Looking for suggestions for upgrading my 4-year old system

Hi everyone,

I'll get straight to the point. And thanks for all the help in advance.

I'd like to be able to run some newer games, not with all the eye candy but decently. I'm looking to spend under $1,000 (CDN, but that doesn't really matter with the exchange rate nowadays, does it :sarcastic: hehe)

The following was bought for $810, October 2004.

Motherboard: P4PE-2X, with 2 RAM Slots, 4 PCI, 4 hard drive bays

CPU: Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz

Case: Antec Sonata

Power supply (from case's manual, not confirmed): Antec TruePower ATX12V, max 360W
20-pin main power
6-pin aux power
4-pin +12V power for motherboard
5 to 7 4-pin peripheral power connectors
2 to 3 4-pin floppy power for drives

RAM: 1280 MB
256 MB, DDR 333 PC 2700
1024 MB, DDR - don't know other details (not included in original purchase)

Hard drives:
WD800BB-55JKA0 (80.03 GB)
WD1600JB-75GVC0 (160.00 GB) (not included in original purchase)

Video card: ATI Radeon 9600 PRO (128 MB DDR)

Sound: SoundMAX Integrated Audio

A really bad mouse that needs replacing

Monitor, speakers, headphones, keyboard all good.

Thank you!

Are you looking to build your own? Or do you want a pre-built system? Either way you will be able to make a huge leap.

well, your Mobo is going to make it hard for you to just upgrade a few pieces in your system. Here is basically an entire new build for under $1000 that would give you good performance on any current game:

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L $90

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 $190

EVGA 512-P3-N841-AR GeForce 8800GTS $220 (before $30 MIR)

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W $110 (before $20MIR)

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $80

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB $75 (your old drives are IDE)

SAMSUNG DVD-RW $30 (i imagine your old one is IDE, or just a CD-RW)

I'm not sure about your case. If its ATX, it will work fine with the new mobo and components. Therefore I didnt add in a new case.


This brings you to about $800. Well below your budget and plenty of power for what it sounds like you want to do. You may consider using some of the extra money on a nice new monitor, mouse, CPU cooler, etc... Have fun

The only other suggestion I would make would be this motherboard instead----------------------------------->$79.00-BIOSTAR

Some reasons are that it does deal with a newer chipset that includes PCIe 2.0 and Intel ICH10. It has two more sata ports

It also natively supports 1600FSB and is already a proven OCing monster.


It does have 6 channel for audio compared to 8 channel with GB board.....but I would think you could look past that.

another thing l may suggest is a video card. either the hd3870 if you can get it for under 150 or a hd4850 which is a monster of a card for around 200

nice board. i missed that one!