Its just for general surfing, media, very little gaming, some coding and photoshop too.

I currently have some kind of ATI Radeon, not sure what model. Im work right now so Ill check tonight.

Both packages mentioned by Beaker and Bacon sound ideal for your needs.

You dont need a monster rig, and those specs would be fine. The only thing to consider is if you want to start playing the latest cutting edge games you will want to beef up the graphics, but if not those systems would make tidy workhorses.

The leap from Athlon to dual core CPUs is massive, you really wont need to worry about all round performance with those setups.

Whenever Ive done that type of upgrade Ive always gone into device manager and uninstalled everything before installing the new hardware (or transplanting the HDD) and it usually goes smoothly. Have you tried going into safe mode?

A quick google suggests http://msn-and-yahoo-message-archive-viewer.download-381-21896.datapicks.com/

No idea what its like, dont use any text chat programs these days.

Seeing as fuman has finished with this thread I hope he doesnt mind me hijacking it.

Im looking for a new setup thats as low cost as possible but capable of playing the new EVE Online client, which basically needs a dx 9.0c graphics card. A better graphics card would help I suppose.

Basically mATX would be decent if the perfomance doesnt suffer due to the size. I could go for ATX. Also, I have a Tagan PSU, must be around 350W or so.

Would I need a new PSU?

I have a budget of around £400 at the very max, as close to £300 as possible would be good.

I have a budget of around £400 at the very max, as close to £300 as possible would be good.

As cost appears to be the driving factor Im suggesting the following, should also allow you to play other newer games OK as well.  Its all from Scan because thats just who i use, again, only picked one place because if cost is an issue you dont want to be shelling out tens of pounds on P&P on top of the cost of parts ::


Asus M2A-VM AMD 690G :: Again, i serious recommend this board if you want something well featured and are on a budget.  Was £20 more 6 months agao when i got mine!

250Gb Seagate
You dont save enough by lowering the drive capacity these days.

4400+ Energy Efficient
This is where there is way more scope to play around with stuff.


2x1Gb generic RAM
its cheap, and it works as well as "cheap" corsair etc.  Doesnt have the same warranties, and wont take overclocking though.  Pay more if you feel youll need to overclock.

512Mb Sapphire 1950Pro
Cheap and has plenty of poke for what you need.  You might want to consider something else, but if you only need Dx9 compatability then this will do fine.

Cheapy Scan Keyboad, Mouse, Case and PSU kit
Again, im thinking cheap here.

Black Samsung Dual Layer DVD Writer
Avoid the real cheapy no-brand DVD Writers, they get really fussy with what media they use, and the Optiarc ones are crap.  Ive seen them die in under 6 months with moderate usage.


Total cost :: £301.80 including VAT and P&P.

OK this is really weird. Ive just tried to do a repair with the new kit and after it copied the setup files it restarted as usual. Then not long after that it switched itself off. Now when I turn it on it switches itself off again after a bit. I think it might be the PSU!! Fortunately I dont mind that Ive had to upgrade but this definitely sounds like a PSU issue right?