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Calmador on 21 September 2011
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So here's my story, my PC died, it's old (6 years), I don't know much about repairing a PC, been wanting an upgrade for ages but I'm on a budget but I'd strongly want to buy my parts in person. I only know 2 places that sell parts and whole PC's kind of cheap, that's Frys and a place called Price4computers.com... they have a store near me and actually I think this place is better then Frys.
My budget limit is 350-400$ [I made a range because of Tax, so let's aim for 350] and it's ok if it goes 10$ over 
 
I'm not a hardcore PC gamer but I used to be a casual PC gamer and I have a lot of PC games from the windows 98 era I guess you can call it. The one game I played the most were the Total War games and those games were my most demanding games of my PC, Medieval Total War 2 in particular so that'll give you a bench mark of my gaming needs. Also I don't play games on Max settings, never cared about it, let's keep that low-mid tier.
 
Note: I also collect old DOS games so it would be a sweet + if that's possible, not necassary tho.

So here's what I got so far but I'm not sure it's good, infact no I know it's not good. like the motherboard doesn't support Windows 7, which I kind of want but I'm sort of considering to just getting Xp Home, havent researched Xp Home much but would greatly reduce costs becase, OS seems to be the most expensive thing, if I can do what I want with Xp then I'm might be down, unless.....well I know microsoft is going to stop supporting it soon, should I worry about that? I'm not application whore, just wanna surf the web and place some old games, no new games, Medieval Total War 2 is the newsest game I'll play and Team Fortress 2, since it's free now :D . Anyhow,here is what I intially have come up with...
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core e2180  (Is this too much, too little power for my needs, now and possible light upgrades later)
Memory: WD 500 GB Sata HDD 3.5   (I'd be fine with 250 but the price difference seems so little that I might as well go for a 500 ya know)
RAM: 2GB Kingston brand (haven't done much research, but the little I did, I noted as Kingston being a reliable brand)
Board: Gigabyte G31MES2 (Has 4GB max, like it's limitations, not too low or too much for my perosnal needs now and future)
DVD: LG DVDRW Sata 22x (LG has been good with me and 22x from research supposably is exceptional for my needs)
Power Supply??? 
That's all I have so far... problem is I'm not sure if all this stuff will even work together and ontop of that I'm not sure if I need a windows 7 professional 32 bit or just stick with a good ole Xp version ________ (what best suits me and hopefully is much cheaper then Windows 7)
The first thing to tackle in my book is the OS, and I'm leaning towards Xp since it'll demand less of me in $$$ since it seems that is the most expensive thing I have to buy considering how cheap my parts are and Windows 7 is atleast 100$ or more.... but I have 1 major question
 
I know support for Xp will end soon, will this make my PC significantly more vulnarable to viruses, hackers, that sort of stuff? Note I will be using either free anti-virus software or paid, will decide on that later. Also I'm basically only gonna use my PC for basic stuff.... in order, surfing net, old pc gaming [no new games], saving documents, a bit of music and pictures maybe. Is the support significant to me?
I imagine some of you might think, what you can do this all by yourself, I probably can eventually but I think some of you can point me to the right direction on some things especially the hardware, but getting help will make this process faster. Thanks for reading, thank for those will help.


All gaming systems, consoles/PC, have thier perks... why fight over preferences? I like Coke and you like Pepsi, that's it, let's not fight over which toy we like best cause that's what they are. Is someone's preference in a toy important or is the relationship between you and your neighbor more important? Answer is obvious, but THE most important thing is your relationship with God almighty. God Bless you in Jesus's name.

I can communicate without talking... I can send a loved one money without actually sending money... and I can commit theft without the product disappearing, the point of theft is the point of theft not one of it's possible symptoms which is the product dissappearing. The thief wants to gain something without paying for it, that's the point of theft, the thief doesn't have to care or anybody else has to care if the product dissappears. The product dissappearing is just a possible symptom of theft. Gifts are sacrfices, in order to give a gift, it has to be a genuine sacrfice/gift, meaning a copy of the game isn't still in your PC. Piracy is theft and/or being a culprit of theft.