upgrade or buy new PC???

[horseplay]

hello everyone! first post here.

anyway wanting to know if i should upgrade my pc or buy a new one. heres what i got

pentium3 866 mghz
500+ mb ram (upgraded)
XP pro (upgraded)
20GB 7200 rpm ultra ATA hard drive
fat32
sound blaster audioPCI 128D
32 MB nvdia GeForce2 MX

ok heres my delima,

my hardrive is pretty much maxed (i need more)
i like to play PC games and would like to upgrade video card
maybe sound card if that helps any.
would like to have something faster to keep up with the games and so on
wouldnt mind getting a flat screen monitor
would like to have a DVD RW drive
and a few other things that i cant think of off hand


well what would be more practical to do in my situation? being that id want to upgrade so much would it be more benificial to just get a whole new computer? and from there maybe add some of my existing ram to it? another words what would you do if money was kinda tight.

[S.D.Willie]

you have to see what your motherboard can support as far as upgrading your cpu. id guess you cant go too much higher so id def. say go for a new system and if you are going to build it its even better as you can do what you need to do WHEN you can.

but.........i will say you can upgrade ram and your video card on an older system but you eventaully will really wanna do the system board, cpu, and ram in one shot. i did the same when i went from a p III 700 to an athlon xp 2600 (2.06ghz)

check out the prices at newegg.com as everyone here praises them (myself included)

flat screens are nice but i hear they arent as great for gaming and are damn expensive (but id take one if i had the money to burn)

you can get a western digital 7200 40gig drive for around 60 bucks and a soundblaster live 5.1 for about 35 to replace some stuff you have as well.

welcome to techimo

[Bill in SD, CA]

Welcome to TechIMO!

Based on your specs in the long run a new system sounds better. However, you'll get by cheaper with a HDD and video upgrade. My son uses the same PIII for gaming and his only complaint is he wants my Radeon video card. Fat chance. :rolleyes

The monitor has nothing to do with your choice of upgrade or new system. That's just an add on either way.

Bill

[tgxiii]

From what it sounds, all the parts you're planning to upgrade all consist of a new computer except for a motherboard. It might be better to just build a whole new one. That way, you'll have the benefits of newer technology, like SATA, RAID, AGP 8x, dual channel RAM, hyper-threading, and other goodies depending on what motherboard you'll buy.

[tgxiii]

horseplay, where do you live? Currently, here in the Los Angeles metropolitan area Fry's has had a lot of great deals on hard drives.

$90 for a Western Digital 80 GB hard drive 8 MB buffer with a $40 mail-in-rebate.
$120 for a Maxtor 160 GB hard drive 8 MB buffer with a $40 mail-in-rebate.

Or, if you don't live near a Fry's, check out www.outpost.com and see if they have current deals.

Also, I agree with S.D. Willie when it comes to the monitor. You mentioned you like to game with your PC. The flat screens don't fare well compared to CRTs when it comes to gaming because of the refresh rate. You might want to consider that when buying a new monitor.

[Bill in SD, CA]

I have no complaints with my NEC 17" flat screen on the gaming refresh rate issue.

Bill

[DanGrease]

I would say to get a new system or if you want to spend less bucks go for a newer Video Card, since you mentioned that you are going to play games an you want good performance. You will need to check though on your motherboard if you have a AGP slot, since most old machines doesnt have just like my one. I really dont play games so I have an average PCI Video Card since I dont have an AGP slot and I have a PIII 1.4 GHZ, very similar to yours. IMO you should spend some bucks on a new system since newer games are needing more of your machine nowadays. As for the LCD Monitor, get a normal CRT since most people recommend them for games and LCD Monitors are hell expensive, at least for me. I would recommend you to build your own system, custom built, but if you are still not sure or you just dont know how to you might want to buy from a brand. I have many brands that I can recommend you in terms of prebuilt systems, but if you really want the best game prebuilt system out there today on the market, you just need to check out Alienware.com , IMO they make the best prebuilt gaming system for a reasonable price. An other brand in terms of gaming performance is Voodoo (voodoo.com) Hope this helps and good luck!

dan

[dr_roberts49]

Sounds like you need everything, so building a new one or buyin one sounds best. I had a P3 800, but I had already upgraded my video and sound cards, and had 2 60 GB 7200 rpm hard drives already onboard. All I had to buy was a new mobo, P4 2.4c and 2 sticks of DDR3200 ram. Cost me under $400 from Newegg. Threw it all together, and I have a nice humming machine.

Robert

[horseplay]

hey just wanted to thank all of you for the replies. i think i got it all figured out now (i think, lol). just went out today and bought a 120 GB hard drive from best buy ( i only had just over 200mb left, lol). i guess what im going to do is just get a video and sound card as well in the near future. and from there ill have a newer system built using some of my original hardware if its still any good.

as for building a newer system, is this something i could do myself being that ive never done it before? if so is their a web site with a tutorial or something else that could guide me in the right direction in doing so?

this site seems pretty cool, wish i new about long ago when i had some difficulties with my computing experiences, lol.

again thanks guys. Horseplay.

[shahani]

Upgrading is more fun.