[Y2eel]

Iam lookign at replacing my ram and hard drive...

my motherboard is a gigabyte 856pe fsb800 dual ddr400 agp 8x sata

i have 1 gb of ram (2x512) but they seem to be giving me some problems and i think the brand is kingmax..

also iam looking for about 200gb hard drive

am using xp with a P4 3.0ghz 800 mhz fsb 1mb l2 cache with a nvidia 6600gt video card


whats everyones thoughts on the motherboard? should i change that aswell?

thanks

Edited by Y2eel, 02 January 2006 - 05:26 AM.

[Advertisements]

Hi

I see no reason to change the motherboard unless you wish to upgrade the cpu beyond what the board supports, or if you wish to upgrade to a PCI-Express video card.

Re. the RAM. I've never heard of Kingmax ram so I assume it's a fairly generic make. Its always advisable to buy good quality ram, such as Corsair, Crucial or Kingston etc. Also, when running dual channel ram, it is especially important that you use matched pairs.

What makes you think it is the ram thats been giving you problems though? (You're probably correct but it may be best to know for sure!)

As for the hard drive, why are you looking to replace it? Has it been problematic or do you simply want a larger drive?

[Samm]

Hi

I see no reason to change the motherboard unless you wish to upgrade the cpu beyond what the board supports, or if you wish to upgrade to a PCI-Express video card.

Re. the RAM. I've never heard of Kingmax ram so I assume it's a fairly generic make. Its always advisable to buy good quality ram, such as Corsair, Crucial or Kingston etc. Also, when running dual channel ram, it is especially important that you use matched pairs.

What makes you think it is the ram thats been giving you problems though? (You're probably correct but it may be best to know for sure!)

As for the hard drive, why are you looking to replace it? Has it been problematic or do you simply want a larger drive?

[Y2eel]

Hi

I see no reason to change the motherboard unless you wish to upgrade the cpu beyond what the board supports, or if you wish to upgrade to a PCI-Express video card.

Re. the RAM. I've never heard of Kingmax ram so I assume it's a fairly generic make. Its always advisable to buy good quality ram, such as Corsair, Crucial or Kingston etc. Also, when running dual channel ram, it is especially important that you use matched pairs.

What makes you think it is the ram thats been giving you problems though? (You're probably correct but it may be best to know for sure!)

As for the hard drive, why are you looking to replace it? Has it been problematic or do you simply want a larger drive?

Hello thanks for the reply..

With the ram i changed it from 2x 256 sticks a while back wasnt having problems with it playing up and all that changed it to the kingmax 512x2 and have had the pc lock up a few times..
it could also be due to heat iam thinking aswell as the tower has a side fan 80mm only (exhust)

and with the hard drive i just wanted a larger drive: which is the best drive to go for??? around 250gb?

[Hemal]

A 160 or 250 should be fine- you could get a 300 really- www.fatwallet.com- look in the hot deals and you could find a nice price

[Samm]

If your current drive is OK and you simply want more storage space, then there's no reason why you can't buy a another drive but keep the original one on the system as well.

I would recommend a Seagate or a Western Digital drive. Make sure you buy one with a decent warranty period on it, i.e 3 or 5 years.
An OEM drive won't come with the cabling so you will need to buy this seperately if the drive is SATA. Make sure you get a good quality sata data cable.

I strongly advise you keep an eye on the system & cpu temps though if you think they may be high. If your computer doesn't have a temp monitor utility already (either in the bios or as a third party utility), then try a utility such as Everest for example.
If the temps are on the high side already, then adding an addition fast hard drive will only increase the temperature further.