Technical Help and suggestion needed

Computer Forum General Hardware
1

A friend of mine has asked me to buy a motherboard and Graphics Card (PCIe) for him. His buget is USD400, but if I could get a better product for an extra 30-50 bucks, then I think he would go for it, otherwise 400 is the limit.

His current PC specs are as follow:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ S939
Gigabyte K8NS Ultra nforce 3 Mobo
ATi radeon 9800 pro 128mb
74GB Raptor
Onboard Sound
420W Raidmax PSu
Came with the Scorpio casing

(He wants to migrate go a PCIe Mobo. Now u tell me which one is better SLI or CrossFire???)

Moreover, I think I would have to install the mobo for him because Geek Squad asked for $120. The problem is that I have installed almost every part of a PC except a mobo. So, any tutorial type of thing would be very helpful. Are there any jumper settings to set during installation of a new mobo?

  Any suggestions regarding both issues are welcome. Thank you.
2

Woah, that PSU is junk. He should consider spending part of that $400/US on a better PSU before adding a high-end video card. Otherwise the whole rig might go poof.

3

Yeah he was complaining that even with these specs his systems sometimes starts but nothing displays on the monitor.
I will keep a note of that,. thanks,..

4

Installing a motherboard isn’t difficult, ATX cases have holes in them where you put brass standoffs, which lift the motherboard off the conductive metal, you put the standoffs into the holes where the holes on the mobo/case align. Once yo put the motherboard on you put screws through the mobo holes into the standoffs to hold it in place.

Of course you’ll probably need to take CD/HD out as well as all components on the mobo.

As for jumpers, check the motherboard manual to see if there are any jumpers needed to be adjusted. Most of the time the default jumpers will work, and modern motherboards don’t have a lot at all.

5

Good to hear about the jumpers,..
What about the processor. Since the processor and the heat sink are already attached, I just have to take it out from that old mobo and place it in the new one. Or, I would have to take the heat sink out, and use the paste to place it back on the processor in the new mobo.

6

i think tht it would be best if you were to re-apply the paste when you put the processor on the new motherboard

7

While you’re at it, you might as well clean off the paste on the heatsink when you remove it and apply a think layer of the paste to the CPU.

8

Okay, having PCIe doesn’t mean you’ll have SLI or Crossfire. While the DFI RD200X LanParty is out, there’s a lot of bugs, and isn’t suggested. The Asus A8R-MVP should be available soon, but even then, the current implementation of Crossfire isn’t quite up to par with nVidia’s SLI.
$400 is kinda tight, but let’s see what we can come up with for non-SLI and a budget SLI system.

Parts, all pricing off Newegg:

Fortron AX450-PN for $49.90 While I love my Enermax, Fortron is a good choice for quality on a budget. Dual 12V with 18A on each, so you should have enough juice to go with that. Now, if you want an SLI rig…well, that’s probably going to be a little tough with a $400 budget (but it can probably be done with 2 GeForce 6600’s and some inexpensive SLI board from ECS or Chaintech).

Motherboards:
On the low-end, you could go for this Chaintech VNF4 Ultra at $68, or
opt for the DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D for $128, pariticularly if a lot of tweaking is desired…provided you don’t have cheap-o DDR.

Now, if you want to go SLI, you can’t go wrong with the granddaddy SLI board, the Asus A8N-SLI for $122. This is the most mature SLI board out there, and probably your best choice. There are cheaper boards out there, but I’m unsure of some of the manufacturers or the good boards (like the ECS KN1 SLI) are too close in price to the A8N-SLI.

Video Cards:

Non-SLI:
Going with a $200 budget (splurge more on an GeForce 6800 if you spend less on the Motherboard and PSU), a Radeon X800GTO like this Power Color X800GT Xtreme 256MB unit would give a major kick in the pants.

If you want to flirt with SLI, you could go with a pair of eVGA GeForce 6600 256MB PCIe cards running at $104 each (the AOpen 6600 is cheaper at $99, but only features 128MB of RAM) If you wanted to go to a 6600GT, you could do that for a little extra. The card’s start about $125, depending on the maufacturer and RAM amounts, and most top out in price around $150-160.

9

Well, considering the options, I think it would be best if he collected a little more money and try to increase his budget. I say this because the main reason for his upgrade is to play newer games like FEAR, QUAKE4 etc, and for this I would not recommend anything less than an SLI capable Mobo.
Moreover, I think the upgrade would make some sense if he could atleast get a 6800GT.
No use if you need to upgrade again after like 4-6 months. Moreover, except for the GF and PSu all of his other components are pretty decent (RAM is 2x512 Kingston HyperX DDR400).