People who know bout buying pc's please :x

[Tuff]

Right... at the moment I'm looking toward upgrading my pc... but it's going to have to be stealthily done to get past my gf's ever so watchful eye on the money. Basically, right now I want to keep a lot of what I have, and buy the necessary pieces of kit to get things running nicely.

I've expanded my current pc as far as it will go (it's 3 and a half years old) and so I'm going to have to start with buying a new mobo, cpu and psu. I'll keep my...

Case
Crappy gfx card
DVD drive
CD-RW drive
40gb HD and 6 gb HD
Sound card
Monitor
Keybord
Mouse
Network Card

So baaaaasically I need some help with what mobo to buy. That is by FAR the most important part for me. I can spend a bit of cash on it, but as little as possible. I can't give a ballpark figure as I don't know what mobo's cost (hence me asking you lot).

It needs to support decent RAM, preferably processors up to 3gig (though 2.5 gig will do me fine) and have some other decent features that I don't have a clue about.I'm only going to use it for games and a lil bit of work, so I don't need firewire or anything fancy like that, just a simple, solid card that I can use some fairly fast kit on.

Next, I need a cpu and psu. I would like somewhere around 2gig processor (for now, I WILL be upgrading later) but I'm not bothered about who makes it. I'm on a 466mhz now so I'm not going to notice the difference between intel and amd (though if you can get nice cheap ones then wahey :E). psu I really don't know anything about. Pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated :).

I will also need ram, but I'll use my current ram JUST FOR NOW. I have 192 meg of pc100 ram (I will upgrade later but for the simple reason of pulling the wool over my gf's eyes, that will come later on).

As a side note... gfx card wise, how much does a decent GF4 cost? or would I be seriously better off getting a radeon9500 and softwareing it to a 9700? I'd rather stick with Nvidia, but if there's a decent enough performance difference I'll swap to a radeon.

Ideas welcome, thanks guys :E.

[[DW]LoneGun]

well the ram is going to hold you back as to what motherboard you can buy with the ability of having it easy upgradeable at a later date. It's definately worth looking at getting some decent DDR ram as it makes a lot of difference.

If you are going to get some more ram i would reccommend either the A7V8X (i have one of these, very happy with it) or the A7N8X. Both of these boards are for amd cpu's depending on ur cash flow, either go for an AMD XP 2700+ or one of the cheaper chips XP1700+ are about 50 quid or so at the moment.

for the PSU you can go for a nice expensive enermax, although i have a nice CWT 450W PSU from scan, about 40 quid or so.

[edit] I've ordered one of the radeon 9500's from novatech, i'll post here again if they are overclockable to the 9700 specs tomorrow or whenever it arrives (was sent out today).

[Tuff]

so that's about £170 for mobo, processor (1700+) and psu?

Added onto that, £75 for the ram? so around £245 to upgrade mah poot (for now)? I should be able to swing that :) ta :).

[mYth]

Indeed. The latest motherboards support DDR RAM only so you'll need new memory when you're sorting things out too. In terms of a graphics card I'd hold on a while if you're ok with what you've got for the moment. GeForce FX is just around the corner and although the price will be stonking I expect when it comes out it's gonna put the rest to shame.

[Tuff]

I'm on a tnt2 :P. I'll be looking to upgrade VERY soon :).