Can you give some hardware recommendation for general us PC?

[kinematic]

I'm looking to replace my now aging PC with an AMD Sempron 3000+ processor. The PC will be a general use PC, stuff like ripping dvd's and converting them to avi's, downloading, burning, working with the gimp and occasionally playing Enemy Territory, True Combat Elite and some other games. I'm leaning towards AMD with 3 or 4 GB of ram and low power usage would also be nice. The price point is around 500-600 euro's for a motherboard, cpu, power supply,graphics card, dvd burner and hdd, I'll be re-using some components from my old pc. Can you give me some recommendations :)

[cj.surrusco]

I'm looking to replace my now aging PC with an AMD Sempron 3000+ processor. The PC will be a general use PC, stuff like ripping dvd's and converting them to avi's, downloading, burning, working with the gimp and occasionally playing Enemy Territory, True Combat Elite and some other games. I'm leaning towards AMD with 3 or 4 GB of ram and low power usage would also be nice. The price point is around 500-600 euro's for a motherboard, cpu, power supply,graphics card, dvd burner and hdd, I'll be re-using some components from my old pc. Can you give me some recommendations :)

AMD is probably the way to go with the type of system that you requested. They are generally cheaper, but are still good. For the stuff that you want to do, a dual core sounds like a good choice, so look into the Athlon II X2 or Phenom II X2. The Phenom costs a little more, but has L3 cache and more L2 cache, I believe. If you want good performance in games, get the Phenom.

As far as RAM, 3 or 4 GB sounds pretty appropriate. I would buy large DIMM's (probably 2 GB) so that if you decide that you need more RAM, you can easily upgrade it.

[Goolie]

3 will be plenty... but remember if you're burning / ripping / converting, processor speed will come into factor. My pentium 4 can do those, just depends on how long I'd want to wait.

I use Patriot Memory for RAM. I swear by it. How much you get depends on how much faster you want certain things to happen.

AMD is the way to go, especially when you're trying to keep to a price range. =P
Which you get depends on how much speed you want. A dual-core would be MORE than enough for a basic system and you can get one for cheap nowadays.

Don't get a Western Digital HDD's if you can help it. But this is probably a moot point if you're just pulling your old hard drive. (I've had 3 WD HDD's fail on me to date. . . )

As for motherboards, I've found ASUS good, but recently a little on the iffy side. Gigabyte is a fine choice.

I dunno, check 'em out.

www.newegg.com !!

[linux18]

get a cheap motherboard with an LGA775 socket, 2 x 2GB ram modules, a cheap nvidia card, and a hyperthreaded pentium 4 @ 3.2GHz. then upgrade the bios and overclock. That will chew through almost all everyday tasks and cost practically nothing.

[cj.surrusco]

get a cheap motherboard with an LGA775 socket, 2 x 2GB ram modules, a cheap nvidia card, and a hyperthreaded pentium 4 @ 3.2GHz. then upgrade the bios and overclock. That will chew through almost all everyday tasks and cost practically nothing.

Pentium 4 HT is a little bit outdated ;), so I don't even know if you would be able to find one in new condition, but I used to have one, and they certainly get the job done. If it was a low-budget project I might suggest that, but for the 500 euro price range, the OP could probably get something newer.

[linux18]

Pentium 4 HT is a little bit outdated ;), so I don't even know if you would be able to find one in new condition, but I used to have one, and they certainly get the job done. If it was a low-budget project I might suggest that, but for the 500 euro price range, the OP could probably get something newer.
but the thing is that you can overclock P4's to insane levels ( 5.5GHz is not unheard of) and in most tasks a powerful graphics card is better for performance than a powerful cpu.

[cj.surrusco]

but the thing is that you can overclock P4's to insane levels ( 5.5GHz is not unheard of) and in most tasks a powerful graphics card is better for performance than a powerful cpu.

I've never heard of clocking a P4 that high... My P4 ran pretty hot just at the stock speed.

[linux18]

I've never heard of clocking a P4 that high... My P4 ran pretty hot just at the stock speed.
But was that one of the newer hyperthreaded ones with 45nm technology?
those sip watts and can be pushed to super high clock speeds ( water cooled will get you to 6.1 GHz )

[cj.surrusco]

But was that one of the newer hyperthreaded ones with 45nm technology?
those sip watts and can be pushed to super high clock speeds ( water cooled will get you to 6.1 GHz )

No, actually, I believe it was 90nm. Cool to know, maybe i'll build an old P4 setup one of these days.