Gaming Hardware Suggestions

Hello People. I'm planning on upgrading my tabletop pc and being somewhat computer illiterate, I need help.

What would be a good gaming harddrive or what am I looking for? 500 GB would be good, much better then then the 80 GB I'm using now, but something bigger would be nice. My budget is around 100 bucks

I'm also looking to upgrade the cpu and mobo as well. This is on a different budget so I'm not limited to the 100 buck like on the harddrive.

Now for the embarresing part. This will go into an 5 year old Emachine 3400 in which I already have an ugraded video card, psu and ram. Please don't say buy a better or newer computer because that's not in my budget at this time.

Thanks in advance for any help given

There is nothing specific about games that would matter to the hard drive. 500Gig is more than large enough for most people, unless you are into storing large numbers of movie-length video files. Of course, when it comes to hard drives, the bigger the better - until you get to around 3TB where booting becomes an issue.

I'd recommend either an i5-760 (+4Gigs of RAM), or a newer i5-2500K if you can get a newer motherboard without the problems. Or, you could go for a high-end Phenom II, if you want to stick to AMD.

Make sure that the new motherboard fits the old case - that is, the case may only fit a mATX (smaller) motherboard. You may also need to check to see if the power supply has the proper connectors for the new motherboard.
A new motherboard and CPU will require new RAM (DDR3-1333).

Could you list the components and specs that you have right now? It sounds like all you need to do to git rid of the Emachine name is to get a new case since every other part is either going to be upgraded or already has been upgraded. If you are in the USA you could get a 1 TB Hard Drive for $60 and a far better case than what you have right now for as low as $40 on sale.... that's the $100 budget you had for a HD alone. Then you wold be more flexible in your options for other parts.

What's your total budget and what do you do with your computer?

I don't know the complete details on my computer but I know it can run WOW, GW, DDO and COX as well as several RTS games that I own including the Dawn of War Quadrilogy, Dawn of War 2, Age of Mythology and Company of Heroes

The video card is a Geforce 8600 GT
The PSU is a Thermaltake Purepower 2.0 500 watts
I don't recall what the ram is

I know I'll probably have to upgrade the videocard again and I am looking at a new case, the Antec 300 or 902, but I am open to suggestions on that part as well

The hard drive is straight forward. Samsung F3 has good price/performance, but really, you can go with Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi, or Western Digital, it's mainly a matter of price. WD Caviar BLue 1TB, Samsung F3 1TB... The 'Green' version of hard drives are slower, and I wouldn't recommend them. Your motherboard has to support SATA. Your PSU does have SATA connectors.

The problem with upgrading the CPU and mobo, is that they often go in pair, and often the RAM as well. It would be useful to know what type of CPU, RAM, and motherboard you have. CPU-Z can help you identify the components. It depends what sort of hardware you already have. Single core / dual core, Intel / AMD, how much RAM, what type of RAM (PC10600, PC12800...)... The motherboard also has to be compatible with the PSU (4 pin connector).

NOTE : On pretty much all new drives, there is a rather high failure rate. If you do have important data, it's wise to keep them backed up. Make sure the drive is well secure in the drive bay, and avoid moving the computer while t's on. Treat hard drives like porcelain, and you'll never have a problem.

7200 RPM Samsung drives have a rhythmic humming sound (not seek noise) that annoys some people. It happens with all hard drives but seems to be very pronounced with the F3 and F4 drives. I had to do some tweaking to get my 320GB F4 tolerable, but it does have a significant edge in speed and seek noise over similar drives. If you just want a basic cheap drive the Western Digital Caviar Blue is a decent choice too.

Upgrading your CPU and mobo depends on what kind of memory you have. If you have DDR2 you'll be limited to AMD or Intel socket 775. That's fine though, something like an Athlon II X3 or X4 + a basic mATX board that uses DDR2 would be very cheap and offer decent performance.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128342
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103886

That would be a decent inexpensive combo if you have DDR2 memory and want to keep using it. I assume your old case will not fit a full ATX board and one thing to look at on mATX boards is where the SATA ports are; sometimes a dedicated video card will block them. This Gigabyte board has them lower so you can use all the ports. Also, if you get the X3 CPU there's a good chance to easily unlock the 4th core.