PC upgrade help please

[Col]

Hello Geeks

I'm looking to upgrade my trusty old PC which I built way back in 2005 and things have moved on a lot in those eight years.

The old spec is;

Athlon 64 3500+ plus an Asus motherboard plus ram plus an old g-force graphics card. These are junk now as I'm getting cmos checksum errors.

The other part of the system which I intend to keep is / are;

x2 sata hdds configured in a Raid 0 array giving 305gb storage.
Tagen (high spec / quality) PSU chucking out 360w
An quality ATX form midi tower case.

I'm looking at getting a motherboard bundle plus a graphics card and use the old sata hdds in a Raid 0 array running off the 360w psu.

Questions are;

1, have hdds evolved or are sata hdds still relevant? I know the 300gb capacity of the two I've got in a Raid 0 config is nothing these days. The laptop I'm using has more!

2, Is a Raid 0 array still relevant, do current single hdds provide the same performance? I'd rather maintain the old hdds for now.

3, Are current motherboard / cpu / graphics cards more power hungry than the 360w my psu can provide?

4, I love win XP and don't want to splash out on win7/8, will there be driver support for xp on the new hardware?

5, Can you recommend me a motherboard / cpu / ram bundle and a graphics card? My budget is about £250. I know it is low but I'd like some reasonable gaming performace.

6, Is there anything else I've overlooked?


Cheers.

[jubbly]

1. sata's are still the norm for hdds so will be fine.

2 your drives in raid 0 may well be slower than a new single hard drive in terms of data transfer, spin speed is still 5200-7200rpm generaly.

3 Depends more performance/cores = more power though a3500+ would be a hungry cpu so i would expect a modern 4 core to consume no more power, maybe less.

4 i would guess xp would still be fine.

5 look at www.scan.co.uk/todayonly for some good bundle deals.

maybe need a new keyboard mouse, doubt you will find ps2 connectors now though if your already on usb that should be fine

good luck!

[Col]

Cheers Jubbly,

I've just spent far too much upgrading, got;

AMD FX-6350 processor on a Gigabyte AM3+ compatible motherboard
8gb of DDR 1333mhz ram
240gb 840 Samsung solid state hard drive
AMD 7770 1gb graphics card
800w certified '80' modular power supply.
x3 120mm case fans
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo CPU Cooler (for a bit of over clocking once things have burnt in he he)
Still running the old Sata 1 HDD's un-raided as backup / document drives.
Still using the old Antec case
Still using the old keyboard
Still using optical microsoft mouse which I love.

And...

Windows 8

The machine is not cutting edge but still a flier. Win8 is also very good once you learn how to use it.

Having the SSD, it boots in about 10 seconds !

[jubbly]

Cool sounds like a nice spec

[Kevin Schepers]

Booting in 10 sec ??? Could been faster if u bought a Intel I7 on a MSI mobo LOL , jk ...

Nice gear!

[Col]

Booting in 10 sec ??? Could been faster if u bought a Intel I7 on a MSI mobo LOL , jk ...

Nice gear!

I know but at twice the price.

And to be honest, I only ever play spider solitaire on it.

[Joe80Cabriolet]

Cheers Jubbly,

I've just spent far too much upgrading, got;

AMD FX-6350 processor on a Gigabyte AM3+ compatible motherboard
8gb of DDR 1333mhz ram
240gb 840 Samsung solid state hard drive
AMD 7770 1gb graphics card
800w certified '80' modular power supply.
x3 120mm case fans
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo CPU Cooler (for a bit of over clocking once things have burnt in he he)
Still running the old Sata 1 HDD's un-raided as backup / document drives.
Still using the old Antec case
Still using the old keyboard
Still using optical microsoft mouse which I love.

And...

Windows 8

The machine is not cutting edge but still a flier. Win8 is also very good once you learn how to use it.

Having the SSD, it boots in about 10 seconds !

Oh no, not windows 8!!!
Nontheless, there are some nice specs in there.

[stevegrass777]

Ditch windows for Ubuntu or Linux mint,you won't look back,no viruses all the usual office software loaded as standard,I even run etka on virtual box.Windows is getting a bit of a joke with all the viruses.

[pixel8]

good call on that SSD+HDD setup - should make a whopping big difference. nice.