PC Upgrade Question

jonny68

My PC is now 4 years old,a Dell,spent a bloody fortune on it back then(well over 1,200 IEP) and now you would probably get similar for €250 or so only has a Celeron processor and 128MB Ram,what i want to know is can i get an up to date processor and RAM (only holds 512MB Ram as well) on the cheap or would i be better getting a completely new PC in a few months?

I have Broadband but it's always the same ok for the first few hours then it's really slow,at first i thought it was the Broadband but im beginning to think that it is just the fact that this PC only has a celeron processor and 128MB Ram,any suggestions welcome.;)

awhir

complete new pc beacuse of the psu,grapics well i think it would be a better move .

Zoned

jonny, get yourself a new PC...

Dells are near impossible to upgrade....

You will just need a new box...etc keep your screen, keyboard and anything else... you could get something v.good for €500..

Youll be delighted you did as broadband has so much to offer people with fast PC's...

jonny68

Zoned wrote:

jonny, get yourself a new PC...

Dells are near impossible to upgrade....

You will just need a new box...etc keep your screen, keyboard and anything else... you could get something v.good for €500..

Youll be delighted you did as broadband has so much to offer people with fast PC's...

Cheers i was thinking as much myself,any ideas as to where i could just get a new box?Also would it be possible to take my hard drive out of this one and get it installed in the new one?

awhir

komplett.ie is good and overclocker.co.uk is very good.

TempestSabre

You can upgrade Dells. But any PC thats 4yrs old is going to be almost obsolete. What model number Dell is it.

jonny68

TempestSabre wrote:

You can upgrade Dells. But any PC thats 4yrs old is going to be almost obsolete. What model number Dell is it.

It's a Dimension 2200

Cuddlesworth

Try the boards For sale forum for computers.

Creamy Goodness

on the hard drive front, you can use it in a new machine that you get but it will have to be formatted to put xp on it (you'll want this) plus i think windows throws a hissy fit if there's a load of new hardware installed since the last time it booted up.

you're better off buying a new drive and starting from scratch, then you can take your exsisting hard drive, set it to slave/cable select and the use it as a secondary drive for storage.

stepbar

Yes 512mb ram would make a diff but u would be prob better off in the long run buying a new pc. I wouldnt waste ur time keeping the monitor to use with the new machine, get a flat screen they are the business. You wont get much off for getting a base machine off dell anyhow (thats unless u know sum1 in dell r sumin). U could use the second hard drive as a slave and even dual boot with another operating system such as linux on the hard drive. Or you could keep the second pc as one for messing about with. As for the pc as is now how often do you do stuff like disk defrag, clear browser cache etc... sometimes you can get good performance improvments from doin this

TempestSabre

It was a low end budget machine when you bought it, but good enough for most tasks. You don't say the speed of the processor or the OS you are using. But I'm guessing its about the 1Ghz and you are probably using Windows 98se. The 810 is a slocket 370 so the max you can go is a 1.4ghz cpu, max memory is 512mb. If you have a cpu over 1ghz and max out the memory to 512mb, that machine should be fine for running XP home and browsing the web, and doing office tasks. Totally usless for games but after 4 yrs you'd know that.

If you are sticking with Windows 98 then 256MB is all it needs. Cost about €30-50. You need to clean up that machine. If you upgrade to XP home then you'd get away with 256 but 512 would be much better. However you would need about €150 to do this. A new Dell Machine with Flatscreen and XP home would cost no more than €400 all in. That would also be a non gaming PC.

BTW why your broadband isn't effected that much by your PC speed. But I think you have IBB which is has a poor reputation. Maybe the problem is with the BB itself and not the PC.

If you are near me I'd give you a hand with the upgrade, just to help you out.

awhir

and the hard drive is probly only a 5000 rpm

SeanW

I have a 4 (early) year old Dell too and it was upgradeable - to a point. Dells can be upgraded with RAM, disk drives (you'd be limited to IDE HDs though), AGP+PCI cards and so on, but little else.

Forget about modernising the processor as the mobo would need to be changed, and because the Dell cases, PSUs and mobos are all customised to one another, that means basically buying a new PC.

Also you can forget about adding anything that uses a USB2 interface like an internal 6-in-1 or 7-in-1 drive.

Better off buying a new machine when you get the chance, I'd advise you to get an AMD build from Komplett.