living room computer

Post Reply New Topic

hey i am currently using a Pentium 3 computer for my living room computer. the specs are

Pentium 3 running at 1ghz
384mb of 133mhz fsb ram
20gb hard drive
100gb hard drive (for video)
40gb hard drive (for music)

Video Card is ATI RAGE 128 pro (has Composite video in and out along with s-video and vga)

i have windows 2000 installed on it but if i install windows xp some of the ATI rage programs wont work well. but if i keep windows 2000 on it it will run fine.

so i decided to change to some better hardware.


shoudl i change the computer to a newer one? or just upgrade the video card to a ATI all in wonder?

EDIT: i forgot to mention that my motherboard is a Asus Cusl2

i would get a new one

Wow, yeah, that computer is extremely out-dated, just get a whole new computer.

i dont think i can get a new one. i am looking to upgrade only the board, processor, and sound card. i dont use it for intensive stuff just playing videos, music, and also recording gameplay from gamecube or tv shows.

what parts you recommend then?

That's basically a new computer. A new motherboard will want SATA hard drives as well, which means those hard drives will have to go. I don't see the point in keeping windows 2000 either, since it's not supported anymore. We could help you more if we had a working budget.

Well, you'd have to get new RAM to go with your motherboard too. Tomorrow I can find good parts for you, unless someone beats me, but it's extremely late here, so I'm going to bed soon. If you have a limited budget, how much money do we have to work with?

@Biokinetica, that is not necessarily true, many mobos still have IDE.

i do need all three hard drives. so if you can help me find a older board like maybe a socket 478 board with two ide's then taht would work. but i also need a ATI all in wonder HD. or some card that do teh same things my ATI Rage 128 pro did.

Ok, I've found all the parts you'll need. The processor was the hardest; they don't make ones that low-end new anymore, it's either refurbished or nothing. The motherboard has two IDE ports, so you can keep your HDDs, and the video card has s-video, composite, and VGA. You need a new card because your old one uses AGP, which is obsolete, so you'll need a new PCI card.

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157216

Processor:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId ... =P43200478

Video card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814139174

RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145098

Sub-total: ~$130

Dunbots your list is incomplete. Where is the heatsink for that processor? For the price you'd pay for a heatsink and that processor (and shipping) you'd be better off buying a microatx socket AM3 motherboard and the bottom of the line processor for it. MX4000s are absolute pieces of s**t, he should at least get a 6200, the price isn't that much higher if at all. If he went to AM3 he could get the same amount of RAM for $10 less

I'll work on my own shopping list in a few minutes.

Ah yeah true, whoops.

the processor i got covered but the video card.....not really what i need.

i need composite in and composite out. if it comes iwth s-video and/or vga thats a plus.

heat sink i still need.

Covered? No really you can't possibly even take advantage of a decent video card with a 1ghz P3. My dual core socket AM2 2.4ghz processor can hardly feed my 7950GT, it's the only reason I refuse to upgrade to a GTX 460.

All In Wonders blow, I have heard a ridiculous amount of complaints about them in recent years, maybe they weren't that bad in the 9X00 series but these days you'd be better off just going on newegg and looking for a VIVO video card and if you need a TV tuner and all that jazz buy a hauppage, sabrent or whatever. Actually I just found out that they have only made 2 all in wonders in the last 5 years, even ATI/AMD doesn't like them!

If you want to get the most for your money

CPU - 2.7ghz single core - $38 shipped (total at this point: $38 )
http://www.newegg.com/Store/BrandSubCategory.aspx?Brand=1028&SubCategory=343&name=AMD-Processors-Desktops&Order=PRICE

Motherboard is a bit trickier to shop for you wouldn't even need a video card because a 4250 IGP would do just fine for what you appear to be using it for...but I can't find one with composite in/out. Might be able to get a cable or a cheap add-in card to supplement that. I'm thinking but I'm not positive this is the best motherboard for you.

Motherboard - 880G Chipset $65 shipped (total at this point: $108)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138283

Ram - 2gb dual channel DDR3 1066
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820134793

Total comes to $134, dunbot's setup is $130 without shipping and is slower and lacks the heatsink. This setup is also made from very current parts, so availability of parts to upgrade should be good for a couple years

Really you should check your hard drives, if you have 5400rpm drives it's time to upgrade to a sata drive, I just bought a 500gb 7200rpm Western Digital hard drive for $40 during a newegg special.

Now I've also taken the liberty to try and get you your damn composite crap. You can get an HDMI to composite cable for like $10 on google shopping. That covers out. As far as in is concerned you would need

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815276002

Hard to say, if you had a 64 bit processor I'd say go up to windows 7 home premium or professional but if you're sticking with a Pentium 4 you would have to use a 32 bit version of the same OS, which negates some of the benefits of 7 (being able to use 4gbs ram for one). Windows XP is stuck on DirectX 9.0C though so you won't be able to take advantage of DirectX 10 or 11 which I guess wouldn't be a big deal if you stick with the MX4000. Which come to think of it probably won't be any good for blu-ray/H.264 playback. I don't even know if you can find drivers for an MX4000 on 7. So really if you stick with a variation of dunbot's setup you have no choice but to deal with XP, my setup fully supports 7.

Wireless keyboard and mouse $32 shipped
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126041

The problem with your motherboard though Pistonhead, is that it only supports up to 2 IDE HDDs, while the OP has 3, so he'd have to replace one with a SATA or something.

Pistonhead's setup doesn't have any s-video or composite, but you could possibly use something like this to compensate for that. I'm not positive you can though, I've never used anything for capturing video from a TV. I will admit that his setup is more modern though.

Read up, HDMI to composite out and a tv tuner for composite in. 90% of the time when I've used s-video it's been for composite out so it's really a moot point.

Yes 2 ide. In other words he could keep the 100gb and the 40gb and get a sata optical drive. He could keep the 100gb and keep it cleaner and use ide for optical and hard drive. It's not a problem, it just requires some workarounds. Workarounds could also include anything from burning more more movies to disk, buying external hard drive boxes that convert IDE to USB, etc.

Fact is there are very few reasons to NOT modernize your computer. Things I paid $200 for 6 years ago are still worth $100 new and there are $30 alternatives out there. His IDE hard drives are probably old and at any moment could fail and wipe out his picture, video and music archives but for $40 he might be able to get everything on a faster drive with a 5 year warranty on it, not that the warranty would save his data in a failure but because he can say with some certainty that nothing is going to happen to his hard drive. I've never had a hard drive fail on me but that's not to say it doesn't happen...there is a reason RAID 1 exists.