StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My current machine is a refurbished ex-lease tower that I've had for about a year. It's given me fair service for the price, but it's severely bottlenecked by the CPU, which can't be upgraded without buying a new motherboard which means all new RAM and so on and so forth.

I'm going to keep the hard disk and the Blu-Ray drive, and I already bought a used GeForce 480GTX. My current machine also came with a copy of Windows 7 Professional which I think I can reuse, if I ever find it. My total budget for everything else is circa £200.

With the assistance of someone on Reddit, I've devised a target build:

CPU: Intel Pentium G3420 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor
Motherboard: MSI H87M-E35 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

That takes me to about £210 if I shop carefully. That's Phase 1. Phase 2 will happen a few months down the line when I've saved up a couple hundred more for an SSD, some extra RAM and possibly a new graphics card.

I do have a couple of technical questions, though. Will I be able to install Windows from scratch with a disk marked "for reconditioned PCs", and do I still need a fresh install or can I just swap the drives over and press the on button the way I can with Linux?

You might want to try and download the appropriate copy of windows and put it on a disk/thumb drive as I don't think your current disk will do the job. Though you should be able to swap the drive over and just install the needed drivers to get things working.

Zaune wrote:My current machine also came with a copy of Windows 7 Professional which I think I can reuse, if I ever find it.

Download Magical Jelly Bean to get your CD key. Then torrent a Windows 7 Pro ISO (it's legal) and burn it to a disk or use a flash drive. I don't know if you need a special edition of the Windows CD key since you have a refurb. Since it's just a license key issue, I think a standard copy will work.

I do have a couple of technical questions, though. Will I be able to install Windows from scratch with a disk marked "for reconditioned PCs", and do I still need a fresh install or can I just swap the drives over and press the on button the way I can with Linux?

I don't think you will have an issue with a Refurb Disc. That seems to be more a "trust" issue with Microsoft: They sell these refurb keys to refurbishers under the assumption they will use them for what they were purchased for. After that, there's no real checking.

I don't know how this works for W7, but back on 2000 Pro and XP, if you delete your chipset, CPUs, HDDs (usually only when you're cloning a HDD), and a few other drivers out of Device Manager (it's been so long, I can't recall), it should boot just fine. But you're usually better off doing a fresh install.

Better a fresh install.
Also for keys try belarc.com free advisor program
http://belarc.com/free_download.html

Give you a happy http edition of every single one of your keys on your computer for most programs, save the website to a thumb drive and now you have all of your keys and a full breakout of your computer specs and takes about five minutes from downloading to fully running. Jelly bean has way to make fake malware infected verisons floating around atm.

There's no worry about finding the license key, it's on a sticker on the side of the tower, but that Belarc thing looks rather handy. Thanks.

Zaune wrote:Phase 2 will happen a few months down the line when I've saved up a couple hundred more for an SSD, some extra RAM and possibly a new graphics card.

I have loads of spare Radeon 7970s sitting about, you can have one of those if you want.

Thanks. I might take you up on that, although seeing as I've spent sixty quid on the 480 I really ought to find some use for it.