A few pointers to remember with your £175 - £200 budget:

If your pc is 5 yrs old, then most probably it will have DDR-2100/2700/3200 ram, An IDE hard drive and an AGP graphics card.

Nowadays a new board and chip combo will require DDR2 memory, a SATA HDD and a PCI-Express graphics card, so all these things will need acquiring on top of your new chip and board.

Next point to think of, your PC currently may have a small output power supply, say 200w or similar, and if you end up with a few extras in your new PC that require external power (Ie a moloar connection as well as being connected to the board) then you may need a new power supply.

Next, because of the gigantic changes you have made to your PC setup, it is unlikely that even if you manage to use your IDE HDD, that it would boot into windows, so you have to have some great knowledge with an XP disc to get it to boot, or prepare yourself for a flat install.

Realistically it can still be done, but you would perhaps have to set yourself a stretch target budget closer to £300 to do it properly. By properly, I mean, that if you want it to last and be functional for another 5 years, then you may as well go for decent parts ie; a decent VGA card, at least 3gb ram (this is the max that 32bit XP and Vista will 'see') and a large hdd (1tb or 2 x 500gb, striped for backup perhaps)

If you are on XP and are using this as a chance to upgrade to Vista, make sure the components you are carrying over from your old build are Vista compatible (check manufacturers website for drivers) or this could also bring in unforseen costs.

Once you have considered all of this, pop into your local computer retailler (I should know, worked at pc world for 8 yrs up until last monday) and see what perhaps £300 - £350 (without monitor) would get you 'off the shelf' I bet you would be surprised... And it all comes with recovery data and a 12month warranty.....!


Hope this is of help