The PC Specs thread

Mine's not far off yours Greg! The ram and video card always let me down though.

Athlon 2800xp
Soundblaster PCI 128 (bah! Not quite a Live)
512 meg ram
ATI Radeon 9600se (this is shite, but slightly better than the Geforce 5200 I had in there before)
MSI motherboard AGP!

It's self built, but in a nasty nokia-esque case which only cost about £20. Will overheat daily, or make troubling noises.

5200 is an EVUL pile of shit. well done for canning it. my old ti4200 pissed all over it, performance-wise. i'll never understand that.

lets see if i can remember, it was all built by myself back in the day:
processor - AMD 850
graphics - nvidia erm, geforce 2 i think
soundblaster 64
128mb ram
30gb hard drive
AGP motherboard
Win98/SuSe linux 9.3

clearly not a games machine anymore.

I need a new everything.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/67909965/m/844003222631

(from the order confirmation email on 19 June 2003 from MagicMicro.com)
Intel P4 Barebone Black Neon #6 (533 FSB, DDR333, 8x AGP & more)
* Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz (478-Pin) 512k, 533 BUS
* EuMax Socket 478 Intel P4 fan
* ECS L4S8A2 P4(478) DDR333, 8xAGP, Sound, Lan, ATA133, USB 2.0, IEEE
* 512Mb PC 2700 DDR333
* ATI Radeon 9500Pro 128MB DDR 8X AGP dual head, tv out
* AC 97 32 BIT Full Duplex sound card (onboard)
* 10/100 Network card adapter (onboard)
* EverCase Mid Tower ATX Case 300W w/ Front USB Black
* Case Fan 80 mm DC fan

This was $608 back then(plus $33 shipping).

-2 60 Gig HDs, 1 with an added 20 Gig Ubuntu Linux partition
-The Logitech 2.1 speaker set up. Sounds just great for what i need it.
-I've since added another 512Mb thing of Ram.

Everything will be fine for another year or more, excent that i'll need a bigger HD and a new graphics card. Maybe someday when i'm not actually losing money. Oh, and I should probably get a DVD drive one of these years.

athlon 64 3000+ or 3200+, can't remember
512 RAM
Radeon 7000 AGP (didn't even make the list!)
the cheapest soundcard i could find that had a toslink optical out because i actually have a good stereo system
vintage 1999 Gateway 15" monitor capable of 1280x768 interlaced only!! (i run it at 1024 b/c i don't like headaches)
self-built

few hundred bucks for a good video card, better monitor, and double the RAM and it would be a decent machine, i reckon

I've got 1.5 GB RAM
440 GB hard drive space (80 of which is prob. on its last legs)
Epox 8RDA3+ mobo

The next thing I'm going to do is get a xp3000+ or 3200+ because I have fast RAM and it pains me to run the FSB at 133mhz when I could have it at 400mhz.

Just overclock the FSB and lower the multiplier.

Remember, dont buy some POS from DELL etc. Build your own rig.
Mine only cost me aound $1,400AU 2 months ago and it ROCKS!

Intel Pentium 4 Processor 630
3.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2Mb Cache
1024Mb DDR RAM
250Gb SATA Hard Disk Drive
256Mb ATI Radeon iterX550HM Graphics

that graphics card look pointless though, what's a decent 3d one?

The graphics card is actually pretty smart, my 3D games are running like shit off a shovel so that's something.

now go get CS:Sauce so you can roffle around with leet [ILX] tags. and then i can shoot you.

I have read up on other sites and ram seems particularly easy, simply a case of slotting it into place but i am very untrustworthy of other interweb places plus having the inside of a pc paranoia.

It's easy, if you know what you're doing, the hard part is knowing what you need to buy.

What do you have currently, and what do you want to buy?

My graphics card is a 9200SE 128MB Radeon, it is kind of the pits as far as 128 MB pc's go. I would like 1024 MB ram but am open to more and just any graphics card that can hadnle modern games, i don't really play fps at all which i know is the most graphical instensive but i'd still like something decent. Ram is a much higher priority though. The rest of my pc is this:

3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4
Fujitsu Siemens D1625 motherboard (i think that's the motherboard)
Soundmax Digital Audio Soundcard
75 GB hard drive

Arstechnica and it's forums are a goldmine of helpful knowledgeable people.

Memory Type DDR SDRAM
Memory Speed PC2700 (166 MHz)

I tried Crucial.Org and they have no idea what the hell my fujitsu-siemens pc is. So basically i get 512 DDR PC2700 or can i get the 3200? My chipset is the intel i865PE if that makes a difference. I tried looking at all my fujitsu-siemens documents and websites but they are pretty damn useless to be honest.

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939)
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 Ultra (Socket 939) Motherboard
OcUK Value 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory
CoolerMaster Ammo 533 Aluminum (No PSU) - Silver
Akasa Ultra Quiet 400W Paxpower PSU

Total £515.36

i already have 120gb HDD and DVD drive, and i'll rip out my 6800GT and put it in this new machine. should be quite nippy!

they're pretty hardy, tbh. i am a complete lamefist with a heatsink and have applied what i would consider to be FAR too much pressure to a number of processors and i've never broken one yet!

Also, all mobos now have ZIF sockets, which have the little lever thingee:

http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/ProcessorSocket370.jpg

You raise the lever, gently place the CPU, and then lower it back. Easy.

Tho I do remember bending the pins trying to upgrade my 1993 vintage PC to a 486-66 some years back.

and 2Gb SOUNDS good. duh.

i bought myself a starter pc to mess around with, upgrade, play a few older games on

first thing i did - took fans out and a good clean all around

second thing i did- cleaned off old thermal paste and reapplied

now it doesnt switch on

i am reminding myself that this is exactly what i bought it for and that it was a piece of junk anyway

it now switches on intermittently and sometimes even has a video output