Heres the problem, I am going to upgrade my kit, at the moment I have Gigabyte 6bx MoBo and P3 450, want to change this to possibly XP2000+ or 2100+ but,

What MoBo do I go for ? It must have 5 PCI slots. Is it worth going for a Raid card (Whats the difference anyway ).

Also will a new PSU be worth getting?

I will be looking at about £250 - £300 for the lot (incl DDR mem)

As you may have guessed this is my first attempt at upgrading (apart from adding more ram and HDD, changing video card etc), but hey we all gotta start somewhere.

Any advice greatfully recvd.

I donno if I have a strong recommendation on motherboard other than I like Asus or MSI boards. Frankly there are a lot of other really good brands as well. I'd probably go with a KT400 based board.

Yes on the power supply, and buy a good brand like Enermax, and at least 350 watts. Your old Power supply might work, but it may also cause some frustrating instability problems with an XP chip.

You should be able to buy a good board, processor, and 256 meg of good DDR memory (Corsair is a great brand) for about that price.

Scout
700 Mflops in SETI!

Cheers for that, its so damn confusing all the options out there.

If your old psu is 300w I would try it on the new system before assuming it won't work. A good 300w psu is plenty for most systems but it has to be good and you don't know if its good until you stress it. If your old one is less than 300w then I recommend you get a new one of 350w or higher like scout said.

If you only use one hard drive, raid is not usable. RAID formats data across multiple drives such that data is recoverable in the case one of the drives fail. My experience is that drives don't fail enough to merit a raid set up plus I back up data manually over a network anyway.

If you are on a P3 450 right now and are planning on transferring that old hard drive to the new system the speed of the hard drive will become a weak link on the new system. A 7200rpm drive is nice.

On the mobo I would only say that the VIA chipset has given me plenty of headaches (mobos with it usually have a "v" in their name). I have heard bad things about combo mobos that can take either ddr or sdram but have no experience.

You will find the memory FAQ on the THG memory board helpful.

John A

I agree with that, I'va had my share of troubles with VIA chipsets. They are all solved for me because my board is getting older and they fixed the bugs over time with bios and driver updates. VIA boards sometimes have a "V" in the name (asus boards do, also gigabyte) and sometimes it's "KT" like SOYO...

I also Agree, with the Power supply statement and The Hard drive... I tend to save on CPU and VGA and pay more on RAM, HD, a Big 19 or 21 inch screen or two.

but that's me. YOU find how to match your needs. If our experience help, then its great.

The best thing I have had (except cofee and sex) is the Nforce with or without integrated VGA. With Nforce2 coming out, you might even get it for peanuts.

Seagate HDs being about the most reliable and silent you can find, even if they have average performances, you might put one on your list it's a safe buy.