PCI Express HELP, have I missed so much? Urgency

OK, we have a solution: a mass overhaul! I'm going for a new mobo AND processor. and I'm defecting to AMD! :) goodbye Intel, you're too bloody complicated!
Gonna get a 3200+ processor and a (Micro) mobo to take it (which will also have PCI-E)
And THEN I can think about upgrading my GPU.
What do y'all think?
 
^that sounds like a plan. for the money you would have spent upgrading your current, you can buy a newer, more compatible, and faster setup
 
publiusdiamond said:
OK, we have a solution: a mass overhaul! I'm going for a new mobo AND processor. and I'm defecting to AMD! :) goodbye Intel, you're too bloody complicated!
Gonna get a 3200+ processor and a (Micro) mobo to take it (which will also have PCI-E)
And THEN I can think about upgrading my GPU.
What do y'all think?
Click to expand...

are you getting a new case too? I would suggest doing that, seeing emachine cases are tiny and can get very cramped, plus a new case isn't that expensive, and would allow you to get a full size atx motherboard.
 
I may also do that. Birthday coming up soon, Money time :) Hopefully I can get a new case too. Any recommendations? Bear in mind I'm in the UK and don't wanna spend TOO much on a case.
 
OK new problem. I don't think my disk drive and media card reader will fit a 5.25 drive bay as they are sort of custom, unique emachines ones. So I think I'm just confined to this tower, which isn't really a problem I suppose. I just have to find a Micro-ATX mobo which is AMD and has PCI-E slots. Shouldn't be a problem, no? Can I just find any old micro-atx AMD mobo with compatible processor and everything else in my PC (disk drives, HD, PSU etc) to work fine with it?
 
Yeah, that will be no problem at all for you. I am currently in the building process myself, and to be honest...for the price I want to pay (~$60-80usd), my top picks motherboard-wise are micro-atx anyway.

As far as case goes, you can obviously either get one with a power supply included, or get each separately. Pretty sure you can get a decent enough power supply for $35, and cases can be very cheap. If you're looking for a case with the power supply included, probably the best quality and deal is to go with an Antec. You can find cheaper cases as well with decent enough psu's if you look around. Most psu's that come with cases aren't very good at all however. In case you don't know, watts aren't the only important thing to look for in a psu. One of if not the most important thing is how many amps are on the +12v rail. I would say go 18 amps bare minimum (and plan to upgrade sometime in the future), with mid 20's being fine and closer to 30 and over great.

I realize you live in the UK and can't order from Newegg.com, but you could probably find good use of their great search functions to narrow down what exact components you want. Also, unlike some sites, Newegg likes to put a pic of it's psu specs on the site. Good luck with your new build/project, it should be fun. Btw, IMO a great choice to switch to AMD and go with mostly if not all a full system. It will be cheaper for you for equivalent components and Intel isn't the "one and only King" anymore.

*Edit* If you wanted to switch to a whole new tower, I wouldn't let my optical drives/floppy drive (cost) get in the way of that. They are very cheap compared to everything thing you will have to buy. Of course, it's your choice and either way would work well.
 
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Thank you very much rahving. It's all set now, all I have to do is buy my motherboard and processor. Depending on how much funding I can get to go into the project, I may or may not go for a completely new tower and drive bays. Which should be great, because then I pretty much would have 2 computers!
 
It depends at the moment but it will probably be around £350-£400 if I'm lucky AND hard working :) I think that's around $600-$650USD but I'm not sure. It might be more.
 
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