Right now i'm running a Soyo k7s5a (i think, i'm not currently at my home computer right now) and a duron 900. I'm goin away to college and would like to upgrade this abit, either buy buying both a new mobo and proc or by just keeping my mobo and changing the proc. Does anybody have any suggestions that would cost me less that $150 or as close to that as possible?

Thx in advance

oh and i need the motherboard to be able to run DDR ram (i have a stick of 512 that i'm quite attached to

I'm pretty sure you mean the ECS K7S5A? Never heard of the Soyo K7S5A...

I used to have the ECS K7S5A, and it can support up to a 2600+ Athlon XP CPU (266MHz FSB, NOT 333MHz). If you don't want a new motherboard, then I would get a 2400+, they are around $75, while the 2600s (with a 266MHz FSB) are rare, and are around $110, very big price difference for a little more performance.

If you still want a new motherboard, I'd get the Asus A7N8X, which is a nForce 2 board, and supports a 333MHz FSB. If you do get a new motherboard, then I'd also get a different CPU (not the 2400+). I would choose the 2500+ Barton chip. It has a 333MHz FSB, which makes it quite a bit faster. It costs about $95, and the motherboard is another $90, so you are going a bit over, but it gives you the best upgrading possibilties for the future, as well as pretty damn nice power.

As always, I reccomend buying from Newegg.com.

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--Daniel--

If you are a bit bolder you could always get an Abit NF7 and a 1.7 GHz chip with a JIUHB core chip and overclock it. Comes in at $152 + shipping. The only thing you would need is a good fan and some Artic Silver 3 and you are set. You could lock the ram and just push the chip. The NF7-S is $20 more.

Check out board here

Chip here

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Sheep!

I like my 1700 quite a bit... got it to 2.4GHz, but that's with good ram and watercooling... just pushing the chip you could easily get it to 12.5 multiplier (from 11x I think), so that'd be a few hundred MHz stock voltage.

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Brian Nehring
Editor, SLCentral.com