Upgrading CPU & Motherboard

Well hawk22, M2 is coming but as Christer rightly said that you should be prepared for a long wait. Don't plan for vaporware. 939 is the way to go (in India socket 754 is also available but that is also on its last legs).

 

Thank you Guy’s, it seems the Jury has passed a unanimous decision. I have been looking around some other Forums for similar questions and there the answers are the same. AMD 939 is the go.
At the moment I am tempted to invest also in a new Case, but maybe it has to wait.
This could be it:
Mobo FOXCONN 6150 K8MA-8EKRS / AMD 939 3700 CPU / 1024 MB Corsair PC 3200 / $ AU 637.- From my local PC Store.
Any low cost improvements??
Hawk22

 

Hi Christer, Yes very nice case indeed $AU 185.- Have you had any experience with that 6150 chip like the one on the Foxconn, ASUS, and some other 939 boards with the onboard video I am not a gamer so fast 3D is of no importance to me, I do Photo editing and photo scanning.
Hawk22

 

I'd like to add my endorsement for the Sonata II case. Like all Antec's, build quality is top notch. Removable drive cage, and side mount hard drive racks make adding drives a snap.

The front air filter is a little hard to access (you have to do it from the bottom) but, it works!

It supports 120mm fans - always the better choice as they move massive amounts of air, but at a lower RPM, therefore are quieter.

And the case just plain looks great.

Also consider the upside down Antec P180 - the power supply is on the bottom and has its own air channel - so heat from the PS never enters the motherboard cavity.

 

Hi, and thanks to all of you. Can I just elaborate a little bit further here. I have no knowledge at all regarding Sata Drives. All the 939 boards that looked into including the" FOXCONN 6150K8MA-8EKRS" that I fancy have the ability to connect several Sata Drives. I intend to again have 2 HD’s 40 gig & 80 gig should I have both on IDE or can you have one Sata and one IDE as I will buy a new 80 gig drive.
The 40 gig I have is ATA100 and on witch drive should then be the OS, XP Pro SP2.
A partition on the 40 or a partition on the new 80 IDE or Sata.
This a completely new field for me so please be patient.
Thanks
Hawk22

 

If you have the ability to use SATA drives, and you have to buy new drives, then I would go with SATA drives. They have a wider data path so they are faster. Plus, the cables are small so they restrict air flow less. And each SATA cable only supports 1 drive so you don't have to fiddle with Master/Slave settings or worry about the position on the cable.

If it were me setting it up, I would install the IDE40 as your boot drive and use it to install Windows and all your hardware drivers there.

On the SATA drive, I would partition into 2 partitions - one D: say 70G and other E: as 10G. All as NTFS drives. I would immediately put a fixed size Page File on E:.

Then I would move My Documents to E: and save every data file somewhere under My Documents - for easy backup.

Then install all your applications onto D.

Your boot times may be a little slow - but I would rather have slow boots but better overall performance after that. If your boot drive crashes, all your critical data will still be safe on E.

 

Thank you Bill, This advice sounds great to me very tidy.
What is the correct way to move my Documents. As Windows always sticks it into C so windows won't get confused.
Unrelated to this my own setup, I am triyng to help a Friend get his system up and running again. It is a older Win 98 that is just about totally goofed up.
Pent III 660 or something like that, but with only 14 gig HD. He wants to hang on to it for another year or two. He has given me a new 80 gig HD and a Pioneer 110D DVD Burner, but would like to keep Photos and a few files that are on the old 14 gig drive.His 98 is that bad most of the time it will refuse to boot exept in safe mode. My thought was to diconnect the 14 install the 80 and install XP onto that Drive and then reconnect the 14 as a slave for him to copy the files he wants, he has no burner installed at present so I can't copy the Files. Now I am unsure as to what I should do I have a Sony CD burner I could install that and attempt to copy if it boots into Windows or do it after the new drive and XP is installed, but how will I hide the 98 OS as we do not want Dual boot. After the files are copied we will Format.
Also can the 98 Fat 32 Files be copied over to XP's NTFS.
If I install XP onto the 80 gig Master and the old 14 Slave will Windows look at that OS that is installed there the drive has no partitions.
Looking forward to a positive solution
thanks
hawk22

 

hawk22, create a new folder on your the new drive where you are planning to shift your documents. On the desktop, right click on 'My Documents'->Properties->Move->browse to the new location. That's it.

You can safely install WinXP on the new drive after disconnectng the old drive. Windows is not going to dual boot When WinXP is up & running and you have created proper users, attach the old drive as slave,log into the user where you want to transfer the data. Now you can copy the data to the new hard drive. Or better still, let the data be on the old hard disk,delete Windows, Program Files directories and covert it to NTFS [take a backup before deleting anything from the old hard disk].

That's it. Hope it helps.

 

rsinfo thank you very much, just one thing Delete Windows first and then convert to NTFS I would think.
So this is the place from where you can delete a unused OS.
I was always under the opinion that you had to format to get rid of it, as you can not remove it from Ad-Remove in Control Panel. Or hide it.
Well thanks for that
hawk22

 

Well, not quite. What that does is create a new My Documents folder in the new location and then it tells Windows (through the Registry) of the new location. All your old documents are still located under the old My Documents folder. Simply drag and drop all your docs into your new folder, then delete the old folder and you should be good to go.

 

I stand corrected. You have to move the files manually.

 

Well Christer, I agree with you that converting FAT32 to NTFS is an afterthought and may result in less than optimum result. But for a layman, its a better option and offers much better recovery & security than plain old FAT32 partitions.

 

Well, now I am confused as I was certain I was right - I am still certain it used to be that way on prior Windows versions as I remember being pleased that TweakUI came out and made it easy to change those "Special Folders" - it still does, BTW, as I note it still says, "Changing the location of a special folder will not move the files to the new location."

Looks like TweakUI needs some tweaking to catch up to the OS it is suppose to tweak!

 

Well, no matter which way works, I would sure back up My Documents first - just in case.

 

Thank you again, I will work on this this weekend so I will report back on how it went.
I would like some pointers in regards to partitions on the new 80 gig.
the old 14 will be slave and as it is such a small drive I dont think there is any point at all in changing that, but the 80 I thought I give C:\ 20gig but not sure with the other 60.
Your opinions are as always much appreciated.
hawk22