A $500 Upgrade

[MrTangix]

alright, here's the scoop:
I recently acquired $500.00 USD for a scholarship essay and have decided to use the money to benefit such a noble cause as upgrading my outdated box (for that sweet college ethernet connection ):

Monitor: 17 in. Plug and Play
Video Adapter: 3dfx Voodoo Banshee
Processor: Pentium II 400Mhz
Sound: SoundBlaster AWE 64
Case: Its beige, old, and ugly.
Motherboard: *shrug* but its probably obsolete
Memory: 192 SDRAM
OS: Windows 2000 Professional 5.0 (Build #2195)
Drives: 40 GB Maxtor HD, 40x CD-ROM, 16x10x40x CD-RW, 3.5 Floppy

Question: What should I upgrade? The only things I don't want to change are my monitor, CD-RW drive, and CD-ROM drive. Any suggestions that would help me avoid blowing away all my money would be greatly appreciated.

PS. DON'T LAUGH. :angry: It used to be top-of-the-line... ages ago.

 

[2bzy4ne1]

Try to get an athlon xp , a good mobo with at least 256 mb ddr ram, a geforce3 ti 200, and a nice case with at least 350W PSU. This is all you should need. Use the drives and monitor from your old computer and it should work good. I can get these all for around $500. :thumbsup:

 

[gokuss4]

ok first go to www.pricewatch.com enter "ASUStek Athlon XP 2000 with cpu, fan" in the motherboard combos category. and get the first one on the list (an A7S333 SiS?745 with amd athlon 2000+ cpu, and fan for about $158.97)

than for a video card try a Geforce 4 ti4200 64MB
for a sound card Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
256MB PC2100 DDR 266 RAM

about $380-$400 right there. if you can try to get winxp and a new tower case, i guess your hard drive is fine as long as it's 7200RPM.

 

[MrTangix]

thanks for the input...

the main function will be to play games and maybe some amateur video editing/ sound recording... i don't have a 7200RPM, will that be alright?
oh, and i don't have 5.1 speakers either... just two desktop speakers that came with oem machine.