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"Upgrading My PC- advice required."

Hi guys,

I'm looking to upgrade my PC this Christmas. I only got it in June, but before you say I'm mad, hold on a minute.

Now, originally when I got my PC, I (foolishly) opted for a 15" TFT, and CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives. Also, I have minimal fans installed.

What would be the best thing to upgrade at the moment? I really need to upgrade my monitor, but I'll have to do some saving for that. And in order to get more fans, I'll need a new PSU too. *sigh*

So then- DVD-R/RW and more RAM, or PSU and more fans?

Thanks

You can usually speed up the keyboard buffer in the Bios, have a look for this and see if it makes any differance, The keyboard buffer is like a memory that buffers each keystroke in bits, each keystroke is 8 bits, basically if you type to fast then you could clog up the keyboard buffer and the key would not appear on the screen as soon as you type and the line you are typing will start being behind what you are typing, More ram can always be a plus, 1 gig would be plenty but you will have no need to get anything over 2gb (in the unlikely event) as windows and all 32bit applications will not detect anything over that, the new 64bit cpu's will detect up to 4gb (the only real good thing about them at the moment),Do not get an erganomic keyboard if you are not used to sing one and don't know how to touch type as they are broken in the middle and at an angle on either side.

Hope this helps

Colin

Microchips wrote:
> 512Mb DDR 400 RAM- Up to 1Gb then?
>
> and I have plenty enough storage.
>
> Thanks for the help.

If you got the money then it cant hurt to get it to 1Gb. Its not too necessary at the moment. If you run something like 3Dmark01 and 3Dmark03 with the 512mb RAM and then run it when you have 1Gb to see if theres any difference.

512Mb DDR 400 RAM- Up to 1Gb then?

and I have plenty enough storage.

Thanks for the help.

fiƒi[oV] wrote:
> Just to point out, 8x DVD writers are now available, starting from
> £115 - however, they'll only write at 8x to DVD+, DVD- still
> tops out at 4x

Havent seen any 8x speed media, should be out soon as otherwise theres no point in having 8x with 4x media.

DVD writers are getting very cheap. I built a PC in June and got a Sony DW-U10A for about £180. Since then they've been going down. Its a 4x -R and thats probably the cheaper of the 2 media. Also does 2x -RW, 2.4x +RW and 2x +R. For me I dont see any point upgrading until the dual layered drives are out.

Your graphics card is more than fine. Depends really how much money you have and what you want. If you have 512mb RAM then may be get it to 1Gb, no point going over as you wont really need it. What PSU have you got? As when I bought mine I opted for a 460w Enermax, nearly £70 but worth it as its rails are very good and provide more than enough juice. Really keeping your PC cool is a good thing. If you already have a few fans sucking in cold air and sucking out the hot then I doubt you need to get any more. If all you have is the CPU heatsink and PSU fan then adding 2 fans may be nice.

What sort of storage have you got? As if your running low 120Gb drives are very cheap now.

Microchips wrote:
> Yeah, I was thinking that, thanks.
>
> Another thing that occured to me- keyboard. I currently have a
> cheap, out-of-the-box Dell keyboard that has a rediculously low
> keyboard buffer- not too good for games. What do you think of this
> keyboard then:
>

Whats keyboard buffer??

Just to point out, 8x DVD writers are now available, starting from £115 - however, they'll only write at 8x to DVD+, DVD- still tops out at 4x

Yeah, I play games. I chose a 2.8GHz P4 with HT, and a Radeon 9800.

DVDR drives arent too expensive, a Pioneer 106 is around £85 from good online shops. At the moment the 106 is one of the best writers. Either this or the Sony U14A. Both are around the same price.

One thing to point out is these drives only do 4.7Gb discs. Pioneer have annouced its bringing a Dual layer drive which will do 9Gb. Also the higest speed they do so far is 4x which is a DVD in about 15 minutes, but new 8x are on there way.

If you have use for a DVDR right now then get one as £85 for a Pioneer or Sony is good. What RAM do you have at the moment? Because if you already have 1Gb theres no point really going up any further. If you only have 512Mb then stick another 512Mb and make sure its the same speed as RAM works at the speed of the slowest stick.

What about CPU? If you got it in June then what did you stick in it when you bought it? The best available or the middle of the pack?

Also do you play games? If so then what graphics card do you have? If you bought a low end FX card then maybe a good idea to get a new Radeon 9600XT and really turn a low end gaming machine into a highish end gaming rig.

Yeah it looks quite good, bit expensive though. For that money I think you could get an ergonomic keyboard. Which I think I might need soon./

Yeah, I was thinking that, thanks.

Another thing that occured to me- keyboard. I currently have a cheap, out-of-the-box Dell keyboard that has a rediculously low keyboard buffer- not too good for games. What do you think of this keyboard then:

http://uk.special.reserve.co.uk/ q_GG4780_microsoft_office_k.html