well I kind of got forced into this one. random lockups on my tbird1200 were not solved with chipset driver updates, reformats, different OS, or known good PS.

After spending about 10 hours sorting through the mess (mainly because my wife can't play the sims, which is the biggest lcokup culprit) it got narrowed down to either motherboard, RAM, or CPU. Too tired of the whole mess, I decided to just perform a barebones upgrade.

I got a KG7-RAID motherboard on the way 256MB PC2100 DDR, A new case and 300 WATT PS (stylish), a XP1800+ CPU, and new DVD ROM (for good measure.) all told it's setting me back around $270 including shipping, but I only should have to pay around $186 as I have an $84 credit memo with the place I ordered.

when finished system should be
XP1800+
256MB DDR
SB Live 5.1
Radeon VIVO 64MB DDR
40GB WD Hard Drive
Generic NIC
Liteon 32X CDRW
16X DVD
80GB hard drive mapped from my network for mp3 storage

The only thing I'm taking a hit on is the memory. I have 512MB PC133 right now, but I'm hoping to put it up on ebay or recycle it into another machine.

what do you guys (gals) think?