I have a Compaq from 2004. It has a Prescott P4 (no HT). I added a gig of PC3200 (400) memory for a total of 1.5gb. I have a couple SATA drives, DVD/RW, 1394 ports, etc. Basically the PC is fine except I've recently started video editing (Premiere 1.5) and gaming (FPS) and I know the CPU is bottom of the barrel. It's always sucked at encoding/transcoding.

Newegg has Opteron 165's (w/good stepping?)for $155 and a Biostar micro ATX motherboard ($70) that is supposed to be quite good (overclockability, 4 dimms, PCI-e). Free shipping on both.

Opty
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103588
Mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138264


But I've never built a PC, no less overclocked one. I've added memory and hard drives, swapped in DVD/RW's, and set up a router. I planned on building a E6300 machine with some tax money next year, but this is pretty much the best value upgrade I can do. Especially if I can sell my mobo/P4 for $50 or so.

How hard is it to install a CPU and mobo? Overclocking? Will I just plug my RAM and HDDs in?

The Opteron 165 is a good option since you wish to keep your existing DDR RAM. I'm not at all familiar with Biostar mobos so I can't comment on the overclockability - perhaps someone else in the know can help you out with that one.

I should mention that you can still go C2D with DDR RAM. The most popular 'hybrid' C2D mobo (DDR1/2 and AGP/PCI-E supported) seems to be the Asrock DualVSTA. It's around $55 I think, so well within your budget.

It's not the best overclocking board, it tends to top out at around 300MHz FSB so realistically you're only looking at 2.1GHz from an E6300. At such speeds it's about equivalent to a 2.6GHz Opteron in gaming and premiere according to the THG CPU charts.

If you are willing to wait until January 21st for your purchase, then the E4300 would probably be the most 'ideal' chip for your situation. With a 9x multiplier and stock 200MHz quad pumped (800MHz effective) FSB, you can expect to clock it up to 2.7GHz on the DualVSTA, which would obviously blow both the E6300 and Opteron setups away.

Is this the board you thinking of?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813157092

Micro ATX is needed to keep the case I'm using now. That board also only has 2 DDR Dimms and I have 4 sticks (2x256, 2x 512), and it's AGP and I just ordered a PCI-e card.

Thanks for mentioning the CPU charts, as I've only looked at the VGA charts (I didn't even realize there's CPU charts ).

Do you have a link for the E4300? Is it going to be the "new" Pentium D805?

The Biostar Tforce is a solid overclocker

there's some good info here:

http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/si [...] forum;f=53

I've been having trouble getting over ~241 FSB with my X2 4200+ though. Dont know if its an inherent limitation on the board - I tried it with G. Skill 2 gig kits that are supposed to overclock well and Mushkin Redline (wont supply the necessary vdimm voltage for that).

It's a solid board no doubt, but not an "extreme" overclocker.

I see, well, with your specific needs in mind I think you're better off going the Opteron 165 path. I'm not sure how dual channel is managed with different size RAM modules though, I've always used identical size pairs of RAM with dual channel.

The E4300 looks like being 'the' ultimate overclocking chip of 2007 but it's no good if you can't fit it into your case , and as far as I know there aren't any mATX C2D mobos that meet your needs.

Dual-channel runs in pairs. So I have the 2x256mb in matching dimms and the 2x512 in the other pair of dimm slots. That's why mobos with 4 dimms are usually two different colors.