PC Upgrade

Morf

I'm currently using a Dell Dimension 9200 that I'm giving away to my nephew when I build my new PC in the next month or so. I'll post the specs and you can let me know if it's worth spending money on upgrading it and what would give most bang for my buck. Thanks

Processor
Manufacture
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz

Clock Speed 2.2GHz

L2 Cache Size 2048

Memory Slot1[DIMM_A] 1024MB

Memory Slot2[DIMM_B] 1024MB

Network Card
Adaptor
RT73 USB Wireless LAN Card

Storage Drive Type Drive Size Total Available Space Used Space
C: NTFS 232.83Gb 109.05Gb 123.78Gb
NTFS 232.83Gb 162.85Gb 69.98Gb (it came in RAID 500gb initially)

A DVD and DVD-RW drive. I think the DVD drive is fecked, getting read errors from it when I rip music.

Radeon X1300/X1550 Series 256MB

Intel(R) ICH8 4 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2820

Intel(R) ICH8 2 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2825

Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)

TerrorFirmer

You could upgrade pretty cheaply, up to yourself if its worth it.

Throw in either a Q6600 quad core or something like a dual core e8600 and add a 7750 video card - shouldn't cost more than about 110 -130 euro for both and will get you through most new games, though something like battlefield 3 online would be limited to 32 man with the limitations of that socket and not being able to overclock.

Morf

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

You could upgrade pretty cheaply, up to yourself if its worth it.

Throw in either a Q6600 quad core or something like a dual core e8600 and add a 7750 video card - shouldn't cost more than about 110 -130 euro for both and will get you through most new games, though something like battlefield 3 online would be limited to 32 man with the limitations of that socket and not being able to overclock.

My nephew is only 9/10 and the extent of his gaming is Minecraft. I'd say an improvement in general performance rather than specifically for gaming would be better I think.

Would I need a MoBo and RAM to be worthwhile adding a new GFX card and processor?

Thanks.

Mr McBoatface

The dimension takes a BTX motherboard , so upgrading it wouldn't be easy. I think you're limited to Kentsfield Dual and quad cores CPU, so the Q6600 (i just sold one) is a good option, don't think the E8600 would work. DDR2-5300 is the max spec but DDR2-6400 should work ....how many ram slots are there in total ?

Morf

jobyrne30 wrote: »

The dimension takes a BTX motherboard , so upgrading it wouldn't be easy. I think you're limited to Kentsfield Dual and quad cores CPU, so the Q6600 (i just sold one) is a good option, don't think the E8600 would work. DDR2-5300 is the max spec but DDR2-6400 should work ....how many ram slots are there in total ?

The crucial scanner seemed to indicate there were 4 ram slots but it did think I had an XPS machine.

Mr McBoatface

Morf wrote: »

The crucial scanner seemed to indicate there were 4 ram slots but it did think I had an XPS machine.

I think it's the same motherboard as used in the XPS. What OS is on it ? Is there IDE or sata Hard drive and DVD rom.

It might be best to open up and have a look.

Morf

jobyrne30 wrote: »

I think it's the same motherboard as used in the XPS. What OS is on it ? Is there IDE or sata Hard drive and DVD rom.

It might be best to open up and have a look.

It's Vista. The crucial scanner says it is SATA 2. I'll open it up and have a look later on if possible.

Morf

I took photos:

http://tinypic.com/r/fvzd3q/5

http://tinypic.com/r/296gg8o/5

http://tinypic.com/r/12665pw/5

Tropheus

I had a Dell Dimension XPS 600 which was a Pentium 4. I did a bit of research around upgrading and since the motherboard was proprietary, the only possibility processor wise was a modest upgrade at relatively high cost. I did upgrade the graphics card to a 260 GTX which bought me some time, but the processor was choking it. In the end, I decided the Dell wasn't worth upgrading and went for a custom build that gives me lots of options in the future.

Mine was a bit older than yours, but you still need to consider that you're throwing good money into a machine that will only give you very modest gains. It may be worth going for a custom build around €500 that will give you upgrade possibilities in the future.

TerrorFirmer

To be fair there's a massive difference between a Pentium 4 and Core 2, as there is 120 and 500 euro. Putting in a Q6600 and a cheap enough card like a 7750 would give it a huge breath of life for someone just looking for general use and minecraft, and even more demanding titles if it came to it. One of my old machines used for LAN was a Dual core E8600 and 7750 and it ran Battlefield 3 Single Player at ultra settings pretty well, to set a benchmark (don't get me wrong, online was a different kettle of fish, but realistically we're talking about a 10 year old).

To be honest the biggest problem is actually the video card, it would have been obsolete in terms of gaming and a severe bottleneck to the CPU even when purchased. If you're not looking to spend money, a 50 euro video card would improve performance massively without changing the CPU which is still perfectly fine for general use and the likes of Minecraft.

Jonny7

Plenty of life can be had from these old Dimensions

I haven't checked the board but if that can take a 8400 core2 then that would be a very nice upgrade (you can get them for 20 to 30 euros on ebay)

You could pick up a second hand 5570 or similar graphics card for 40 euros

Grab 2 gb of ram

That will be a perfect gaming machine for him, it'll even handle fairly new games.

Mr McBoatface

I'd agree with Terorfirmer about the GPU. The cpu isn't that bad. I don't think anything beyond Kentsfield is supported so a Q6600 would be the best option if you decided to upgrade it.

From the looks of your photos I think there are two un-used ram slots, so a ram upgraded would help too. Windows7 if you could get your had on it cheap would improve performance too.

Morf

Will look into those, thanks.

My nephew has a history of dropping laptops off bunk-beds and and generally not taking that great care of things like this so I'm not certain I'll spend much or anything on it at the moment. I might leave it up to his parents to leave it in for a service (I have a problem with bad boots where networking doesn't work, half the start-up programs don't initialize and it's glacially slow and takes about 15 minutes or more to reset).

I'll speak to my sister about it anyway.

Thanks for the advice anyway!