Hello, this is my current setup:

CPU: P3-1GHz
Motherboard: Chaintech CT-60JV2
Video Card: ATI Radeon 32MB AGP DDR
RAM: 256MB
Hard Drive: Samsung 40GB
Sound Card: SoundBlaster 256 Live! Value
Monitor: Viewsonic Q71B 17IN
Floppy Drive: 1.44M Drive
DVD: Raide 8X DVD
CD-Writer: Sony 52x32x52 CDRW
Mouse: Microsoft IntelliPoint Optical Scroll Mouse
Speakers: 2-piece ZoltriXound ZX-MPro w/ 300W Sub-Woofer
Modem: Conectant SoftKey 56K v.90 PCI Fax Modem
Network Card: RealTek 10/100 PCI Ethernet
Operating System: Mandriva Limited Edition 2005

As you can see, its kind of an old and slow computer, although it works fine, and good enough, I am thinking of upgrading just so its faster in normal use things. Plus I program (at least try to), quite a bit so cutting down on those compilation times would be nice. I was thinking of maybe getting this:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...Tab=0&NoMapp=0

And then putting the rest of the HW (maybe my video and sound cards, HDD, DVD, and CDRW, and maybe the network card), into the new box. Is Mandriva able to handle such a hardware change, especially if I dont put in any or some of my video, sound, or network cards. Is it possible to nicely and safely reconfigure the installed Mandriva for the new box, or would the best thing be to do a clean reinstall. I ask this just out of curiosity. Doing a reinstall isnt that big of a deal, but it is an inconveniance. Especially since I have a few things installed from source, and some other cusotmizations. Plus I always do urpmi --auto-select after a new install or update, and that usually takes about 12 hours on my slow connection.

I am not sure if I should use my existing video, or sound, or network at all, or just use the onboard stuff. I do not have any experience with this perticular motherboard at all, so I am not sure. I know my current setup works fine with Mandriva. What would you suggest? Any other ideas, cautions, suggestions?

Thanks a lot,

Latem

Maybe upgrade the video card to a 128MB card and maybe the processor to as high as the motherboard supports, other than that, you're fine I think.
You might want to get a second 80GB+ harddrive for media and stuff.

Thanks for the reply. Yea I'll be getting another hard drive, I just forgot to mention it.
Mainly I was just wandering if the installed Mandriva will be able to handle the HW changes, or should I pretty much expect that I'll have to do a clean install. I had never done any sort of hardware change under Linux, so I am not sure what to expect, and if maybe there's something I should look out for.

Latem

I purchased an inexpensive bare bones setup from TigerDirect almost two years ago. For less than $400, I got P4 2.8 GHz with fan, 512 MB PC2700 Ultra RAM, FIC mother board with built in ethernet and AC97 sound, Radeon 7000 32MB. The only regret I have is the cheap case. It looks nice, but you can tell how cheap it is by the USB ports and headphone jack in the front. This week, I bought another 512 MB of the Ultra brand RAM. Also, I got all of my mail in rebates back from the original purchase in a decent amount of time.