My friend is wanting to upgrade his processor, motherboard and ram.

I aint looked in to anything like this for years now, so what do you guys recommend?

Hes got Ã,£180-ish......

I was thinking around a Athlon64 3800 Chip (and a heatsink and fan)
1Gb 400Mhz RAM
and a motherboard to suit the above......

Also, looking on tekheads, why does the AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 90nm (939 Pin) - Retail with Fan only get 2 stars, but the AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm 1MB L2 (939 Pin) - Retail with Fan **Special Offer**  gets 4 stars??

Cheers

For example, would this be ok:

   
604587 AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 90nm (939 Pin) - Retail with Fan In stock: 7 Ã,£67.95 Ã,£67.95
 
605820 Asus A8V-X AGP (Socket 939) Motherboard In stock: 6 Ã,£34.95 Ã,£34.95
 
603103 Corsair ValueSelect 512MB PC3200 DDR400 In stock: 3 Ã,£26.90 Ã,£53.80  (2 sticks)

Thats far from a bad system i would say

This is actually interesting as only a few days ago i was thinking the exact same regarding a decently cheap CPU/Mobo/RAM... after the major money wastage of my previous PC setup (ie...P4E Prescott and 9800XT), i am seriously in the i cant afford expensive parts any more or ITS JUST A PC category, which is sad lol

I would be most happy with the three parts you gave as an example, jsut maybe the RAM i would consider upping a little bit, but thats only because i havent ever used the Value range from Corsair.

Best of luck

Cheers mate.

Wouldnt you trust the ram? Maybe for reliabilty you mean??

Nothing wrong with ValueSelect. Unless you intend on serious overclocking dont throw your money away on expensive RAM.

Na, hes just a young lad working his ass off over the summer to upgrade his puter.

Think that will do then......wil be ordering shortly

Sorry for the late reply chris, but i second what clocked said about  the RAM, it should be fine for non-OCing purposes, which is in general good for all computing needs (games, apps etc..)

I blew alot of money on my last Corsair DDR, and ive learnt from that now, i went on for weeks and weeks about how im going to OC my ram, and i never did for 2 years now, and i dont think i will tbh. LOL

PS - Anybody know whats the fastest DDR available nowadays... is it 667Mhz?

Cheers

Cool, cheers mate

Will prolly deffo order that now

never underestimate Corsair ValueSelect, while not the equal of the big brands it can often be pushed surprisingly far, just cant count on massive clocks as you can with some of the others.

Cool,    Well there wont be the slightest bit of overclocking, so it will be spot on