Few questions

[illinivb7]

Not sure if this is the best place to ask these but here I go :

My current comp has been having some issues so I am thinking about building a new one, is it safe/recommended to try and use some of the old parts? It is a little over 2 years old but not sure its worth the risk trying to save money by reusing parts like antec 900 case, old harddrive(really dont want to reinstall win7/wow), the 4gb ram, etc.

Also are meeting minimum requirements worth it? I noticed on the front page the power supply just met the GPU min reqs.

Thanks for any help

[Deneb]

The Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case still sells for under $110. If you like the case I would stay with it. Most computer equipment that isn’t abused and/or overclocked will last at least five years if not 10 in continuous use. There are some exceptions like case fans.

In general things like DVD burners, keyboards, mice, computer cases, power supplies, and other stuff that doesn’t get out of date is fine to reuse. Of course you may want to blow the dust out of an old computer case before you start a new build.

The stuff that really has to be changed often is the CPU, RAM, motherboard, and hard drive. In a lot of cases you can reuse the CPU cooler by purchasing an adapter bracket to allow an older cooler to work with the new socket.

Hard drives can be reused but today you can get a nice 1 terabyte drive with 32 MB of cache RAM for about $90. So seems silly to reuse an old drive even if it’s big enough.

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive $69.99
called Acoustic Management (prolly lowers the speed or something) that can be turned on or off with samsungs HD tool.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185