Upgrade Kit

Revision as of 15:57, 16 September 2007

$250 AMD

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 Staticice, I'm assuming that the buyer will carry over their hard drive and optical drive. If you wish to purchase new drives as well, you may be better off with the complete systems on the Workstation page.

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). If you require AGP graphics support, you could purchase the MSI K9MM-V for similar.

If you plan to run Windows Vista, 1GB of RAM is recommended, although if you're not using Vista and don't ever 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.

$250 Intel

Here is an Intel version of the upgrade rig, for those who prefer Intel's products. This motherboard has the advantage of having slots for both DDR2 and DDR1, so if you have some spare DDR RAM to use, then this is a better bet than the AMD rig (and would save you a further $50).

Any higher end upgrade rigs have been removed, except for the DDR system. This is because that the systems recommended are similar to the Workstation systems, but just without a few components, so it might be worth choosing one of the Workstation systems and removing unnecessary components (like cases).

$250 Intel, AGP/DDR1

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, can even support the latest quad-core CPUs. :)

$400 Intel, Gamer

$400 AMD, Gamer

These machines are new additions, designed for gamers upgrading on a budget. This assumes that gamers own a PCIe video card and wish to purchase new DDR2 RAM.