The last time I built a PC was a good 4 or 5 years ago, I guess. I am looking to rebuild my current PC over the next week or so with a new:

CPU & Fan
Motherboard
RAM
Graphics Card

I have recently purchased a new PSU (Thermaltake PurePower 560W) and the HDD I have is fine (not ?SATA?, if that makes any difference?!).

I do not use my PC for gaming, so the graphics card doesn?t need to be anything majorly fancy in that respect. I use it mainly for web design, DVD creation, photo manipulation, DVD copying and using MS Office software. Quite often, I will be running several apps at one time. I am not really interested in overclocking, either, mainly because I don?t know why I?d need to do it, and even if I did, wouldn?t know where to start!!!

A major consideration is that I need the PC to be as quiet as possible, since it is used in the bedroom and I like to leave it on overnight to download.

I have a budget of up to around ?400, and would like to buy something which is as future-proof as currently possible! I have been looking at both the single and dual core processors from Intel and AMD, but in particular the Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+.

I have no idea what is compatible with what, so am not sure where to start with all this really. I am completely out of touch with all this, so please make your replies newbie-friendly! J

Your suggestions would be much appreciated!


Many thanks J


Cheddar

Howdy Cheddar,
I would go with the AMD DC there cheaper and since you want a "quite" pc they will run cooler than the Intel. What you just need to look for is a motherboard that is socket 939 and SATA does make a bit of a difference as they dont clutter up your pc with the IDE cables. As far as ram The basic pc 3200 (pc 400) will do. Patriot memory is great and alor cheaper than alot of the bigger named brands. And for the GPU if you want to be future proof, get a PCI express board and card.. they run just the same for AGP cards you could get a descent one for cheap. But go for the AMD dual core there core clocks may seem slower on paper, but they are faster than Intel..

Thanks m8 - that's the best advice I've had so far from all the forums I've come across

I think I've decided on my final spec:

Asus A8N VM CSM Socket 939
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800 512K Retail Socket 939
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 PRO
Corsair Twinx 2x1GB matched XMS3200 3200PT Platinum

Total: £405.85 inc VAT

What do you think? The mobo has onboard graphics capabilities, so that should do me for what I need (for now, anyway!)

One question I do have is with regards to the memory. I have a choice of two types of Corsair memory, with about £3 difference between them. They are:

3200PT
3200C2PT

Which one should I get?

And will this system run really quiet for the price??

don't know about the memory, but afa quiet -- most noise is from fans/harddrives. You can replace the CPU fan with a quieter design...generally the larger diameter fans move the same amount of air at slower speeds, plus many are adjustable. Cost a bit more -- but worth it

http://www.silentpcreview.com/

another useful utility is speedfan (free) it monitors speeds/can be used to control fan-speed according to current demands on your PC