Well, some ideas to mull over. As it is, other issues have cropped up and so this will have to be put off until after Xmas.

My old brain is in serious need of some advice on the best choice to upate my hardware. I'm well behind the curve on most of this stuff. Over the years I have used a succession of Abit m/boards with AMD CPUs. I built my current PC nearly 4 and half years ago – Abit KN9s, Athlon 64 x2 4400+, Seasonic...

Vicotnik wrote:Many years of service left, unless you are unlucky. I wouldn't hesitate re-using it.

Well, that's good news, and one less component to think about. Choosing the rest is another story.

My Seasonic S12-II 430W PSU has had four year's use in a PC that's been on about 10 hours a day, every day. It's never ever been stressed, I've never heard the PSU fan ramp up,and I'm wondering how much life is left in it. I ask because I'd like to use it in a new build. I'm finally going to upgrade...

Assuming your are not expecting your current PSU to fail any time soon, I'd be tempted to make some changes to your existing set-up before investing in a new case and PSU. I would suggest: 1.Replacing the noisy Volcano 7. Two much quieter alternatives are: (a) Arctic Cooling Copper Lite, which is in...

SPCR is a great site, I have been trying to absorb the depth of advice and experience it contains while reading the postings of its many contributors. Not all of us have the latest and greatest kit, so I thought I would post my experience of quietening an older PC in the hope it might encourage othe...

The Abit AN7 is another NF2 board to consider. But whether its DFI or Abit you'd have to look in the 2nd hand market. In the UK such boards are changing hands at around £40 on Ebay with the NF7-S v2 being the favourite. These boards very stable under Windows or Linux and you can underclock and unde...

Ubuntu is a popular distro and I would recommend using the ubuntu-6.06-alternate-i386.iso (or whatever the latest is) for the extra flexibilty when it is installed. See here for an explanation : http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p3.htm Ubuntu is light on multimedia apps which will have to be do...