Not sure what to do.

[SONY007]

I think it's time for me to have a faster Processor as i've been butting it of for some time. Now what I was wondering is would it be better to get if I bought a brand new pc all together or this place I know do a bundle pack which consist of a (motherboard, fan, processor) so depending on the quailty of the bundle you purchase you decide how fast your processor is. But is this the case are these three or maybe two things the only things I need to worry about as well as i've never fitted a motherboard the most i've done was a dvd-writer and a harddrive. I've got an Athion 900 MHz at the moment but I think i'd like a Pentium next if there the fasters available. Will all motherboards fit in tower cases, i'm I likely to have compactibility problems with anything, will the pci slot at the back line up so I could re-install some cards or is it just like putting in a writer?, and i'll just have a faster pc.

[killingspree]

ok... well it depends on what you want and what you have... if you have a rather old hard disk a crappy DVD etc... you might want to consider buying a whole new set, but if you have put quite a lot of money into your old Pc, which you obviously have since you have a dvd writer which for sure didn't come with your athlon 900, you might rather buy a new motherboard with a fitting CPU and cooler. but you have to be aware of the following things:
1) look at the type of your RAM, every motherboard only supports one, at most two types, so if you now have SD ram and the new motherboard only supports DDR or RIMM ram you'll have to spend quite a lot of extra money on the ram (which might be worth it though, depending on the ram you have right now. this is especially critical if you're switching from AMD to Intel!
2) afaik, not all motherboards fit into all towers, so you'll ahve to buy another board for a high tower than for a minitower.
3) if you have sound on board, you also have to consider that your new board might just not have a sound chip onboard (which would be preferable IMHO), but you might just end up without sound.

oh and fitting in a motherboard the right way, is way harder than just installing a burner / hard disk. i don't say it is not possible, it just involves a lot more screwing around on your computer including the setting of several jumpers and probably working with the BIOS two.

i myself would rather buy a new PC with a high tower, which includes a new DVD- drive and burner, add in the dvd writer as a third drive, probably add the extra HD (only if it is equal or larger as 40 Gig) but be aware that is might require an additional raid controller as most computers only support 4 IDe drives (cd, dvd, hd, etc)

hope this helps
regards
steVe

[theReal]

If you have an Athlon now, then your case is an ATX case and every PIV or Athlon board (ATX size) will fit in that case. The case just shouldn't be too small because the newest P4's and Athlons have a heat dissipation of around 75 Watt and you have to get that heat away from the CPU and out of the case.
BTW. maybe you'll need a new PSU for a P4 board (different connectors) - and depending on the quality of the PSU you have, a new one will always be a good idea, also for an Athlon.


Other than that, it's not too complicated to build everything yourself. The manuals usually show pretty well where you have to connect everything and what settings you can change by setting jumpers.

[SONY007]

I've got a HP Pavillion 9720 and I want to change all including the ram to ddr, what i'm not to sure about now after speaking to a few ppl is what processor to get Athlon or Pentium. I heard athlon is cheaper but is it better or at least the same. I want a m/b with raid, oh yeah will most m/b accept both Athlon and Pentium ? as I have no idea.

[killingspree]

ok, well to start of, no motherboard supports both athlon and intel. and yes, athlons are cheaper. the question about which one is better can only be answered by yourself. imho the best procesoor available right now is the PIV with HT (Hyperthreading). but this is for sure no low budget solution :-P, but something like a PIV with 2.6 GHz are fairly cheap right now. the advantage in my eyes, which PIV have right now, is that they support SSE2, which, if supported by the software, can spped up multimedia processes significantely. as you might have guessed already i am rather an Intel fan, although i wouldn't have any problems using an Athlon if it gave me a better price - performance ratio.
But as i said, decide by yourself.

my suggestion: since you have a HP pavillon, which iirc have a rather small case, i'd rather get a complete new PC with a high tower, a decent CPU and a PIV!

regards
steVe

[Xayd]

I don't have anything against AMD as far as their procssors go, nor do I have a reason really to favor Intel strictly based on the processors.

The one thing I do favor Intel for is the motherboard chipsets, which AMD does not produce nor desire to produce. I think the AMD CPUs are fine, but the VIA chipsets are crap, and have been for quite some time. Intel on the other hand hasn't released any 'dud' chipsets. They're all very stable and without compatibility issues.

Maybe that's not such a big deal with the nVidia chipsets out there, but I personally haven't used those so can't really comment.

[theReal]

The one thing I do favor Intel for is the motherboard chipsets, which AMD does not produce nor desire to produce.They did once with the AMD760 chipset!
I still have an AMD761 board (that is AMD 760 Northbridge and VIA Southbridge) and it's a very good and stable board. The 760 Northbridge was better than VIA's KT266, only the KT266A was a little faster, but I heard a lot of complaints about stability problems that the AMD760 never had. AMD should really make their own chipsets more often.