upgrade help

[monkfeesh]

i bought a novatech PC last February, with a Foxconn 915MO7 motherboard and 1GB of RAM (i believe its 2x512MB)

It is a 3.2GHz P4.

I would like to make some upgrades to it.

my motherboard booklet says i have:

"Four 184-pin DIMM slots that support up to 4GB system memory using unbuffered non-ECC DDR 333/400 DIMMs"

now, in english please, as ive never done an upgrade, which RAM would be recommended to buy, and would i be silly in buying 2x1GB rams to put in my last 2 slots??? is 3GB RAM worth having? i do a fair bit of video encoding.

also i currently have 1 200GB HDD.....would an extra internal HDD be too much? or should i go for an external one?

also i would like to do a complete format of the computer, make it fresh and brand new, get rid of all unwanted things that on the HDD...got any good links to websites that help with doing this.

thanks in advance for any advice given.

Cheers

Jon

[Danno]

hello,

i think the memory used in the pc will be 400mhz pc3200 ddr.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prod ... z1p0s0n0m1 (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a540x1y0z1p0s0n0m1)

please can you let me know the serial number from the back of the pc so i can check our build list.

there will be space inside the pc for another hard drive if you wanted to add one.

if the system came with windows pre-installed if you boot to your recovery cd it will automatically wipe the hard drive and install a fresh copy of windows. if you installed windows on the pc a very helpful site is http://www.windowsreinstall.com.

[Taxation]

i would get ocz memory
intel systems love it

[monkfeesh]

please can you let me know the serial number from the back of the pc so i can check our build list.



I dug out the invoice, and the prodcut code was PC-0695T with a description of "Nero Pro Nvidia P4 3.2 200GB 102"

i will look at the serial number tommorrow.

thanks for all the other help too guys.

[Danno]

i have checked the build list for the pc and it is 400mhz ddr thats been used in the system.

[Nox]

now, in english please, as ive never done an upgrade, which RAM would be recommended to buy, and would i be silly in buying 2x1GB rams to put in my last 2 slots??? is 3GB RAM worth having? i do a fair bit of video encoding.
up

In English, as requested: get the 2x1GB sticks, it is probably not worth having now, but will be if you are looking at vista, certainly.

Nox

[Taxation]

basically you can naver have enough RAM
and vista needs at least 1GB of RAM just to run

[Nox]

I heard it was 512MB

Just like XP is 128?

Nox

[Taxation]

na, if you want all the features to work properly then you will need 1GB, 512 is if you are on the ultimate budget

[djgandy]

if you do a lot of video editing get as much ram as you can
2G should be enough but there is no harm in 3.
If by encoding you mean ripping a dvd then you don't need as much.

Don't worry about vista, by the time it is functional and worth having you'll probably have bought a new pc.

[monkfeesh]

cheers all :)


i had been looking at AMD dual core, theres a nice one in this months novatech catalogue....amd dual core 4400, 2gb ram, 512mb gfx, 500gb....for the small price of £1200!!!!

did look at the barebone version, think it went to 4200 only though, but harvesting my parts from this machine, and buying the odd new bits i think it could be worth it.

my mate got me an NEC LabelFlash drive for my b'day, but havent decided wot im gonna do with it yet!!


oh decisions, decisions!!!

[monkfeesh]

ok, update. 2 questions i have...

opened up my PC today, and had a look at the parts inside.

as for the RAM, on my Motherboard, the slots for the RAM are coloured both yellow and blue, in alternate order (yellow | blue | yellow | blue)....i have 2 512mb RAM installed on the yellow slots.
Now my question is, am i ok to leave these both in the yellow slots, and install my 2 new RAM into the blue slots?


secondly, would an external hdd (like the 300gb MAXTOR one in the current top selling lines http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?MAX-U15E30) be sufficient purely for a backup hard drive? i was thinking of using it purely for music and my movies only? would it be worth it? coz when i looked inside i noticed i would have to source a power supply to a new internal one, and i dont fancy messing with the cables!!

thanks once again in advance

jon