My brothers computer needs upgrading desperately. Unfortuneatly he only gets ~£40 a month from his paper round, so the plan at the moment is for him to use his bithday money (end of june) plus whatever money he’s saved. This will probably be about £200-250. I’m not sure if it’s feasible but the plan at the moment is to keep as many parts as possible, whilst upgrading to the cheapest version of each technology, e.g. cheapest core 2 duo, but with a motherboard that can accept faster core 2’s later. This way he can then upgrade the rest bit by bit, which he can’t do at the moment due to everything being so old.
His current spec is
2.533ghz p4
512mb ram - DDR-SDRAM PC3200
GeForce 3 graphics card - 64mb
200GB IDE hard drive
15" Monitor with ?(blue plug ) connector
The keyboard, mouse, speakers + monitor can stay, as can the case (i assume). Obviously the processor and motherboard will need to be replaced, and i’m guessing that means the memory too. Would onboard graphics be better than the geforce 3, or would we need a new card straightaway. Although he uses it mainly for games, most of the ones he plays are fine on the Geforce 3, albeit at low graphics settings. As long as the upgraded computer can match this current spec, and still let him upgrade bit by bit over the next year he’ll be happy.
I’m currently thinking
core 2 duo, cheapest version, unless there’s a budget intel that uses the same socket (is that pentium now?)
basic motherboard with support for core 2 duo, pci-e graphics (although onboard graphics to start) and, if possible ide hard drive, so he doesn’t need a new drive straight away.
New ram, 1 x 1gb stick if possible
everything else kept from before if possible.
Now, if anyone’s willing to wade through all that i’ve just written, can you please give me some advice / point out any mistakes / laugh at me for trying this with only £200 etc. If anyone’s looking at prices, I usually use http://www.dabs.com , but i’m willing to go with any reputable online shop (preferably not eBay or other secondhand places). I know a fair bit about computers, so I shouldn’t have any problems doing the upgrades, i’m just a bit out of touch on whats availible and what’s compatible with what.
The first question I’d ask is: why does he want to upgrade? Is there a pressing need? I think you’d get quite a lot of upgrade potential by doing this:
upgrade the memory to 2GB
replace the monitor with a 17" or 19" flatscreen.
I think you’ll see a large performance benefit, even without making any other changes.
Well, quite a few of the newer games he want’s to play won’t work at all, even with all the settings turned down. Not surprising really with such an old graphics card. Unfortunately his motherboard only has a 4x AGP slot, so there’s nothing really worth upgrading to. Thats why we thought we’d replace the motherboard with one that has all the new sockets, plus upgrade the bits we have to, like the cpu, then the rest can be done bit by bit, maybe alternate months or something.
I’ve used ebuyer once before, and they took 3 months to deliver a dvd drive! OTOH a friend of mine uses them a lot with no problems so i’d be willing to give them another chance.
Not true. There are plenty of much better AGP graphics cards. The Nvidia 7600 GT and 7800 GS series for instance (I have both), and ATI / AMD do the 1950 and the 3850 in AGP. I’d go for the last - £107.
My games box is a P4-2400 with a Nvidia 7800GS. Yes, it won’t run the latest and greatest at ultra quality, but it more than suffices.
Beyond that, I’ll second the extra memory: 2 GB is good; 4 GB is better. Go to Crucial and run their system scanner on his machine.
I’ll have to agree with you OP, the mobo needs to go.
If you wer ein the US I’d be able to help you out more with prices and places to buy. Hell I’ve got most of the components you need available for 40-50% retail cost
The best I can come up with in the UK is Novatech. Either way chekc out the motherboard bundles (Mobo + CPU) and the barebones system setups. See if there’s something affordable there you guys might like.
Don’t forget to overclock in order to get the most out of your budget gear.
Just thought I’d like to add in here a few things from my days when I did this.
Forget about buying a motherboard for upgradability purposes. That will never happen. By the time you’re ready to upgrade again, you’d just rather go ahead and buy yet another mobo. Just buy the fastest mobo / processor combo that you can afford and be done with it. Are you really going to upgrade to another core 2 duo in 2 years time? I doubt it. You’d rather just get a whole new one, right?
40 quid a month? That’s nothing! How often does he work? Sounds like they pay him very little…
As far as I know, whilst they will work in the 4x agp slot, they won’t run very well. It seems a waste of money to buy a new card like that if it’s only going to run at half speed.
