New Computer Build

Previously I posted that I was going to upgrade an old dell dimension. I realised that it would turn out to be too expensive to be worth my money with all the over inflated prices on AGP cards and Rambus memory.

I now have acces to a new computer (My brothers old one). This has given me acces to a case and a hard drive to re-use in my new build. At the moment the computer has the following specs inside it. 

Pentium Dual core E5300 @3.3ghz

9500 GT DDR2 @ 775/1715/345

2GB DDR2 Ram @ 1066mhz

MP G31-M Motherboard

500GB Seagate Blue 

2x Noctua NF-R8 PWM Fans 

Random Foxconn Case :) 

Right, now onto the main point of this article. The computer I plan to build in the next month or so will be around $7000 HKD or $900. I'll be keeping the HDD and case from the current build so I'm saving money there. New specs:

GPU: Radeon 7850

CPU: i5 3570K

RAM: 8GB Any decent brand

PSU: 700w Modular power supply

Motherboard: Asus P8z77-M Pro

Cooler: Corsair H80

Fans: x2 Cougar CF-V12 HP

I plan to get a new case when I have a little more money as the the case I'm using at the moment is quite cramped and cabling (As you can see) is a bit of a problem. Also further down the line I plan to buy an SSD as a boot drive when the prices come down.

Dell Dimension 8250 upgrade

As I said in my previous post I have acquired an 8 year old Dell 8250. I now plan to use it as a movie playing machine and a minecraft server. Hopefully the 1gb of RDRAM will be enough for a local server for private use. But the one concern I have is video playback. As I said before the MX420 is only just able to run full screen 480p video. So to fix this problem I am going to have to buy a graphics card that supports video acceleration. After a look on amazon and ebay I have come down to 2or 3 cards that are at the price I need. They are as follows

Nvidia 6600gt AGP

Nvidia 7600gt AGP

ATI 3450HD AGP

ATI 4650HD AGP

The the 3450hd is there because it supports full HD acceleration for video and draws much less power.

Edit 1 16/03/12: So i've added the ATI 4650HD to the list only because it is far better than the other three and hopefully I can get a good price somewhere on the internet. However my main concern is if my measly 250w power supply can handle it...

Edit 2 16/03/12: Now there are pictures


Developing...

Dell Dimension 8250

So recently an old dell has become available to me as my brother recently got a new laptop. This computer is from around 2004 and has specs as follows:

Pentium 4 2.4ghz
1gb PC800 RDRAM
Nvidia Geforce MX420 AGP Graphics Card
Some old HDD thrown in

At the moment it is running windows 7 which I installed on it about a year and a half ago. It actually runs it well with a very fast boot (around 30 seconds). It was used as a primary computer for an 8 year old, mostly youtube, rome total war and rugby 08. It was able to do these tasks perfectly and the only compromise was that to run full screen youtube windows aero had to be disabled. I think that the fact that an 8 year old middle of the line computer (When it came out) is still able to run the latest operating system and do so without any major flaws.