I decided I wanted to upgrade my computer one day, but I found out that I couldn't actually upgrade it any further then it was. So I decided to build myself a computer, buying all the pieces and salvaging some parts from the would be old computer. So I went from
AMD Athlon 64 2.2ghz (single core)
2gb ram
512mb vid card
to..
AMD Phenom x4 2.3ghz (quad core)
4gb ram
512mb video card (from the old machine)
gigabyte motherboard
It all worked swimmingly too, had no trouble putting the stuff together and getting it to work. Its really not as hard as is looks, just read the manuals carefully and check compatibility of each piece. I did have to play a little guessing game with the power button/reset wires though because it didn't label + and - but I got it right 1st try. I was even tempted to see what a machine like this would have cost from pc world and found I saved about 200 pounds which really cheers me up. Tested a load of different things and it really has kicked the old computer in the ass! it could even play gta 4 on minimum settings! haha haven't tried it with the extra 2gb of ram though, I dont believe it would make much of a difference.
The only hitch though is I'm stuck with an old 40gb IDE hard drive but I ordered a 500gb SATA2 hard disk to finally complete the system.
oh.. animation wise, I'm making a new one! its not rat but it has some really impressive sequences in it, perhaps some of the best scenes I've done yet. I did the roughs for the 4 minute animation in about 6 days!
wynand
=) sounds pretty sweet, i has going to get those specs premade for 15grand aussie tho, which seems an alright price.. you can chuck the extra 2 gb into your machine if you have vista =) xp only supports about 4 =S where vista supports 8.
goodluck with your animations aswell =)
tyokio
thanks c: pre-made is certainly the best way to go if you don't want to risk destroying the components your working with, some of which are pretty sensitive and cost a fair amount (the processor itself was about 90 pounds for me). From what I've heard about ram, xp and vista 32bit can handle the same capacity (3.3gb) where as xp and vista 64bit can handle up to 128gb. 3 or 4gb of ram is still worthy of handling some pretty demanding stuff though.