Thanks, I’ll have a look later, after work
I probably should have mentioned, he’s 15, still at school. He gets about £10 a week from his paper round and £10-20 pocket money once a month, if our mom remembers. He actually spends very little though, so most of it can go towards upgrades. 2 months would get him some more ram, 3 months for a graphics card, perhaps better cpu for christmas. It’s just this first major upgrade to get out of the way, then he can do it bit by bit.
Just going off of Novatech’s site, for a reference of what £250 can get you…
GeForce 8600GT 512MB for £45
GeForce 9600GT 512MB for £115
MoBo Bundle w/ C2D 2ghz, 2GB RAM £130
MoBo Bundle w/ C2D 2.66ghz, 2GB RAM £210
Now, I had this long winded post advising you to get 2GB of RAM and a 256MB AGP video card as the “best bang for your buck” upgrade option… but it looks like your brother could easily afford a pretty decent mobo bundle + video card today, then save up for a few more months and pick up a new LCD monitor for another £200 or so. I would suggest he finds out the recommended requirements (not the minimum) for the games he can’t run now, and go for that, plus a bit more.
And don’t worry about upgrade options. You are better off getting the best offer you can afford today, then planning a long term upgrade path. I have been burned by that before… You can only upgrade your CPU by a few MHZ before you run into a new form factor, or an incompatible chipset, and the CPU speed has little impact on overall system performance anyway.
Sorry I can’t advise on a UK retailer for you… I am land-locked in the US.
Oh, and you can get a SATA to IDE adapter so he can use his current hard drive. another month of savings and he can afford a 500GB SATA 7200RPM hard drive. (and keep the old one for extra storage!)
Don’t forget to consider power requirements of te system and the PSU.
I bought a new desktop for home with a core duo processor, 8600GT graphics card, 2GB memory and added in an extra 500GB SATA HD. Unfortunately when ever I play games (which was the whole purpose of the machine) the system will often barf horribly. These are games that run OK(ish) on a little Sony TX2, so it is not lack of processing horsepower on the CPU or GPU. After digging around it appears the powersupply (400W) is probably insufficient and I should really have a 550 or 600W PSU.
Thanks, thay look like pretty good prices. I’d certainly be happier buying a package like that than trying to make sure the cpu i bought was compatible with the mobo’s chipset etc.
Looking at that, we could definately get the cheaper options, quite possibly the better mobo bundle. That would give me
Case
Hard drive ( either with the adapter you mentioned, or just on the IDE cable)
Monitor
Keyboard & mouse
DVD drive
Floppy drive (if i can be bothered)
I’ll probably need a new psu as NaturalBlondChap pointed out. Do you think this would do?
Also, with the hard drive, is there any problem with having it on the same cable as the dvd drive. I know it’s slower that way but is it just a minor annoyance or does it make the computer almost unusable?
Other than that, is there anything else I need? I’ve got a windows disc ready.
When you come to activate Windows, it will probably fail. Don’t worry about it: just activate it by phone. Explain that you’ve replaced the motherboard etc and they’ll sort you out.
Yeah. i’ve had to do that before. It was the same computer, same serial number but different windows disk (this one had SP2 included which the original didn’t). I was suprised by how easy it was, inconveinent and pointless too, but easy. I was expecting a load of questions, but they just took my serial number and gave me the activation code.
Generally, you will want the hard drive set as the Master, and the optical drive set as the Slave. You will see a performance drop only when using the drives at the same time, but it is negligible.
Oh, I’ve been upgrading: HDs, RAM, video, sound, etc. By the time I felt the need to replace the CPU (Athlon 1800+), it was easier to get a new computer.
My former PC was an Athlon 1800+, and I never felt the need to upgrade the CPU. I really think CPU needs have sorta topped out in the last few years. I can remember all my CPUs since the day I got into computers… 286 12mhz, 486sx2 50mhz, 586 133mhz, K6 233mhz, K6-3 450 mhz, Duron 650mhz, and lastly Athlon 1800+ (1533mhz). I believe I got the Athlon in 2002, and I think I got the 486 in '95 or '96. So in 7 years, I upgraded 5 times, and the Athlon lasted 5 years with out an upgrade. It’s still going strong as my Mom’s new computer.
I think my current quad core 2.8ghz CPU will last a good 6 years, before I need something faster.
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