Major upgrade/build

[Jim Baxter]

I have a 2 year old gateway which has been and still is a pretty good unit (see signature specs) and I was considering doing a memory upgrade only to find out the Rambus Ram is getting pretty hard to come by.

I am considering building a new 2.8 P4 with an updated motherboard (ASUS P4800), Maxtor 80 gig SATA harddrive, 1 gig GEIL DDR RAM PC2700, AMS GTower Blue case, Antec 350W power supply, and a LITE-ON CD-R/CD-RW.

My question is and hopefully someone here can address and advise yea or nea,
Can I salvage from my gateway the following

Soundblaster Audigy Audio sound card
Gateway NVIDIA Ti4600 video card.

I would also keep my 17" LCD monitor, Altec 4.1 speaker system, Logitec keyboard and mouse.

Thanks for the help and advice.

JB

[bigandy]

I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to swap these.

Just a note, if you are going with that CPU and motherboard, change the RAM to at least 3200. If you don't have the money for a Gig of 3200 (or above), just cut it down to 512MB, that is still plenty of memory.

[morriswindgate]

If you have one of the older large MId-Tower cases from gateway you can also use it, but to upgrade the power supply you will need to alter the mounting hole to make it larger.

[Jim Baxter]

That's another thing I was considering.
Pull the Motherboard, 1.8 CPU and power supply and replace with the newer, faster, high tech components, leaving my hard drive, CD ROM, Zip drive, graphics and sound cards.

Is that a do able thing?

Thanks again

[bigandy]

It might be do-able, but you never know. The problem with many of the Gateway, Dell, HP, etc. PC's is that the components that they use are very often proprietary, and so the only way to upgrade/repair is to get the part directly from the company that put out the PC.

If you want to do this, check out the case, make sure it is big enough to work in, and make sure that a regular ATX MB will fit in it properly and that you would be able to remove the PSU and put in a new ATX PSU, etc..

Like I said, you might be able to do this, but it may be more trouble than it's worth. I think you're better off just building it from scratch. Plus it's more fun this way .

[Panama Red]

Last April I dismantled an older Gateway to use the case and drives as a way to save a few bucks. Now I wish I'd listened to a friend that advised against it. If I were in your shoes, this is what I'd do. Leave the Gateway intact. Buy a new case like an Antec with a quality power supply. Get a motherboard with onboard sound, video and lan that has AGP (for later addition of a quality video card) like an Asus P4P800 - VM. Get a new DVD/CD rom and/or DVD/CD burner. You can get just a burner for now and add a CD rom later. Watch for deals on a 7200 rpm, 8Mb cache hdd. Use Kingston Value Ram PC3200, you don't need the fancy colored heat spreaders. Spend less than $25 and get yourself a KVM switch. That way you can run both computers off the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse. You may need the old Gateway to get here to PC Mech to get questions answered as you build. Use your existing speakers with the new machine. Just my opinion, but I wish I'd have followed these instructions last April. Good luck any way you go.

[andyms18a]

you can get ram bus ram from http://accessories.gateway.com/Acces....htm?ref=merch