Rebuild or Buy

iceFatboy SG

hi, need good advice.

As per earlier thread, I was using an PC (for 5 years) mainly for websurfing, storing digital photos & burning to CDs. A few days ago, it went dead. tried changing power supply, it set my power fuse off. Figured the cards inside are "burned".

My consideration is whether to rebuild the PC, means, buying a mini-casing, a new MB, a graphic card, sound card, ram, and re-use the existing HDD that I savalge from my old PC. I do believe for my usage, I am looking @ HW around less than 1K.

My concerns -> my existing HDD (WinXP (OS)), will there be any conflicts if I rebuild a new PC, and plug it in? for example, graphic card?

On the other hand, I can get a new laptop, convert my old HDD as a secondary drive.

Which seems a more practical approach?

Thanks for advice..

PWNED32 SG

Rebuild. Since its 5 years. Usually computer last around 5 years.

iceFatboy SG

Rebuild. Since its 5 years. Usually computer last around 5 years.

given I am reusing the HDD, will there be any conflicts? in terms of graphics card/sound card?

thanks for advice.

MyPillowTalks SG

It is possible to reuse your HDD. Nowadays Mainboards comes with only ONE ide ports, the rest are all sata connecters.

If you change a motherboard/mainboard, you might need to reformat. The reason lies with the chipset of the board itself

If your old motherboard is using a VIA chipset, and you change to a one with intel chipset, the systems will just restarts after loading the windows xp boot screen.

One way to counter this is to buy a mainboard with the same chipset. Brand does not matter

THere will be conflicts for graphics card if i am not wrong. As your computer is already 5 years old, and 5 years ago, it is using sth called 'AGP slot'. Nowadays the hole for you to slot your graphics card have changed in terms of design-they are called pci express slot- and therefore your old graphics card will not be able to fit into the slot

Sound card there should be no conflicts, anyway if you are buying a new motherboard, it comes with onboard HD audio, which is considered to produce decent quality sound compared to the old AC97.