Mom needs an upgrade

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jaxstraww

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
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My mother is still using an e-machine celeron I had like 10 years ago. I have a ton of recently upgraded parts sitting that won't pull much $ from eBay because of weight.

What I have for her:
Vista Ultimate (I know...but its free)
Thermalake V2 Mid Chassis
Corsair TX 650
VisionTek HD 6870
DVD Drive I'll pull from my rig

What I need:
MOBO (Intel or AMD)
CPU
CPU Cooler
RAM (4gb is fine but 8gb preferred. Would also like to stay DDR3)
Hard Drive (320gb-500gb. 5400 is fine but would prefer 7200)


Used or ebay is fine as well as a great deal on the egg or amazon. Doesn't have to kill it. Actually anything last 5-6 years for CPU should be fine.

Looking for combo deals or buys from the forums. I really only want to drop $150 for the 4 items. I've gotten close on a few things but then items started to piece out and then the idea of compatibility became an issue. Hoping to get as much in one shot as possible.

Any suggestions would be great. AMD is probably going to be the way to go to keep costs down. I'd like the MOBO to be on the newer side to handle some of the newer AMD chips. I want to be able to add in things down the road as cash fees up like additional ram or a CPU upgrade.
 
I don't think you'll be able to do all that for $150. With the current BF/CM deals going on, this is the cheapest 8GB DDR3 RAM I've seen:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313419

These sales are only temporary and RAM is still in relatively high demand. So even if you bought used, I highly doubt you'll find a 8GB set of RAM for less than $55.

Also, are you sure your mom needs that much space?
 
That is a tight number on 8gigs.

She may not need that much space. Considered the 160gb to get her going. Saw some refurb HD's for pretty cheap but I really would not like to buy a refurb HD. Buying new is a crap-shoot on platter drives sometimes.

Found a 1TB for less than the smaller sizes of the same model???

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339

Up to a bill.....need a mobo/cpu combo now w/ heatsink.

The $150 can be done. Just need all the parts to rhyme together.

There is or was an ebay deal on a E8400 or Q6600 with a giga board and 8gb of ram which I think was Kingston value ram. The cooler was the Corsair h80 I think. Water cooling for a 65 year old is just not going to work. That was up to about $160 with 30 minutes left. Almost pulled the trigger but then I needed to pull the cooler out of the buy for something on air and then no hard drive as well. The buy started to fade at $160 because I still needed a number of parts to complete. Meh, maybe I should have done it.
 
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Ok, this is the setup to beat:
$57 - Intel Pentium G3220 CPU
$50 - Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2V Intel H81 mATX Motherboard
$54 - Team Dark 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$63 - Crucial MX100 128GB SSD
---
Total: $224 shipped

Whatever setup you come up has to beat the above in price to performance in order to be worthwhile. The SSD and RAM are BF/CM sales pricing so you should jump on that ASAP. If you don't mind a lower quality and lower performing SSD, then you can save $13 with this SanDisk 128GB SSD:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2979419&Sku=
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Even without the rebate, it's still worth the extra $6 if you can swing it.
 
To bad I can't find a micro ATX with IDE as well as the newer stuff like SATA and USB 3.0. I have two older DVD Writers I could throw in. She will need a drive and was hoping to put this hardware to use.

Found this....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...re=ide_to_sata_adapter-_-12-232-002-_-Product

but looking for something internal to use.

Two SATA drives are relatively cheap. Cable may cost as much but I truly want to recycle tech as much as possible. Sustainability.......
 
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jaxstraww said:
To bad I can't find a micro ATX with IDE as well as the newer stuff like SATA and USB 3.0. I have two older DVD Writers I could throw in. She will need a drive and was hoping to put this hardware to use.

Found this....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...re=ide_to_sata_adapter-_-12-232-002-_-Product

but looking for something internal to use.

Two SATA drives are relatively cheap. Cable may cost as much but I truly want to recycle tech as much as possible. Sustainability.......
Click to expand...
Just buy new SATA DVD burners. Either route will require you to buy additional hardware so you might as well buy the latest hardware for the same price.
 
A year or two ago I would of cringed at the idea of putting an SSD in "grandma's solitaire computer". But the fact is rarely do people use the entire 500 GB or 1GB of a disk drive. If they do a removable drive is recommended. It's almost the time in PC's where everything (other than Enterprise) should be solid state regardless of the price point.

That said, if you are using Vista I would not use an SSD because there is no Trim support. Consider a Hybrid HDD by Seagate or Toshiba. I also suggest setting Super fetch service to Auto Start Delayed on Vista due to how aggressive it is.
 
Thanks guys. For costs I pulled a 260 GB platter Seagate from another case to use. I agree on SSD because when I give this to her I wanted it to be very fast from hat she has. I'll swap it out a little later as prices continue to drop.

I ran into one hitch with Vitsa. The MoBO and the chipset driver CD wouldn't auto run on Vitsa. Giga made me dig into the CD for the drivers.......Found a Win7 license from an old folding rig and used that instead of Vista.

Just ordered a Cooler Master HS T2 with push pins. The stock Intel fan is a loud mess. The CM should be a littler quieter and was under $20. Temps were great for the stock cooler so this should be better.

Does anyone know the name of metal brackets that slide in the back of a PC case? They are the longs ones that you remove when putting inn PCI cards. I'm missing three that I assume I pitched and have no spare components to just take up room. Heck, I put in an Esata cable to take up a slot. I need four of those to slide into this case.

Thanks again to Dangman for the recommendations. The CPU and MoBo will be perfect for what she will be using the machine for. Just need to find those slip in brackets so that a cat doesn't crawl inside.
 
Those are called "expansion slot covers". With your case, typical of cheap-o cases FYI, those were "tear-off" expansion slot covers. So once you took them off, that's it. You had to throw them away.

You can buy expansion slot covers but they're not that cheap and IMO not worth getting for a cheap-o case. Basically, lipstick on a pig.

Personally, I'd just go with an entirely new case since you get far better cooling, ease of building, significantly better cable management, and more up-to-date features. I recommend the $50 NZXT Source 210 Elite:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146077

Alternatively, just leave the case as is. Don't buy expansion slot covers.
 
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