Help with buying a new pc

[cuddlers89]

Hi everyone

My pc is pretty rubbish so i want to get a new one, i found a site where i could build my own, hence saving on things like cd writer which i allready have.

Is getting a cpu around 3.4ghz worth it? it seems so big would it be nessasary?

I want a really good heat sink, silent 550w PSU + 120mm fan + 10.2 dBA CPU Coller is what i'm thinking about i don't really inderstand this so a translation please??? :D

It comes with an 80 gig hard drive but i wanna take my hard drive out of my existing computer and put it in the new one, so i dont have to buy xp again and all my prigrams and docs are there. Is this easy enough to do? The most i've ever done is put in a cd rw and a modem.

And also how much ram is needed for xp? I use my pc for programs like fireworks and medi and some games so what is the standard for this?

Thanks alot people.

[dlh6213]

My opinion? I think a 3.4ghz is too expensive, anything in the 2ghz-3ghz range should be more than adequate. But if you've got the money and want the "best," go for it! (By the way, "fast" would be a more correct term here then "big.")

550w PSU is a 550 watt Power Supply Unit, which should be enough to power anything you need.

120mm is the fan size, which is good; typical fans are (or at least used to be) 80mm.

Not too sure about this one "10.2 dBA CPU Coller"; I don't recall the exact definition, but dBA is basically short for decibels, which is how loud (or noisy) it is. 10.2 dBA would be very quiet, but if this is in reference to a CPU cooler, airflow (CFM) would be more important to me then dBA.

XP will run on 128mb of RAM, but not very well; 256mb is adequate, but 384mb is better for acceptable performance (my opinion again).

This one is likely to be your biggest problem: "...i wanna take my hard drive out of my existing computer and put it in the new one, so i dont have to buy xp again..." If you have an OEM version of XP, you can't legally put it in another computer, and it probably won't work. If you have the retail version of XP, then you can do it, but when you go to activate, you will need to call Microsoft and explain to them that you removed if from one computer to put into another. As far as changing the hard drive itself, that's not difficult, no harder than a CD-RW.

Hope this helps a bit, I'm sure you'll get other opinions as well!

[cuddlers89]

Thanks alot

How do i know what type of windows xp i have? When i got the pc it was pre installed.

[dlh6213]

If it came preinstalled, it's almost certainly OEM. If you have an actual XP CD, at the top will be a statement saying "For distribution with a new PC only..." If it says that, then it's OEM, if it doesn't then it's not. If you don't have an XP CD, but instead have a 'Restore' CD, then it is OEM.

You can still try putting it into your new computer, but be prepared for it not to work because most likely, it won't.

[cuddlers89]

Ok, is there a way of taking windows xp off, but leaving my files and programs on the drive, Because i no longer have the discs for some very expensive software and i dont want to buy it again.

[cuddlers89]

***bump***

[Catweazle]

No, you can't do that with programs. Even if the program files are still on the drive, any new installation of Windows won't recognise them, because the Registry entries wouldn't exist. The program would need to be reinstalled anyway.

Your program discs are not things to be careless with.