what to buy

[puppydog2]

I have a disabled daughter who is in graduate school. I need to upgrade my computer (desktop) to accomadate her and get her off my computer. She will be running dragon naturally speaking, word, power point and painter. She is not a power user but needs memory, cpu power and motherboard to do the job. I am going to upgrade maybe in november to maybe a very high end laptop. For now I need a computer that will do the job for a reasonable amount of money so hence the upgrade. Which, cpu/motherboard/memory should I get. I will continue to use the graphics card because it is still very good for her needs. I need to do this now!

 

[o1die]

What case do you have? Some cases, such as Dell, won't work easily with a non-Dell motherboard. I recommend antec cases as their power supplies are above average, and priced around $75 with a 300-350w power supply. For the cpu-board, checkout the retail boxed venice athlon 64 3000 (around $146 at newegg) with asrock dual sata2 uli 1695 motherboard ($68 at newegg-read the article today at anandtech), which works with either an agp or pci-e video card. For memory, pqi is what I use. And newegg has the pqi power series pc3200 512 meg sticks for $39.95 on sale. Two will run fine for dual channel mode. If you prefer Intel, the socket 775 cpus will work fine, but run warmer than amd. Be sure your video card is at least agp 4x. Some older agp 2x cards won't work with newer boards.

 

[Crashman]

I'd probably start off with a Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE motherboard and AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice core CPU.

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[marneus]

if you're going to continue with the current graphics card, whichever board you get, make sure it has the same slot...

AMD Processor is best 'bang per buck'
Motherboard, check the chipset
AGP Slot -Nforce3/K8T800Pro chipsets (MIS/Epox shortlist)
PCIE Slot -Nforce4/K8T890/AtiXpress chipsets (Abit/Asus shortlist)
1 Gig of DDR-RAM

that is my suggestion...

Trust me I know what I'm doing... ooops, grab the cat...