Hi all.

I am getting to the stage where I really want to upgrade my now aging computer. It's starting to get too jerky in certain circumstances to play games properly.

So.... currently have an Athlon 550, some PC100 RAM and a Geforce 1 w/32 meg DDRRAM. I'm planning on keeping the old components and getting a few new bits and pieces that will let me keep the old on as a server - ie no monitor, keyboard, mouse etc. So I need: case, motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, and a couple other little things. One of the things I'm more concerned about this time around than I was when I got my current machine is the heatsink & fan. I've had a lot of problems with overheating, and I'd like to make sure I don't have them again.

I'm thinking of something along the lines of an Athlon XP 1800. Since I don't really follow the whole hardware industry thing any more, I'd appreciate some advice on a decent motherboard (more concerned with performance than features), heatsink & fan, and graphics card.

I see the graphics card market is pretty wide in the price range now. Radeons and GeForce 3/4s seem to be the top performers in the consumer market. I reckon I have an upper limit of around £200 for the graphics card. My preferred gaming resolution would be 800x600 or 1024x768, and 1200x1024 for non-gaming use. I'm more interested in smooth framerates than really high quality images if there's a tradeoff.

Also, since cooling is important to me, what kind of case is good for cooling? I need at least 2 external 5¼" bays, 1 external 3½" bays and 2 internal 3½" bays. Obviously, external bays can be used as internals.

The other components I know enough about to make a decent decision, but if you have any strong opinions please feel free to voice them.

Cheers for your thoughts