$300-$500 system suggestions

[joecool]

i need an upgrade, bad. i've got $300-$500 to spend. i don't need an optical drive and can use my old case but i'll need a new psu, mobo, cpu, ram, and hd. i'm thinking something w/on-board graphics and i'll get a decent card later, if i decide i need it. i haven't done serious gaming in years. :-( i'm cheap so i'll probably just keep using winxp - don't see a compelling reason to upgrade to win7, unless i could get a real deal on it.

the rig will be used for surfing, quicken, ms office, and some light photo and video editing.

you guys have always steered me well before ... what do you recommend right now?

 

[mfenn]

i need an upgrade, bad. i've got $300-$500 to spend. i don't need an optical drive and can use my old case but i'll need a new psu, mobo, cpu, ram, and hd. i'm thinking something w/on-board graphics and i'll get a decent card later, if i decide i need it. i haven't done serious gaming in years. :-( i'm cheap so i'll probably just keep using winxp - don't see a compelling reason to upgrade to win7, unless i could get a real deal on it.

the rig will be used for surfing, quicken, ms office, and some light photo and video editing.

you guys have always steered me well before ... what do you recommend right now?

You could go with something like this:

Athlon II X2 245 $59
ASRock 880GMH/USB3 $85
G.Skill DDR3 1333 4GB $94
Samsung F3 500GB $55
Corsair 400CX $50
Total $343 - $20 rebates = $323

I think making the jump to Windows 7 is worth it, especially since that build has 4GB of RAM.
Windows 7 HP 64-bit $95
Total w/ OS $438 - 20 rebates = $428

If you want to spend closer to $400 ($500 w/ OS), you can swap the CPU for the Athlon II X4 635 @ $100

 

[joecool]

thanks, that looks interesting. def. gives me a starting point! some additional requirements occurred to me after my first post:

need LOTS of usb ports - ideally 8 on the back, plus headers for more i can attach to the ports on my case.
like to have 2 ide ports - 1 for my two optical drives, and one for my old pata drive that i'm not ready to ditch yet.
if there is a good sata optical drive out there, that supports lightscribe, that would be interesting.
need firewire for my digicam.

 

[mfenn]

thanks, that looks interesting. def. gives me a starting point! some additional requirements occurred to me after my first post:

need LOTS of usb ports - ideally 8 on the back, plus headers for more i can attach to the ports on my case.
like to have 2 ide ports - 1 for my two optical drives, and one for my old pata drive that i'm not ready to ditch yet.
if there is a good sata optical drive out there, that supports lightscribe, that would be interesting.
need firewire for my digicam.

Well, you might want to just get a new optical drive then; Lightscribe doesn't add too much to the cost these days (this Samsung is only $22. You aren't going to find a modern motherboard with 2 IDE ports. In fact, I just looked, and Newegg sells a grand total of 3, all of which are based on ancient terrible VIA chipsets.

Take a look at the Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H. It's $5 more and doesn't have USB 3.0, but it does have Firewire, 6 USB ports on the back, and 3 USB headers. Going up to 8 USB ports on the back puts you at over $100 for the mobo. You can buy one of these brackets to get a bunch more USB ports on the back.

 

[joecool]

anybody else? how about a recommendation on an intel system, just to be "fair and balanced"? ;-) how do intel and amd compare in mips/$ these days anyway?

 

[jaydee]

One IDE port will support two IDE devices (master/slave), albiet on the same channel. Why do you need two IDE optical drives?

Edit: If you're going budget and starting from scratch, AMD is the only way to go. mfenn's got you a good start, the thing you might want to ask your self is how well threaded your apps are. You can go 2, 3, or 4 cores with about linear costs. There's also Phenom II X2 555 with decent chance of unlocking two cores for only about $95. Even if it doesn't unlock, you could overclock the other two cores to be just about the fastest per-core chip on the market.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Just to throw this out there : http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2085394

That gets you a decently powerful system under $500 that you can game on. The only thing is it doesn't have the large number of USB ports that you were looking for.

 

[betasub]

If OP really needs to use 2 PATA optical + one PATA HDD, then put the old (& possibly slow) HDD on an adaptor (IDE->SATA) or in a caddy (USB/eSATA).

 

[joecool]

i need two optical drives 'cause one is a slot load that i refuse to part with - but it doesn't write, just read. the other is a full-on writer that supports all formats plus lightscribe. since i've got a bunch of unused lightscribe discs, if i get a new (sata) optical drive i'd like it to support that format.

i think i should prolly just jettison the old pata drive. sata drives are cheap enough, no reason to slow the whole hd subsystem down for one crummy drive. right now i've got the pata drive, a really old sata drive, and a new sata 500 gigger (i think it's sata2 ... guess i should check!). the 500 gigger backs up data for the whole house. i'd still like to have two other drives in the box - one for os's (xp, linux, win7 if i go there), and one for my data plus a partition for a backup os if the main drive fails. i'm thinking a pair of 250 gigs aughtta do. your thoughts/recommendations?

 

[joecool]

Just to throw this out there : http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2085394

That gets you a decently powerful system under $500 that you can game on. The only thing is it doesn't have the large number of USB ports that you were looking for.

that looks like a nice system and if i was smart i'd probably go that route but ... i've NEVER had an off-the shelf rig and i hate to start now. plus, i'm kinda proud of the way i pimped out my current case ... i really don't wanna replace it. tried to find a pic and couldn't ... now i'm gonna have to take one when i get home!

 

[mfenn]

i think i should prolly just jettison the old pata drive. sata drives are cheap enough, no reason to slow the whole hd subsystem down for one crummy drive. right now i've got the pata drive, a really old sata drive, and a new sata 500 gigger (i think it's sata2 ... guess i should check!). the 500 gigger backs up data for the whole house. i'd still like to have two other drives in the box - one for os's (xp, linux, win7 if i go there), and one for my data plus a partition for a backup os if the main drive fails. i'm thinking a pair of 250 gigs aughtta do. your thoughts/recommendations?

250GB drives would be fine, but they are horrendous in terms of cost per gig. For example, the cheapest decent 250GB drive is $45, which is $0.18/GB. By comparison, you can get a GOOD 500GB drive (Samsung F3) for $55 which is $0.11/GB. If you don't need but 250GB, you can always short-stroke the drives to make them faster.

 

[jaydee]

Check the hot deal forums. $49 for WD Black 640GB right now. A little slower than the F3, but bigger, cheaper and 5 year warranty.

 

[xSauronx]

Check the hot deal forums. $49 for WD Black 640GB right now. A little slower than the F3, but bigger, cheaper and 5 year warranty.

FWIW I have two of these in my quad core box, one for the OS and one for storage and Ive been pretty pleased with them. gaming/vms/general usage machine