Really Tight Budget

[Livy]

nope that only supports ddr ram,

what your currents specs.

[Triadcool]

Specs: Motherboard MSI ms-6330, Processor Amd athlon 999mhz,Memory 512mb,256mb,128mb pc133. 80gb hard drive

[SciManAl]

hmm... with 150, well i would get a barton 2500, and then use it with what you have right now(i know it would be way underclocked) then qfter you get another 50, you could invest ain a good mobo, like an bit, or gigabyte... and some ram... but your choice also check Compgeeks.com they have refurbished stuff that i would normally frown apon, but i have purchased even there used proccesers, and have gotten perfect qaulity and the have warrentys on all products... but they have cheap stuff and sometimes kickass (sory my french is that good) sombos under the motherboard section... like a barton 2500 and a gigabyte mobo for $120 (that deal no longer exists but about that much) then you would have enough for a stick a ddr ram 256... mayby pc2700 or so... not bad and next upgrade would be getting more ram...

[Livy]

from wht i read at msi u can support a athlon xp1800, which is about $55 on ebuyer, then u would have and xp1800 and 1gig ram, and 80gig hd, which aint to bad, and save up the rest of the money, till u can afford a newboard, ram and cpu.
but u could even do it in this oprder.
1. buy athlon xp1800,
2. buy new motherboard and ddr ram, use old xp1800
3.buy faster athlon xp chip.

if u want to do it in steps.
or even a new graphics card.

oh yeah, if its not a retail athlon cpu u will need a cooler, which aint much, u will get them for $10 max,

[Triadcool]

The 2 big reasons I want to get upgraded and newer stuff is because I get a lot of stop errors and when I write them down and look them up every one says its either the motherboard,proccessor,or memory.

I need to upgrade anyways.


From what I have seen is that the new proccessor chips are smaller so they wouldnt even fit in my computer,or are pentiums smaller then amd athlons?

[Livy]

athlon and intel use different fittings, from what i remember, old celeron and old p3 use socket 378, it uses 378 pins, newer intel chips use socket 478, and athlon chips use socket a, and aolder amd chips use socket 7.

[SciManAl]

dude you have a socket A mobo set up right now the only thing you can put in is an Amd chip, which is CHEAPER than an intel chip... so you are probably gonna get an XP chip...

[Triadcool]

Another thing is that when I open my computer after it has been running for a while it is very hot,but when my friend opens up his dell 2100 not one spec of heat comes out of it?

[Livy]

if u want to cool it a bit, invest in 2 fans, on at the lower front of the case, pulling air in, and one at the rear pushing air out, this will draw air current throught the case cooling it, but also just go round all your fans and clean them, and the case. but be careful though, and devices can be broken due to static,

[Triadcool]

It gives me the stop error every time I try to run norton antivirus then it just gives me the stop error at random times if I dont run norton. What hardware would this most likely be causing these stop errors?