Upgrade Kit

Revision as of 11:47, 4 April 2007

February 2007 NOTE: I have removed all Socket 939 systems from the list, since 939 is being phased out, and motherboards are increasingly hard to find.

$250 AM2

Some people are really short on cash and need to get a boost in performance (it really sucks to be on something like a Celeron 600 nowadays). These are probably the cheapest bits you can get from MSY, I'm assuming that the buyer will carry over their hard drive and optical drive. If not, an 80GB one can be had for around 60 bucks. If the buyer wishes to purchase a new optical drive, a DVD-RW drive is under $50 now.

Remember that freight charges from different stores will add up - this defeats the purpose of finding the cheapest price from several stores, rather than just one.

The board features onboard video and onboard everything else which removes the need for a graphics card (which is expensive and unnecessary). Such an upgrade of course is targeted only at e.g. students doing work or mums and dads who just want a no frills machine. The board also allows upgrading to faster AM2 CPUs, and it is rumoured that AM3 CPUs will also run in AM2 boards, giving some future proofing.

Some people may wish to run a more feature-packed motherboard, and the Asus M2NPV-MX is another $20, for a better chipset and better onboard video (nVidia GeForce 6150).

It may be tempting to go for a Socket 754 setup if you've got some spare DDR1 RAM lying around, but it is considered obsolete nowadays. Some may wish to get either a DVD-RW, or a faster CPU (like an Athlon 64 3000+). Now if you plan to run Windows Vista, 1GB of RAM is strongly recommended, although if you're not using Vista and don't plan to, 512MB may be enough.

The new power supply is recommended because of the fact that most current day motherboards are 24pin, whilst most older power supplies are 20pin. Whilst adapters are available, it's wise to play it safe and get a brand new quality power supply anyway.

If the machine you're upgrading still uses a BabyAT power supply, chances are it's past being upgradable (the rest of the system would be ancient), and you'll be looking at a completely new machine.

$500 AM2

Many people will prefer a quicker AMD system, so here's a faster one. However, unlike the Core 2 Duo listed below, there's no boards which support both AGP and PCIe video cards, or DDR1/DDR2 RAM, so you're stuck with PCIe or onboard video (which the Intel setup lacks). It's more an advanced version of the $250 upgrade than an AMD version of the $500 one, though.

$500 Core 2 Duo

The big advantage of this board is that it can run AGP and PCIe video cards, and DDR1/DDR2 RAM, it's the ultimate upgrader board :)

$750 Core 2 Duo

It may seem stupid to spend $750 on an upgrade, however I found myself in a similar situation after my P4 motherboard screwed over on me. What I needed was something that had bang, overclocking, and some future proofing at the lowest cost possible. This meant reusing my old DDR RAM, HDD etc. This is what I had:

• 2.8 M0 Pentium 4
• Gigabyte 8IPE1000 Pro 2
• 1GB Corsair TwinX 3200C2 V1.2
• 120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA
• 128MB SmartVGA 9800 Pro
• 16x Pioneer DVR-109
• 52x 32x 52x LG CD-RW
• Generic Window Case
• 480W Thermaltake Butterfly

With the board dead, that meant that I had to replace the CPU, motherboard, graphics card and power supply. I was unwilling to go AM2 because there weren't any cheap Lanparty overclocking boards, and I wanted to keep my semi-decent RAM (much better than my old Kingston ValueRAM stuff). This is what I ended up getting:

• X2 4200+ Toledo
• DFI Lanparty UT nF4-D
• Leadtek PX7600GS TDH Classic Edition
• 500W Super Flower

In total it cost around $640. Affordable, overclockable, blingy. From this upgrade I have learned a few things which I always keep in mind when buying new parts.

• First of all, the hard drive I bought nearly 3 years ago was SATA. Thus this didn't require me to buy a new hard drive later on
• My CPU was a good overclocking chip. Thus it fetched more when it was up for sale (compared to the Prescott that I had earlier and would have sold later)
• Video card wasn't too bad - being second to only the flagship model a few years back, meant that it could fetch a bit more when it went up for sale

Thus, when buying new parts always look for overclockability, value and future proofing.