On 06/07/10 17:28, Barry Drake wrote: > On Tue, 2010-07-06 at 16:44 +0100, Alan Lord (News) wrote: >> Any reason you are specifically going for AMD? > > Hmm .... I can see I've asked the wrong question. What I ought to > have said is 'what do you guys recommend?' No preference for processor. > I'm looking for something fast-ish maybe a bundle something like the one > Maplin are offering. I need to have at least one IDE slot and a couple > of SATA slots. Maybe around 2 Gig ram. Oh, and it needs either > firewire built in, or a card slot for a firewire card. And of course it > has to be good with Ubuntu. > > The reason I'm doing it as a motherboard upgrade is that I have my main > box with two removeable hard drive caddies, one IDE and oner SATA. I > want to be able to carry on swapping these for a number of reasons. The > present mobo must be some five or six years old, and although good, it's > a bit slow recoding videos to DVD's (it takes all night to do one). > > The bundle Maplin is offering includes processor, heatsink and 2 GiB ram > for £189.99 That is about as high as I want to go, but I could maybe > persuaded to go a bit higher if there were really good reasons. Main > use will probably be with video and photos. I'm doing almost all my > writing and e-mails on my little netbook. This means I have everything > I need with me when I'm away from home. > Barry Drake.
Okay well you don't say what processor it is, but for a reasonable spec machine you could look at this... Athlon X2 5600+ CPU, 2GB Ram, motherboard for £122 (bear in mind the CPU isn't as good as the newer Athlon II or Phenom II though... http://www.ebuyer.com/product/201692 I did find some other deals too (to be honest Maplins is VERY expensive even on their bundle deals usually). I found you could get a Intel Pentium G6950 (based on the Intel LGA 1165 socket), 2 x 1GB DDR3 sticks of memory and a motherboard for about £185, or an AMD Athlon X3, AM3 motherboard and 2 x 1GB DDR3 memory sticks for about £160. It might also be worth bearing in mind that you may have to upgrade your power supply. Most (if not all) new motherboards these days have 24 pin ATX connectors (like standard ATX but with an extra 4 pins). It is possible to get a 20pin to 24pin adaptor but then you may as well buy a new PSU. I'd suggest an 80+ certified one if you can afford it (IIRC it's a bit more but more power efficient). I've got to do tea for the kids now but I'm always looking at what possible upgrade to get next and I'd also be looking at a budget of around £180 ish. Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
