HELP! Upgrade Questions

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Thread: HELP! Upgrade Questions

  1. #1
    Catfish MisterTurret's Avatar
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    Exclamation HELP! Upgrade Questions

    After 2 years with my "beautiful" Celeron 400, I've decided to upgrade. Having a 3000 budget (but not wanting to spend it all) and having a Monitor, this is what I'll probably get:

    AMD THUNDERBIRD 1 GHZ
    IBM DESKSTAR 45GIG HD 7400 RPM
    DIAMOND MX 300 SOUND CARD
    PLEXWRITER 12/10/32

    This is all I know so far, but here come the questions:
    Am I choosing the right kind of HD? Is it a good deal for 146$? What things do I need to look at when buying a Hard Drive?
    Also, I need a motherboard. I really suck at picking these, so could you give me a little help? I need one that can support the Thunderbird series above 1 GHZ, so I can still upgrade in the future. Or if you think otherwise tell me. Also, where can i get that 256 DIMM or SDRAM from crucial that is posted on the front page article, "HIGH-END GAMING PC BUYERS GUIDE" It seems to have a great price, almost too good to be true. What is RAID? do I need it? Also, what it the best GEFORCE 2 card or any card I can get right now? Radeon? I already have a case and all. Any sound card suggestions? Sorry about all these questions but I actually want to buy the best I can for my money, and I'm not that experienced with computers. I would appriciate any answers

  2. #2
    Hammerhead Shark tuck2040's Avatar
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    The HD is pretty cheap. If you want a reliable socket A board get a KT7 Raid it does the job if you don't want DDR Ram or other very expensive stuff. For graphics I would suggest a GTS2 Pure 64mb, It is about the best at the moment. You can get crucial RAM from www.crucial.com, strangely enough. Also pick up a microsoft intellieye explorer optical mouse as it is the best pointy thing around.

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  3. #3
    Catfish MisterTurret's Avatar
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    What is RAID? and do I need it? what about DDR? I already have intellimouse. Thanks

  4. #4
    Hammerhead Shark WolskiDK's Avatar
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    I would recommend not getting an IBM harddrive. Their drives are great don't get me wrong, but if you are getting an OEM drive, they will not honor any type of warranty. I prefer to use Maxtor or Seagate myself, as they both will honor OEM warranties. As for the mobo, I suggest the A7V. It's true many people have had problems with them including myself, but now that I have it working I highly recommned it. If fact look at my signature I have two of them. Abit comes with both the Raid and non-Raid versions. My feeling on that, if you don't knopw what Raid is, don't get it you won't use it Good Luck

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  5. #5
    Catfish MisterTurret's Avatar
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    Hmm thats funny. My brothers IBM deskstar just totally crashed, and it was replaced for him. Hmmm, I dont know, I think MWAVE did it, and he didnt send it directly to IBM, maybe that was it.

  6. #6
    Hammerhead Shark DoGGx23's Avatar
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    Sounds like a good system you are about to get. What kind of mother board are you planning to buy? The IBM hard drive is very good and quit. Try partioning the drive into 2 drives (10gigs 35gigs) That way it can boot faster. Your computer won't have to load all 45 gigs.... If you would like a faster HD you should try a scsi one at 10000 rpm, but it might be a little expensive. Raid is only good if you have more than 1 hard drive. So if you are planning to get mroe than one hard drive then raid will benefit you.

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  7. #7
    Catfish MisterTurret's Avatar
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    What is RAID? is it some form of SCSI? What does it do to the HD's?

  8. #8
    Goldfish
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    these people cant be helping you. not one person said that the diamond mx300 is a dumb idea. diamond was sold to s3 and s3 quit supporting pretty much everything. i have two mx300 in the closet because their last driver update was feb 1999. and a3d who made the chip on the sound card is out of business so you cant use reference drivers. get a soundblaster live card. all the support in the world and they bought the left overs of a3d ie aureal. no the ibm deskstar and maxtor plus are very good reliable h/d's. i think your rpms are wrong they should be 7200. if you can wait asus just made a new motherboard for the athlon called the a7m266 which has ddr memory support. ddr=double data rate in simple terms it means twice the performance of normal sdram. the 266 fsb is made by doubling the 133 fsb speed. it should hit store shelves by the end of this month according to an email i received from an asus tech a week ago. hope this helps.
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  9. #9
    Tiger Shark cracovian's Avatar
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    IBM DESKSTAR 45GIG HD 7400 RPM smokes anything that's out there by a wide margin. And I mean awesome speed, 7.0ms (tested) seek time, low noise and low temperature. I bought mine for $138 from Buy.com and it was the lowest price I've seen so far (use $30 off coupon form techbargains.com). Also, make sure you download installation utilities from ibm.com (especially DiskGo!) - they'll help you tremendously. Who needs a retail warranty if that drive costs twice as much as the OEM? When it breaks in a couple of years (if at all) you'll just buy a 300GB replacement for a hundred bucks or so.
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