First off i would like to say that i no next to nothing other then the basics regarding computers so please be gentle if i make mistakes. I am currently underway with "rebuilding" my old Dell Dimension 4300 computer because it is incredibly out of date. Im thinking about putting in a new motherboard, cpu, ram, and a video card. This is what i have so far...:
MOTHERBOARD - ECS GeForce6100SM-M (1.0) Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - $49.99AMD

CPU - Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2.2GHz Socket 939 Processor Model ADA4200DAA5BV - $67

RAM - 2GB 240pin DDR2800 G.SKILL

VIDEO CARD - ATI POWERCOLOR 26XT512M/D3HDMI Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 - $124.99

I was hoping all this stuff would fly. I also have another main concern that the motherboard has something to do with GeForce which is know is NVidia but I want an ATI graphics card and I don't know if this will work or not. I also wanted to know if I would need a new powersupply because Im assuming my powersupply is around 300W or so. I was rebuilding this computer mostly to play games like Half-Life 2 at very high quality and possibly the new game Crysis at High quality. Is this all compatible/Suitable??? Thanks to all who reply to this!

Hi ZR1000,
Firstly, I'd like to welcome to CompuForums - it's good to have you here. I hope you will be on the board for a long time, and if there is anything I can do to make your experience better please let me know. We are here to help you, so it would be appreciated if you could help us by posting in threads as well as your own. By doing so, you are helping to keep this site running in the future, and we will respond to your thread faster too. If you can't help us, then we can't help you.

Those specs look fine to me, but as you mentioned, you probably would want to upgrade your Dell-provided "300W" PSU for something a bit beefier. I think you would probably be fine with something in the 500-600W range.

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well any motherboard other than dell will NOT work 100% in a dell computer, the front usb and audio and in some cases even more things will NOT function due to dells port setup

thanks i would have had no idea. what about something like this? Dual Xeon Pentium 4 Motherboard 3.0GHz Server P4 i found it on ebay here: New Dual Xeon Pentium 4 Motherboard 3.0GHz Server P4 - (eBay item 330188682484 end time Nov-21-07 18:44:17 PST)

the only board that will work with a dell , is a dell motherboard .

your best bet is to just build yourself a whole new computer and use what is usable from the dell ( hard drives , cd drives etc)

Yes, Dell way customizes their hardware. I guess they took a page from Apple's book. The restore disks provided by dell for years have searched for dell hardware. In fact, i've had to reinstall old hardware in order to reload a PC I had from Dell. (I replaced the bland cd-rom with a CD-R/W.

Yea don't you hate we you have to do that. Thats why I build all of my systems

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