g222leav

Hey guys...

My desktop's PSU suddenly crapped out 3 weeks ago, i replaced the psu and it worked until last night...thinking it was the psu again, i got a new one, but now the thing won't even power up. I tried to reconnect everything and the motherboard started smoking!

Is it time to get/build a new system? I have NOT kept up with industry changes and have no idea what is a good chipset/mobo/etc...

my system was an old AMD Barton 3200 (i think), all the drives were IDE....i think all drives are now SATA...argh

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Devhux

What were you doing? You weren't supposed to let the magic smoke out!

(All joking aside, smoke from a motherboard isn't good).

Right now, the Intel Core 2 processors are generally your best bet. In terms of chipsets, the X38 & new P45 chipsets are probably the best ones to look for (both of these use DDR2 memory, which is far more affordable than DDR3).

Basically, you'll need:

- Processor
- Motherboard
- RAM (your system probably uses DDR memory -- not DDR2)
- Hard Drive (if you have one IDE drive you'll be OK, since all motherboards have one IDE port still)
- Video Card (if your system uses AGP for video, you'll need a new PCI-Express card).

As far as recommendations, here goes (bear in mind I don't know what types of applications you run, but just thinking of a good balance between price/performance):

Processor: I'd go with an Intel Core 2 E8400 or similar, unless you plan to do some video encoding and such (at that point, the Q6600 or Q9350 would be a good starting point). Not many applications take advantage of a quad-core, but you'll definitely notice a difference with a dual-core system over what you have now.

Motherboard: If you're looking for a basic board, I'd take a look at Gigabyte's boards. They've really become quite popular these days, and generally don't suffer from the reliability issues that ASUS' budget boards have as of late (I know a fair number of people who've RMA'd ASUS boards recently).

Video Card: If you plan to play some recent games, I'd look for something like the nVidia 8800GT. Reasonably-priced, yet still offers fairly good performance in most games today.

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g222leav

thanx for the advice...i stopped by frys today and was amazed at how obesolete and outdated my build from 5 years ago was...

Jeffbx

My recommendation -

If you're gaming or doing any other high end work, go to the Dell outlet & get a basic Precision Workstation T3400 - they start out around $500-600, and 1) the build quality of the case & PS are amazing; 2) they are highly upgradable; 3) they use Intel boards with dual video card support; and 4) they come standard with 3 years of next day, on site service.

Upgrade the components you need to & away you go. If you compare the cost of one of these vs. buying the same components & building yourself, you'll find that the cost is the same or less, and you just can't go wrong with the 3 years of next day on site service.

If you just need a basic machine, I'd recommend an Inspiron 530 desktop or an Inspiron 1525 laptop from the Home/Home Office outlet. Keep in mind that these only come with 1 year warranty - mail in for the laptop & on site for the desktop.