Looking to upgrade my computer from my P3 800mhz to this.


CASE : Hot New! X-Cruiser Mid-Tower 420W Case W/ WINDOW, MultiMeter Display & Control (Blue Color)
CPU : (939-pin) AMD ATHLON64 3200+ CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
MOTHERBOARD : (Sckt939)EVGA nForce4 SLI Chipset SATA RAID Dual PCI-E Mainboard w/GbLAN, USB2.0, &7.1Audio
MEMORY : 1024 MB (512MBx2) PC3200 400MHz Dual Channel DDR MEMORY (Corsair XMS High Performance Memory w/ Heat Spreader)
VIDEO CARD : NVIDIA Geforce 6200 256MB 16X PCI EXPRESS VIDEO CARD
VIDEO CARD 2 : NONE
MONITOR & LCD : NONE
HARD DRIVE : 200GB Hard Drive (SATA150 - Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive)
Hard Drive 2 : NONE
Optical Drive : (Special Price) LG GWA-4161 16X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLUE COLOR)
Optical Drive 2 : (Special Price) LG GWA-4161 16X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLUE COLOR)
SOUND : HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
Price: $990.00

Price includes color matched keyboard, upgrade power supply to 500watts, three extra case fans, mouse, windows XP pro and three year warrentee.

Forgot and free shipping.

Looking to buy from here
http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/

looks like a decent price to me, I would see if they have an option to upgrade to 2GB mem (1GBx2) and see what that would run, but I run a a bunch of things that take up memory, and you may or may not. just my .02

also what are you going to do with your current PC? trade it in? toss it?

2 gigs will raise the cost another 100 bucks. 4 gigs will run an extra 500 ouch.
I don't think I'll need that much ram my better computer uses 512megs and keeps up just fine. Just my processor speed isn't quite upto some of the new games that are out.


This will be computer number three in the house. Thinking on the old one I'm gonna wipe all my stuff off of it and give it to one of the junior guys that doesn't have a computer. It's fine for internet use.

it has 327 megs ram
128 meg Geforce video card
on board audio
10/100 ethernet card.
20 gig HD
CD/CDRW/dvd cant remember the specs
CD rom
and a floppy.

I know what you mean, I was just sayin that if it's not too bad, it might be worht it. I'm looking at a new one for me, but take the one I got and build one up for the wife for her business from extra parts I have laying around to be decent. I saw the extra memory as necessary for me, but if I couldn't get a good price on the PC in the first place, I wouldn't be getting one at all

200G hard drive
That's HUGE, tiny E!

I have two 120's and two 160's in this computer.
One 160 is for backing up stuff, the other is for random stuff and is hardly used. Two 120's are RAID0 for speeeeeed.

Herc thats a fairly decent price. You might want to stop at some electronics retailers and compare prices and specs. Name brand will get you a year warranty in case you get a lemon.

And you probably don't need two DVDRW drives. One is fine, get a plain old DVDrom maybe a dvd/cdrw combo for the 2nd drive.

I noted you have RAID capability on your motherboard but the computer is only using a single hard drive. I would recommend taking advantage of the RAID since you've got it.
You want to use two identical SATA hard drives for it. Depending on configuration you can either have a faster hard drive system or mirroring for data safety.

Price is decent. If you are doing games and stuff the video card should stand up alright.

Hard drive space is on the low end. For a decent computer like that, 200Gb isn't bad, but space is precious if you get into video and multimedia. I have 610Gb in my media center and it's filling fast. It's still a decent price and at least hard drive space is easy to upgrade.

Space really isn't a problem for me. The computer I'm keeping has a 200gig drive and it's only half full.

I'm with BryantGTP here. I've got a pair of 300GB hard drives in mine. But it all depends on what you use it for. I wanted a media PC so hard drive space was crucial for me.

Based on what Herc has said, I'd say don't sweat the hard drives or RAM. Those are easy to swap/upgrade at any time, and prices will always come down.

The main thing to look at is the motherboard. If you are satisfied with that, you can swap out anything else very easily.

Price SHOULD always come down, but some people have been screwed.

**cough** PC133 **cough**

I must not be using my computer to it's fullest. I've got a 20 gig hard drive that I load all my programs onto (it's almost full), and a 40 gig H/D that I load all my music on, and the wife loads here pics on. The 40 gig is almost half full.

BryantGTP and myself have video tuners that record TV to the hard drive. That uses an insane amount of hard disk space (I think something along the lines of 7 GB for one hour of video at medium quality).

Before my tuner card, I had no reason to go beyond the 80gb drive that came in my cheapo computer.

Makes sense.

I record at 2.5Gb per hour.

I stand corrected. You are right.

I was thinking of my football recordings which are 7GB (3.5 to 4 hours long).

What would I need to have TV on my computer?
I am getting my I-net through my cable line.
Is it just software, or is it a whole complicated hardware/software install?

I don't remember how Bryant's is set up, but I use this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006FS...6&s=pc&v=glance

It plugs into a PCI slot on your motherboard and takes about 10 minutes to install (if that). I did a lot of research and this model seems to have the best overall reviews and satisfaction from users for an analog tuner.

However, you will probably want at least 1GB of RAM and lots of hard drive space, so that might add to the cost.

That will allow you to watch TV on your PC, and record what you are watching to your hard drive.

There are also models with two tuners so you can watch one thing, and record something on another channel.

Then, there are digital tuners which will record digital signals in high quality, but not analog... so you need to plan out what you want. Most decent storebought media centers have a ditigal tuner and an analog tuner so you can record everything, and still have the benefit of two tuners.

As for your question about needing anything else... aside from the RAM and the hard drive space you don't NEED anything else. The tuner comes with software that helps you set the channels, program when/where to record, edit your recordings (remove commercials), etc. However, if you are like me and want to record your pay per view events, you need another cable box from your cable provider. I think Comcast charges me $10 a month for a 2nd box.