally had picked out about a year back....but in the thought of try'n to lower the price the soltek came out. The soltek has a deluxe version of the board i'm lookin at thats pretty well identical to the asus. Or this board is a direct comparison to the non-deluxe asus.

Hah i remember reading all the debates about that onboard sound vs various soundcards.

Only reason i didn't really go for it is i don't have much use for RAID or sata drives - sure they'd be neat and all, but not necessary