PC Upgrade

[Raistlin]

Hey Guys,

I've got an old box which currently has an AMD Athlon K6 2-500 and a couple of sticks of RAM in it.

I'd like to upgrade to the point where it could comfortably run an XP host with a couple of VMWare images running inside it.

The idea is to be able to stick this box on my network and use it to simulate a couple of web servers, or perhaps a database server, or a mail server (but all from within VMWare).

Neither the servers or the box will be needing to take any great load, they just need to sit there ticking over.

Any thoughts on the best upgrade route for this beast? I was thinking of just plucking some sort of bundle off of eBay (motherboard, 2Ghz processor, 2Gb RAM, that sort of thing), but didn't want to throw money at it when I don't really know what I'm doing

Needless to say, the less money I can spend the better (and the happier 'future Mrs Raistlin' is going to be as well ).

Any thoughts/advice gratfeully recieved.

ok cheapo sempron cpu about 25/30 quid. Mobo with onboard gfx another 30/40 and 20 quids worth of ddr2. You hdd optical case and psu(if its atx)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134751 cpu

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126138 mobo

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/105976 ram

less than 70 quid. Bung a cheapo case if your psu is no good say 20 quid and jobs a good un. Not really an upgrade though lol

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/86501 case 14 quid 84 quid plus delivery the job

[Raistlin]

Yay, Zing I knew you'd be on the ball for this one

Thanks Zing. What sort of spec processor (speed etc) should I be after, and would you say 2Gb RAM is enough?

Any particular boards to look out for/avoid?

Id say 1 gig was for el cheapo build with xp

see my above edits