# Could get a free Pentium 4...worth it? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 14, 2014, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551 "2014-08-14T22:40:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/1 "2014-08-14T22:40:02Z")
My computer (which was a dual core something or other) recently crapped out (most likely hard drive failure, though I haven’t had that confirmed yet) and I asked the IT guys at my place of employment if they had any old PCs gathering dust that I could have…and they came back with an offer for a usable Pentium 4 with a blank hard drive. Now, I’m not TOO picky about free PCs, but would this system likely be too old to run anything decent, or stream video on the Net, at least? Sorry, I don’t have any of the other specs on the system yet. ---
**Author:** ![jacobsta811](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jacobsta811/32/2893_2.png) [@jacobsta811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacobsta811)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/2 "2014-08-14T22:53:39Z")
You can do ok with a P4 for web browsing, _if_ you install a lightweight linux distribution on it (example: [http://xubuntu.org/](http://xubuntu.org/) edit to add, or lubuntu if \<512mb ram: [http://lubuntu.net/](http://lubuntu.net/) ). The only windows versions that would work well with it are out of support and it is certainly a mistake to setup a new system with them. Edit to add, your existing PC is almost certainly faster than a Pentium 4 if it is dual core anything though. ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/3 "2014-08-14T22:57:42Z")
> [@jacobsta811](#): > > Edit to add, your existing PC is almost certainly faster than a Pentium 4 if it is dual core anything though. Yeah, true. Looking at even the low-end systems available now in the $200-$300 range, I’m thinking those “cheap” systems would likely blow the doors off my defunct system, too. Maybe I could use the Pentium to play some of my old Windows 95 games or something… ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/4 "2014-08-14T23:01:57Z")
It can do whatever it did in 2001 or whenever it was released. There are a lot of things it would be well suited for, like a file server or web server. It’s certainly worth free, if you can use it at all. But it probably won’t run newer Windows OSes or software like Silverlight to stream Netflix. At least not easily. But you could put Linux on there and browse the web and listen to mp3s and stuff like that. It should work fine for writing text files and compiling homemade programs if you’re into that sort of thing. Still, you’ll be very annoyed if you use it as a daily machine, hence why I think it would be better suited to a server of sorts. You could put a big hard drive in there and serve files over your home network and even the net. ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/5 "2014-08-14T23:08:59Z")
If the drive is the problem simply take the HDD for the P4 and put it in the machine with the dual-core. Re-install the OS and recover from backups. Assuming the HDD interface matches whatever you have now. If not drives are cheap now. ---
**Author:** ![ryan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a8b319/32.png) [@ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryan)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/6 "2014-08-14T23:11:22Z")
Take the P4 system, pull the hard drive and replace your presumed dead one Edited to add: But yeah, even a cheap newer system will be a much better performer than your old one… ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/7 "2014-08-14T23:41:14Z")
If you’re sure it’s the hard drive, you can replace those easily for around $50. Here for example - > **[Seagate Desktop HDD ST500DM002 500GB N/A 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"...](https://www.newegg.com/seagate-desktop-hdd-st500dm002-500gb/p/N82E16822148767)** > > Buy Seagate Desktop HDD ST500DM002 500GB N/A 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg! It would be way less hassle than trying to cope with some antediluvian beige beast from the dawn of XP. But do check first to be sure that’s the problem. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/8 "2014-08-15T13:23:18Z")
Sorry guys. Chances are you can’t put a P4’s hard drive into a dual core machine. I know because that was something I had planned on doing when my dad brought home a discarded dual core with no hard drive. The P4 likely uses ATA, while newer computers use SATA. And the power supplies probably won’t be compatible, either. There are adapters, but the hard drive is also likely slower and smaller. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the P4 for tinkering experience. And you can get a USB adapter and make the ATA drive into an external drive. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/9 "2014-08-15T15:44:26Z")
My daughter has a 3.2GHz P4 (a Sony Vaio) that I’ve installed Windows 7 on. It works well enough for web browsing and Microsoft Office. It’s a bit pokey, but not too bad. It can’t play full screen HD videos, but it can play full screen non-HD videos, so Netflix and Youtube both work as long as you keep the resolution below 720p. So, you can definitely use modern operating systems on it (Windows 7, for example). And, you can run Office 2010 on it. It would probably work even better with LibreOffice, and better still with Crunchbang Linux or something like that. I agree that the old hard drive won’t work with newer machines. ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/10 "2014-08-15T15:45:23Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Sorry guys. Chances are you can’t put a P4’s hard drive into a dual core machine. I know because that was something I had planned on doing when my dad brought home a discarded dual core with no hard drive. > > The P4 likely uses ATA, while newer computers use SATA. And the power supplies probably won’t be compatible, either. There are adapters, but the hard drive is also likely slower and smaller. > > That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the P4 for tinkering experience. And you can get a USB adapter and make the ATA drive into an external drive. That’s what I thought, regarding the compatibility issues. Hadn’t thought about adapting the ATA drive into an external drive. Right now I already have a 1.5 TB external drive and another 1 TB external drive (I double-backed everything up, having learned the hard way from my last PC that once a HD goes, it’s very unlikely that you can get anything back from it), but I’m thinking there’s no such thing as too much backup storage. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/11 "2014-08-15T16:01:34Z")
you can get PCI cards to control PATA(IDE) and SATA drives. so you could run the drive. you may not be able to boot from it. getting a controller car is cheaper than buying an enclosure for PATA. you can get USB connections for PATA and SATA for about the same price maybe $12, without an enclosure. i run xbuntu on an old machine of that type. works just fine. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/12 "2014-08-15T17:00:01Z")
Sata was introduced in [2003](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_revision_1.0_-_1.5_Gbit.2Fs_-_150_MB.2Fs). Pentium 4 was sold from [2000 to 2008](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4). So that free hard drive could well be a SATA drive; there’s no way to know without the machine in front of you. That said, a brand new internal hard drive for the OPs busted PC isn’t expensive, and if you have an OS install ready to go to put on it, that’s certainly a more reasonable option IMO. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2014, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/13 "2014-08-16T17:05:10Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > Sata was introduced in [2003](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_revision_1.0_-_1.5_Gbit.2Fs_-_150_MB.2Fs). Pentium 4 was sold from [2000 to 2008](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4). So that free hard drive could well be a SATA drive; there’s no way to know without the machine in front of you. > > That said, a brand new internal hard drive for the OPs busted PC isn’t expensive, and if you have an OS install ready to go to put on it, that’s certainly a more reasonable option IMO. True, but my experience is that most P4s that had SATA were hybrids with both ATA and SATA, and every time I’ve seen a hyrbid, the drive that came with it was ATA. then again, I mostly get cheaper machines. So I guess just take what I said as a warning. It may very well be an ATA drive, and your new computer probably isn’t a hybrid. (Then again, I’m surprised that P4s were still sold in 2008. Even the cheap eMachines computer I got around that time was better than that. And its processor was from 2005.) ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/14 "2014-08-17T01:05:03Z")
Gift horse Mouth What are you looking at? Take the thing, even if it winds up not suiting your needs, you can just throw it out or pass it on to someone who can use it. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/15 "2014-08-17T05:12:14Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Take the thing, even if it winds up not suiting your needs, you can just throw it out or pass it on to someone who can use it. OP: probably this. Concur, what the hell. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-get-a-free-pentium-4-worth-it/695551/16 "2014-08-17T14:18:58Z")
don’t throw out. pass it on or recycle it. old machines can work well with a lightweight linux.