Upgrade

[Aatical_1]

Hi

My cousin got an old pc which he was thinking of upgrading however his motherboard went bad. The specs of the previous system was 2.6ghz intel celeron, two 512 ram chips, two hard drives (a seagate barracuda ST3200820A -200gb and a segate barracuda ST340014A - 40Gb)

He is also running windows xp

Could you assist me in buying components for a good upgrade. if any other information is needed I will surely provide. thanks

[tomtoon]

You could upgrade the ram.
To determine what RAM he can have in there, if anymore, go www.crucial.com and get him to run their scanner, as it is very accurate

[Aatical_1]

you might have misunderstood. the motherboard is now dead. and will have to be changed. i want to know what is a good motherboard to buy that i can integrate all the old components in, while upgrading the processor.. i would rather to have an onboard vid card with the option of adding a new video card later.

[Aatical_1]

as a matter of foget that its a upgrade, think of it like i am building a totally new system and keeping as mcuh components from the old. i will run the the program to find out the exact ram.

at the moment i have now 2 hard drives - 200gb and 40gb
a cd rom drive and two 512 ram chips

any other information needed?

[tomtoon]

Oh sorry, Yes i didnt read it properly.

Is the celeron socket 775?

Is the cd rom IDE or SATA?

Same with he HD's are they IDE or SATA?

[phigdon]

First scrap the RAM, RAM is cheap right now and what is available is better and faster than the 512's you are trying to save.

Second, are you looking for an Intel or AMD build. glc or shadowpr will probably take care of the Intel side but I like AMD myself and I dont know how many Intel boards support IGP's. If you want AMD,
mobo- IGP HD3300.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...6&Tpk=M4A78T-E
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103649
RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...W3X4G1600C9DHX
get a DVD-RW instead of reusing the CD. They are only $25 and will be much faster and more versatile than the old drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827118030
Also upgrade to bigger and faster HDD's and clone the old ones over. You will see an improvement in performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136284
Also you will more than likely need a new PSU and upgrade the case to more current hardware. ie. USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, firewire.

This is about $500 not including shipping or a case/PSU.

[not important]

Moat all newer motherboards are equipped with ONE PATA connector that supports two PATA devices so if your HDD's and optical drives are PATA you will need to replace something with SATA.

[glc]

Those are IDE hard drives.

Is this a name brand computer such as a HP or eMachine? If so, please tell us the brand and model. If it's not, please open the case and read the label on the power supply and tell us the brand and model.

I think you are going to wind up essentially building a whole computer. What is the budget, and what does he want to do with the computer?

[Khalil]

Some of the name brands like Dell and eMachines use funky front panel headers and you may not be able to just throw in a different motherboard in there without making major changes to the wiring. It would help as glc suggested if we knew what make and model of this machine.

[glc]

A lot of them also do not have removable I/O shields and a replacement with anything except a OEM won't line up.

[Aatical_1]

it was a pc that was built for him, i will look on the inside to read the brand and model will do this when i get home

I am leaning more to intel than amd

@ not importnat are you saying i will not be able to use my old hard drives? or is it that i can use both hard drives but will have to get a sata optical drive.

[not important]

Originally Posted by Aatical_1 @ not importnat are you saying i will not be able to use my old hard drives? or is it that i can use both hard drives but will have to get a sata optical drive.

You could use the 2 IDE HDD's and get an SATA optical drive but my best suggestion would be to replace one of the HDD's with an SATA drive. SATA DVDRW's are very cheap, under $30 retail, so if your budget allows I would also get one of those.

[glc]

*IF* this upgrade is feasible, the best thing to do is use only the 200 gig drive and the existing optical - and get a USB adapter for the 40 gig and make it an external for backing up important files.

I am guessing right now that you will need a motherboard, processor, ram, and possibly a power supply. Still need to know what he wants to do with it (i.e. does he want a gamer or just a web surfer - email - homework - music/video box?). If he wants a gamer, is this a standard (7 rear slot) or a micro (4 rear slot) ATX case?