On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 21:31:54 +0100, "Cuzman" <cuzNOSPAM@supanet.com>
wrote:
A good deal on ebay is generally just the same deal found elsewhere
but older parts or after a middleman's markup... I'd try Newegg.com.
Maybe. Consider whether it's a full ATX or mATX... buy the
appropriate sized board. The new board/CPU will produce a lot more
heat, it's fairly safe to assume you'll need to increase the airflow
with an additional fan or two... if the case can't accomodate at least
one 80mm fan in addition to the one on the power supply, I'd abandon
the case and buy a new one.
How can we know when you didn't list the make/model/capacity of your
current power supply? If it's a very good power supply it may be
fine, otherwise I'd replace it with at least a name-brand 300W.
Newegg.com also has good deals on Sparkle/Fortron Power supplies, very
reasonably priced in the 300-350W range.
"Connect it all up" is a pretty comprehensive description, so yes, be
sure you connect it ALL up.
If your OS is Win95,98/SE, ME, you can plug-n-play the new board and
be done in 10 minutes. If it's NT/2K/XP then you need to do a repair
install by booting to the CDROM.
If you don't mind losing your data/application installs, you might
want to backup data and do a fresh OS install instead, it's the
simplier route but takes longer considering reinstalling everything,
and "usually"t not really necessary.
If you feel comfortable configuring a BIOS, configure it. If you
don't, don't. You may need do a minimal amount of configuration
anyway, like setting the processor/northbridge FSB to the correct
value, as often it defaults to the lowest possible value to allow ALL
possible processors to POST the first time. Just change what you
KNOW you need to and leave the rest at defaults, or do some online
searching for tweaks/tips for the particular motherboard.
You want a board with integrated graphics to play games... That's
been a contradiction for many years, only recently there's a
moderately quick integrated graphic chipset, nForce2. There are a
number of different manufacturers to consider at differing
price-points & feature sets.
You'll want a processor using DDR333 FSB, very good PC3200 memory, and
if you buy a lower-speed processor with some overclocking headroom you
can increase the FSB and memory bus synchronously (both at same speed)
to increase the performance of the integrated graphics. It'll yield
the performance of a Geforce 4 MX, more or less, since that's what it
is.
Since you plan on buying a better system later this year, I suggest a
motherboard without integrated graphics and buying the video card for
the NEXT system, now, but since it'll produce more heat and need an
even better PSU, it's more likely to require a case and PSU upgrade.
Dave
