DIY PC Revamp

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Guantanamo

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So I was moving a cupboard out today and I had to take our ancient PC out of it first. I decided to open it up and I figured with Windows 8 coming soon it might be a nice thing to sort of redo and give to my mom who needs a PC of some sort. I have a chassis, PSU and motherboard but the RAM, processor and HDD etc will all have to be replaced. I have never worked on something like this before. If i bought the components would it be hard to assemble? How much might I be in for if I got say a Core i5, 8GB RAM and say 750GB storage? Could I put it all together over a weekend?

Thanks
 
The motherboard will have to go if it's old and you're getting a new CPU. If it's really old, your PSU will probably need replacing as well as it won't have the appropriate power connectors.

Building a system's pretty damn easy if you've done it before. There's not an awful lot that can go wrong if you're careful about handling the hardware. I'd suggest you scrap the thing and start from scratch though. A new chassis isn't terribly expensive and the rest will probably have to be new anyway.
 
Or get Prophecy or Wootware to build the system for you. Prophecy used to be good and I sang their praises on multiple occasions, but their service really sucks at the moment and I'm not at all pleased with how they're handling a noisy PSU fan which is still well under warranty, even though I've spent a relatively significant amount of money with them, so rather give them a miss until further notice, unless you don't have any other choice.
 
Maybe start by posting the specs of what you have so far, based on that we could formulate a proper reply.
 
It looks like I could build a really solid system for about R5 000, I won't need much in terms of graphics power but I think it would be cool to have something decent.

The old machine isn't that old. Intel Celeron, says designed for Windows XP on the tower, has some kind of Gigabyte motherboard but I can't tell which model. Has an LG optical drive, not sure what HDD but I remember it being about 32Gb in size haha. It looks like what I would salvage are the cheap parts like a PSU and the fans though. I'm not going to start it until probably August time if I do start it at all.

I was thinking Core i5, 750GB HDD, 8GB Ram, I'm not sure what sort of graphics card I would need and if I need a motherboard what sort I would need either.
 
If you are north of JHB, I can look at, you need at least new mobo, CPU & RAM. HDD of course...
 
Usually its best to just replace the entire thing and start from fresh. Entry-level rigs can go on for ages if they're properly specced. What will your mom use it for?
 
Nothing serious, I might use it a touch but mainly it is going to be email, browsing, word and .ppt stuff. I'm not a gamer and I have a mac for video and photo editing. I might try set it up as a multimedia server eventually since I will start using it exclusively for my downloads.
 
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