Heh. Nobody caught that I said I was going to ask three questions, but forgot to add the third one: What OS should I put on this thing? I have 2 copies of XP and one of Vista on hand, and would rather not buy a new one (although I have friends urging me to suck it up and buy a copy of Win7). For that reason, the lack of DX10 or DX11 is irrelevant to me...
Thanks for the responses and discussion so far!
My budget is.....as little as it is humanely possible for me to pay. I'm on a tight single parent budget. I only need something that will run an MMO and minecraft well, and I wouldn't mind being able to play the FPS single player games from 2009 onward (used games from my friends). I am currently running the MMO on an AMD 3500+ single core and a HD4830 video card. It runs the instances well, but really lags at the load screens and in busy public areas. It handles Minecraft pretty well.
Here's what I have on hand to work with. I've been raiding my friends' "closet-ware" for bits and pieces.
Cases: A Coolermaster Centurion 534, circa 2006. Has two 120mm case fans in it, rear and side.
A Tsunami Gemini II, about the same age. Has spots for 4 fans, but the smaller noisy ones. Would rather not use it.
Some generic ATX case, no identifying marks, with a 120mm rear fan in it, and an odd plastic funnel-type thing in it, on hinges. It swings away to allow access to the motherboard after the side cover is off and appears to exist to funnel air directly onto the CPU? It doesn't have a fan in the video card area, but I'm handy with a drill and tin snips and can soon fix that. There is room for another 120mm fan to be bodged onto the side.
Motherboard: Asus P5Q, LGA775, full ATX. Has a single PCI-e x16. I noticed that the cpu power socket has 8 pins, with 4 currently blocked off with a black rubber plug and only a standard 4 pin connector in it? What's that about? For a better processor, will I need a PS with an 8 pin cpu plug?
Processor: Just bought a Q9550 off eBay, $100 shipped. Should be here in a week or so.
Ram: an assortment of DDR2, given to me and scavenged from other systems. PC2-4200 and PC2-5300, Crucial Rendition, Hynix, Samsung, and "no-name". Should be able to get 4 gigs into it, and am watching for some 2GB sticks for cheap/free to try and get it to 8gig.
Video Card: Probably going to put the aforementioned HD4830 in it, but also have a HD6570 on hand, plus an 8600GT. After 6 months or so, depending on performance and the $$ situation, may upgrade to whatever is cheap and a few spots above it on the Toms Hardware video card chart.
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 250GB SATA
About 3 older 80GB drives, one SATA rest IDE
Optical drives: a bunch of CD and DVD drives/burners. Not even sure of what's all there.
Power Supply: Have a couple Coolermaster eXtreme powers, one 430w and one 550w. Both are a few years old, and only the 550w has a pci-e power plug. Thinking about buying an XFX 550w 80 plus bronze certified. Also have a couple 250/300/350w supplies, but really aren't worth mentioning...
As you can see, 2009 is calling and would like it's hardware back. But it's the best I can do. Whadya think, can I scrape together a frankenstien-like budget gamer out of this mess? And have enough left over for my boy to have a dedicated Minecraft machine? I could put an AMD6000+ dual core (eBay, $25) into the AM2 socket motherboard that I still have (MSI K9VGM-V)....
Thanks for helping a guy out. One day when the situation changes, I want to drop a grand on a proper rig. Just not now.
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