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Thread: need assistance improving my pc.

  1. #1
    niroshido Guest

    need assistance improving my pc.

    hi, im new i got a few questions i wish to get answered as soon as possible.

    I have a dell XPS 710 which i had bought in 2007, the specs were as followed:
    300GB HDD ( i believe a SATA-300) (it is a WD caviar Blue) with Windows XP (in spite of win VISTA being out i held back since i heard about compatability issues)
    Quad core 2 processor ( i don't have a specific processor type)
    1 GB ram
    2 x 256mb GeForce 8600GTS in SLI
    1 SoundBlaster Audigy sound card.

    The pc was bought for a few purposes but mainly because i was going to college and i needed a machine to do assignments on. Since i lived about 80km away from the family home when i finished up college for the year the tendancy was to put the pc into the back of the car and fasten it down on the seat with a belt. Needless to say everytime trips were made with the pc, the pc encountered errors.

    The first problem was a damaged/corrupt OS file and as mentioned above the OS was XP the DVD drive for some reason did not like the OS recovery CD forcing me to get the OS installed by "other" means (via another computer through a techie).

    The next trip with the pc resulted in 1 of the 2 graphics cards dieing (the fan works but it was not recognised on the pc so simply the pc ended up using the single remaining graphics card. By this time the warrenty expired.

    Now last week the last graphics card died, or so i suspect. The pc was turned on one morning and the monitor remained in standby as if it was not receiving a signal, the fan however was working so i suspected the GPU was buggered. Outside of the graphics card the HDD was making a lot of noise and found at times when the HDD did cycles the pc became un-responsive.

    this leads me to my question, i need to upgrade but i am on an extremely tight budget, i would upgrade my pc totally if i had the money but i don't so i need to replace components.

    i suspect the HDD needs to be replaced should i aim for the SSD'd even though the SATA cables are most likely SATA-300's ?

    if the HDD gets replaced which version of windows 7 should i go for? (keep in mind a tight budget)

    graphics cards..... i am on a budget but i suspect that i will need a decent g-card however... the slot on the mobo is a PCI-E x16 can i use a pci-e 2.0 card on the pci-e x16 slot and if so how much am i losing out on in terms of performance and usability?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Posts
    677

    Re: need assistance improving my pc.

    SSD's are costly. And also you will get less choice for size. Though they are reliable but mostly recommended for laptops. I advice you to go for SATA drives. They are cheap and reliable. For Gpu I will recommend you to go for any low range card. If you are using any graphic related software, games etc then a low range card is more than enough. That depends on your motherboard configuration and your need. And for more better performance any mid range gpu will do. Zotac has some low range DDR2 cards, and for mid range go for Nvidia or ATI.

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