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by wayneinreno

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I currently have an HP with an ASUS board/ Celeron 850 MHz. 310 chipset. I just cannot put what I need on the board because I only have two available slots.I installed a Sound Card, and A nVIDIA Graphics card. Oh, I had to remove the NIC to put thenVIDIA CARD IN. (Crap).Plus the Celeron is just too darn slow in processing simple tasks. It takes forever to load a simple web page, like yahoo, or msn. When I go online I have to wait about 5 minutes on the average to get where I want.Reading email? Forget it. Two hours reading email.Ridiculous. I already tried upgrading my memory. (I have 384MB) Made no difference, so I figure the only way to get a system to work at decent a speed,is to start with a new one all together.I want to build the same style of desktop I have now with a midrange tower.I have most of the hardware I would need, but I don't know how to size them up, along with all the technical jargon that I don't understand. Like for instance, what cards will work with what boards. Need some suggestions PLEASE, before I take a hammer to this piece of crappola!

11 replies

by thechas

Hi Wayne,

There is not a simple answer to your question.
I would start by looking up the articles in the Tech Republic archives.

One good site for starting out is www.tomshardware.com

My best recomendation for a first build-it yourself system is to work with a local dealer.
Yes, you will pay a little bit more, but if you buy most of your hardware at the local PC store, they will be more willing to help you out.

I have had conflicts with some cards and motherboards with one OS, andno problems with the same combination on another OS version.

I was installing XP Home on a sytem last night, and it would continue to lock up.
I changed the video card, and got it to install, then it went black screen on me.
I then changed backto the desired card, and everything was fine.

I prefer to use name brand motherboards. They are just more stable than the lesser brands.

Maxwell_Edison posted a series of questions afew months ago about building the ultimate PC.
Those are a good source of general information.

Get back to us with what hardware you have, and I'm sure that you will get comments as to how well it all works together.

As a general comment, your Celeron CPU should have no trouble surfing the web.
I'm on an Athlon 750 right now, and see very little difference between this and a 500MHz or 1GHz system.
What often happens, is that windows (specifically the registry) get corrupt over time.
You can often get a significant performance improvement by simply formatting the hard drive, and re-installing all of your software.

Chas

by dmiles

Here are a few reference sites to building a PC
1)www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/howtobuild
2)www.dailyint.com/build
3)www.buildasypc.com/
4)www.dansdata.com/buildpc.htm
5)www.geocities.com/SiliconValley
6www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/109/1

Take inventory of your current hardware and and try matching it with a case and motherboard that will support your PCI cards

Check the motherboard manual and reference to see what other type of chip is compatible,you may be able to update the cpu and not have to rebuild,which would be economical,see the Asus web site.

by otl

Tried SCANDISK then DEFRAG ? What type of connection to the internet do you use ?

Dial-up what is your connection speed ? Make sure your modem is set to the maximum and for the ISP dial-up network connection.

Since you added cards to the computer make sure you have no conflicts with the new cards. Check out the system properties for any yellow ! or ?, this indicates something the system does not recognize or has a conflict with the memory address or IRQ this will use.

BTW even Windows 95 - 200 MGHZ, took 5 minutes to load e-mail when the connection was 24K or less otherwise 30 seconds.

by qballrail

Sometimes the best way is to go for broke. Sounds like you may need to simply build a new one with a full-sized board. ABit has a decent model. Then you may want to get an AthlonXP, nice and fast! Kingston memory (512M minimum) and stay with NVidia, only go AGP. Better graphics and you don't have to share, so to speak.

by wayneinreno

First of all I want to thank "TheChas" and every one else that helped me with this problem. I did as suggested,to a point. But, I was able to get one hell of a system off the ground by checking with the web sites listed in a couple of your answers. I now have an Intel board, with 1.8 GHz Pentium 4. 256 MB DDRSDRAM. I was able to keep the nVIDIA Graphics, and Sound Cards in tact. The only draw back was having to SPEND SPEND SPEND. But, you know as well as I, you get what you pay for, and this isreally true in the computer field.Thanks Guys. Have a great day.

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