Puttting life back into my old Dell

Greenmachine

Okay guys want to do a project upgrade on old dell 4700
Not sure which information is the most important, so including as much as I can think of. Looking at over clocking but from what I can remember it could not be reset from the BIOS.

From what I can figure. I should be able to drop in any P4 HT with Socket 775 LGA.
Not sure about this or whether I would need to upgrade the fan.
Ram can be upgraded from 512mb to 4gb. (DDR2)
Will the Ram upgrade increase speed much or is it worthwhile putting in a higher rated P4. They seem cheap enough on ebay.

Current set-up

Microsoft Windows Home Editiion XP
Service Pack 3

Pentium 4
512 mb of ram

Intel Pentium 4 HT 520
Code Name Prescott
Socket 775 LGA
Technology 90nm
Family/extended family F/F
Model/ Ext Model 3/3
Stepping 4
Revision D0
Multiplyer x 14.0

Not sure what other values are important here.

FSB 800
CORE SPEED Pretty much 2800.00 Mhz with some small variation.

Main board Dell Inc. OM3918 Chipset i915P/i915G.

Graphics Inter (R) 82915G/GV/910GL (Built in Graphics)

Budget I guess €50-100? Know I could do the Ram for this anyway.
Hopefully can put 64bit P4 on there so I won't have to buy two new versions of windows.

BostonB

Waste of time. Pick up a core2duo desktop for the same price 50~100 which is better than your machine in everyway.

Greenmachine

Might be true. This was meant as a project however. This would be a 2nd pc as opposed to my primary pc. It is more about learning the inner workings of the pc. If the motherboard would take a core 2 duo. I would consider it of course.

So do you think the main board would take the core2 duo.

BostonB

Nope forget that motherboard. Also a P4 is too slow and too wasteful in energy to be a useful project. Though the 4700 is unusually for a Dell pretty much a standard case so will accept a regular mATX board.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19432814.aspx

If it were me I'd get a cheap mATX board, cheap 1155 celeron, and a 2GB stick of ram.

Heres some ideas
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056508989

1155 board gives you loads of options in the future.

Greenmachine

So is 1155 the socket.
Have an case off a friends old computer, bigger one so that would give me more options I guess.
Only problem I think is that it switches itself off before loading anything. Can't even get as far as the Bios to view what boards is in it.
Think it is a slower chip than my current one but the board is definetaly more expandable as it has 4 expansion slots on the back instead of two. Might be able to plug some kind of a graphics card in there if I can work out, what is going on with it.

BostonB

I don't think you are really getting the idea.

Those old machines are useless/obsolete. A modern website and browser will slow them to a crawl. Whereas even a basic new chip with a new motherboard will fly, and cost roughly the same at the end of the day. Even a P4 3Ghz crawls compared to something like a 1.8 Core2Duo. But they'll cost much the same.Like wise even an old dual Xeon 2.4 workstation is much slower then a basic core2duo and the c2d would use vastly less electricity too. So it doesn't make sense to recycle them either.

Greenmachine

Okay so going down that line. Will the mother I buy have a socket rating that will dictate which processor I put in. I know it would dictate what type ram I would use.
So what about buying harvested used parts from the likes of overclockers. Anyone any experience of doing this.

BostonB

Not much cheaper than buying new IMO.

Gurgle

Greenmachine wrote: »

Will the mother I buy have a socket rating that will dictate which processor I put in.

Yes.

So what about buying harvested used parts from the likes of overclockers. Anyone any experience of doing this.

E-bay is better if you're looking for older stuff. I replaced an old Athlon 64 x2 with a Phenom 2 x4 last year for around €50 IIRC. But that was in a custom built PC where I'd got the best motherboard I could find at the time.

Unfortunately with a Dell motherboard it's unlikely you'll be able to put a faster chip in there. Your GT 520 seems to be the top end of the 84W chips, your motherboard may not support the higher power requirements of faster chips(115W).

BostonB

Why would you want to put a chip at 115w in a machine that old?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/celeron-g540-g440_7.html#sect0

You could sell yours for 50 and buy this for 100
http://www.adverts.ie/desktops/hp-compaq-dc7700p-desktop-pc-intel-core2-duo-2-13-ghz-4gb-ram-160gb-hdd-dvdrw/1929775

vs
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-203-OK&groupid=43&catid=2047&subcat=