Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Building a new comp on a low budget

I know some of you out there are complete techs when it comes to PCs, so I want your opinion on this system as an upgrade.

Barebones Tower, Intel T socket
+
Intel Celeron 3.2ghz, 533 mhz bus
+
Kingston 1GB ram single
+
some old goodies come along from old comp.
- 20GB 7200RPM Seagate HD <--7 years old, no problems upgraded from 98 to 2000 to XP Pro, has billions of files and fonts office XP Pro, software alone is worth keeping drive
- 256mb PCI 5200 GeForce FX - overclocked edition (4 months old,updated from a 32mb Synergy II<- old school)


This will replace my current Intel 478 board with a 1.6ghz P4 with a 400mhz bus and 512mb ram, which is going on its fifth year.

Oh and total cost of upgrade shipped is 247 dollars. So I double my processor and double ram + new tower.

My current PC is just becoming out dated and lags nicely when I have enough running. Also heading into a science major I'm probably going to need a faster comp. Especially if my school starts to provide licensing of CAD and Mathmatica to students (which they want to).

So let me know what you think.

Also another plus on this system is I can drop in a faster processor later with a 800mhz bus and another gb of ram.

GOD, DO NOT build a computer with a Celeron... thats just asking for troubles. a GOOD budget processor is an Athlon Sempron 64. or a lower Athlon 64... Maybe a 3000+ That is TONS better then any celeron will ever be. Otherwise you have the right idea...

i just built mine with a athlon 64 3200+ for quite cheap and im really satisfied with it

I would have dropped the P4 in it but the processor jumps to over 200 dollars. It kinda just kills the whole saving alot of money route.

Plus the board is upgradedable to a p4 later on. So like 2 or 3 years from now I can go back and buy a dual core P4 for the same price as the celeron.

Edit:

Plus I'm not really gonna go into any hard core gaming. I would just like to use aim, yahoo messager, my firewall, virus protection and some other program without lag.

It just is a pita when I try to use word and pictures and the damn thing lags because I'll have music playing in the background and other apps going.

Oh and next year the dorms are going to a complete network for everyone and not individual cable modems like we have now. So I want my firewall and virus scan up constantly. Right now I shut them off if the system lags.

Even though thats all you want to do, I would still agree NO CELERON!!! They area poorly made processor IMHO and would go with a more inexpensive AMD before I would ever consider a Celeron.

I dunno I've used a alot of PC's with celerons in them. And my roommate has had his dell (celeron inside) for over a year with no problems.

I've always gone with the Intel product, but its always been the pentium.

What are the issues with a Celeron? besides they are cheap because they do less steps in the cycle then the pentium?

Another AMD builder/user here... AMD budget processors > intel budget processors.

i've never reccomended intel procs when building computers... unless you're going with on-board graphics, then intell boards tend to have more options

I was doing a quick overview of a few of the AMD processors, but all of them are slower then the celeron!?!

Some have slightly bigger L2's but I'm not seeing where the great leap of performance is.