$550 Frankenstein Computer Upgrade

J

JerryTheStampede

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
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My friend's comp died. Need help upgrading it. Its been upgraded time and time again but the case is still fine hence it being a Frankenstein. And he still uses a crt (won't switch because he does lots of photoshop)

His old machine was an
AMD Sempron 1.6ghz
2gb ddr2 6400
and 7950gt nvidia

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
- Gaming (fallout 3, l4d, tf2), Photoshop, browsing

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
- 550 after shipping/tax

3) Where do you live?
- CA San Diego

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
- Mobo, Ram, Psu, processor, hdd


5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
- optical drives, monitor, input devices, case.

6) Will you be overclocking?
- Nothing too extreme (won't be needing 3rd party cooler)

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
- 1680 x 1050

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
- before next month

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
- nothing special

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
- No, but has access to M$ ultimate steal (Vista Ultimate Red for 65 dollars)


NOTES:
-HDD doesn't have to be too large. He has a 1.5tb external storage.
-Most online retailers are good (newegg, zzf, mwave) and chipsandmemory is also convenient
-AMD, Intel, ATI, or nvidia.
 
Which case are you reusing?

$219 - AMD Phenom II X3 720 & Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P combo deal (free shipping on both)
$56 - G.Skill 2x2GB DDR2 1066 dual channel kit (free shipping)
$105 - Sapphire HD4850 (free shipping, with 9% discount code HARDOCPVGA51810 used)
$55 - Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320GB HDD (free shipping)
$69 - BFG LS-550 550W PSU (free shipping)
=====
$504 - Subtotal (not including taxes or rebates)

If you need to drop the (after-taxes) price down even further, getting DDR2 800 RAM and picking a cheaper board from the PII X3 720's combo deal list are the two easiest steps to take.
 
What tiraides said.

I wonder if ultimate steal will offer 7?
 
This deal on Tigerdirect the other day didn't actually seem too bad.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=4689446&sku=B69-1076.

EVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW Motherboard -
BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC MAXCORE Video Card -
OCZ Platinum XTC 4GB Dual Channel PC6400 Memory -
Western Digital Caviar GreenPower 500GB Hard Drive -
Ultra X-Blaster Mid-T Case -
Ultra LSP550 550-Watt Power Supply -
Intel Pentium D 965 Extreme 3.73Ghz Socket 775 CPU -
 
AjFreimuth said:
This deal on Tigerdirect the other day didn't actually seem too bad.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=4689446&sku=B69-1076.

Intel Pentium D 965 Extreme 3.73Ghz Socket 775 CPU -
Click to expand...

You do know that the Pentium D 965 Extreme 3.7Ghz CPU performs on par with a Core 2 Duo E6300 1.8Ghz CPU, right? And that E6300 could be OC'd to merely 3Ghz (can typically go much higher) and blow the Pent.D out of the water. Now, thats an EOL'd chip. The E5200, a $60 chip, can outperform the E6300, both at stock and OC'd.
 
The Ultra power supply is crap -- and there's a good chance that it can't handle the full 550 watts it's rated for.
 
My friend's 8ish year old laptop died last night(his backup) and he panicked so we ordered mainly what tiraide said last night. Except for the 1066 ram. Went with 51.99 Patriot Memory with a $25 MIR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220293
and this HDD because he's hurting for funds.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075

As for OS none of us could find an old windows 98 (version to upgrade to vista from) so he'll be running win7 until we can get something.

Thanks for your guy's help.

And that Tiger Direct deal looks really good. Except for the P4.... Could have considered that if it had a core2duo chip like enginurd said
 
You're hurting for funds, yet you bought RAM that only becomes cheap after using a MIR?

Stupid move.

You do realize that shipping on the HDD comes to around $5-$6, right? You should have went with this...

$50 - WD3200AAJS (free shipping)
$44 - A-DATA 2x2GB DDR2 800 kit (free shipping)
=====
$94 - Subtotal (not including tax)

... and ended up paying less for the above setup that you did with the parts that you ended up with.

If you can, cancel the current order and go with the above setup. If you can't, consider this a lesson learned.
 
I don't see why using an MIR is a stupid move.
The ram costs 6 dollars more than the one you suggested but you get $25 later on. If the company doesn't honor the rebate then that is a different story.
 
I don't see why using an MIR is a stupid move.
The ram costs 6 dollars more than the one you suggested but you get $25 later on. If the company doesn't honor the rebate then that is a different story.
Click to expand...

yea, $25 returned to you in about 4 months <- worst case scenario
also, that's IF every step on the instruction list was done correctly...

the only MIR i trust are the ones from staple's easy rebates, screw everything else (my opinion only)
 
Rebates are never guaranteed, so I'd choose the cheapest out of pocket solution while maintaining the same specs. Then again, its only chump change, so it doesn't really matter.
 
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