Abit IP35 Pro & Dual core E2140?

[Jimbolarue]

Hello everyone, I'm new here. I'm Jimbo from the UK. I hope you experts can help me with upgrading my old Soltek SL-75FRV & AMD Athlon 1.8 Gz.

I'm looking at the Abit IP35 Pro Mobo and the Intel Dual core E2140.

Do you think the pro version is overkill? Bearing in mind I can hopefully upgrade the chip at a later date.

I presently have 2 EIDE hard drives installed within the machine and 2 x external USB EIDE drives. Can I still use some of these?
Would I need a new SATA drive to run Windows XP operating system?

My existing PSU unit is only 250 watts, so I think I'll need to upgrade this also?

I would like to install 2 gig of ram.

Would my graphics card (Radeon 9600) be ok with this setup?

I need my system for video editing mainly.

I hope these are not too many questions for my first post.

I thank you all in anticipation.

Jimbo

[essjay]

Personally I think there are better boards out there for the money.

I would go for the following:

Motherboard Asus P5k Premium
Memory Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800)

You don't say what optical drives you have got, bear this in mind as most boards these days only come with 1 IDE port

You could use your usb drives no problem.

Hard Drive500 Gb Samsung HD501LJ Spinpoint T, SATA300

You will definatly have to replace your graphics card as these new boards use PCI-e

Don't know what budget you have in mind for this.


PSU 520W Corsair HX Series Modular

hope this helps

[Jimbolarue]

Thanks essjay,

I am prepared to buy a new SATA drive as well.

I have a Liteon DVDRW-LH-181H & a BenQ DW1655.

I want to spend abot £200 - £250.

How much would a decent graphics card cost?

Jimbo

[Jimbolarue]

essjay,

I've done a calculation as follows:

Your recommendations

Motherboard Asus P5k Premium £125.40
Memory Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800) £46.73
Hard Drive500 Gb Samsung HD501LJ Spinpoint T, SATA300 £58.75
PSU 520W Corsair HX Series Modular £64.52

Total: £295.40
I think I can stretch to this.

This lot would be good for video editing?

I can use my Liteon DVDRW-LH-181H
and my 350 EIDE drive, yes?

Does this Mobo have a floppy drive interface?

Thanks again, mate. Much appreciated.

Jimbo

[MikeK]

Asrock do a Motherboard with both AGP and PCIe slots onboard (4CoreDual-SATA2) - though you can use only one or the other, it would allow to to keep your 9600 for now - it's perfectly adequate for video editing.
You'd be able to use both your existing EIDE hard drives too as well as your EIDE DVDRW drives.

I'd go for an E2180 (2x2GHz) instead of the E2140 (2x1.6GHz) - it's only about £12 more, but is a fair bit faster, and easily overclocks stably quite a bit higher.

BTW - in your £295 calculation, you appear to have forgotten to count in a CPU!

Personally I wouldn't spend anything like £125 on the motherboard,and then pair it with a £45 budget CPU - for the same £170 (in fact quite a bit less) you could have a motherboard and CPU pairing which is much faster.
I'm assuming from your original choice of an E2140 CPU, that you are on a budget.

I'd go for a quality PSU, but these can be had for such a system for the £30-50 mark, from the likes of Tagan, Seasonic etc
No argument with the memory!

[booyaka]

kind of agree with the above - why pay £125 for a motherboard when you can get a decent one for £75.

Corsair HX Series 520W Modular PSU - £53.91
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC with LIFETIME WARRANTY £42.54
Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Socket 775 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard £62.97
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 2GHz Socket 775 800MHz FSB L2 1MB Cache Retail Box Processor - £45.81
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache -£53.49

above prices exclude vat.

Total: £314.94 inc shipping and vat.

Would still need to consider a newer gfx card as your older on wouldn't work with the motherboard but hey - what are budgets for!!!

from ebuyer.

[jimborae]

Originally Posted by booyaka

kind of agree with the above - why pay £125 for a motherboard when you can get a decent one for £75.

Agreed, plus I've had two duff Abit IP35 boards in a row from different suppliers.

But rather than the GA-P35C DS3R how about the GA-P35 DS3R, ok he won't be able to upgrade to DDR3 in future. But by the time DDR3 is affordable he'll need a new cpu and board anyway. The P35 DS3R is slightly cheaper £69, has more sata ports and overclocks better due to having superior components on it.

Also for graphics cards, sounds like he is'nt gaming much so a second hand PCI-E card may be the way to go. Something like a 7800gt, 7900gt or 7900GS can be had very cheaply these days and will still give good frame rates. Alternatively if there's no gaming to be done some something a lot cheaper will suffice.

[booyaka]

yeah - anything out of the gigabyte range have always been excellent for me and they clock well.

Yeah anything like a 7800GT/X1900XT etc could be had for about £70 2nd hand and will still murder most games/apps etc for a while to come.

[Jimbolarue]

Hey, thank you all guys!!

This is really good info and you've given me a lot to think about. Seems I had it not quite right.

You're right MikeK, I did forget the psu, thanks!

I certainly won't pay so much for a mobo, now.

Thank you all gain - you are the Tops !!

Jimbo