Howdy,
The internet always brings me back to you folks. I look forward to your advice.
I dropped at $1000 bucks on an HP machine (hp pavilion d4100e) back in the day. I'll spare you the saga of trying to replace OEM XP home with XP professional. Suffice to say, it likes to eat DVD drives and it rarely gets in battles with the graphics card (7900) where it tries to change some setting and makes the screen a lovely set of diagnonal lines. Never did figure that one out. Also, the fan is so excitable I just took the side off to let it breath.
Anyway, I'm trying to squeeze the last of the gaming juice out of it that I can (works perfectly for work) before I finally cave and build a real machine. For that, I figure I need to replace the graphics card and CPU. I could be convinced to buy a SSD drive as well, as I have a copy of Windows 7 waiting on the shelf and a dual boot sounds swell.
Ideally I'd like to keep the upgrades rather cheap, as I assume the motherboard and power supply are antiquated and I'd like to build that new machine in the next year or two. Maybe under a $100 buying used parts?
Please bear with me while I get my system information posted. I shall do that within the hour I hope.
Thank you again for your sage advice in advance.
The internet always brings me back to you folks. I look forward to your advice.
I dropped at $1000 bucks on an HP machine (hp pavilion d4100e) back in the day. I'll spare you the saga of trying to replace OEM XP home with XP professional. Suffice to say, it likes to eat DVD drives and it rarely gets in battles with the graphics card (7900) where it tries to change some setting and makes the screen a lovely set of diagnonal lines. Never did figure that one out. Also, the fan is so excitable I just took the side off to let it breath.
Anyway, I'm trying to squeeze the last of the gaming juice out of it that I can (works perfectly for work) before I finally cave and build a real machine. For that, I figure I need to replace the graphics card and CPU. I could be convinced to buy a SSD drive as well, as I have a copy of Windows 7 waiting on the shelf and a dual boot sounds swell.
Ideally I'd like to keep the upgrades rather cheap, as I assume the motherboard and power supply are antiquated and I'd like to build that new machine in the next year or two. Maybe under a $100 buying used parts?
Please bear with me while I get my system information posted. I shall do that within the hour I hope.
Thank you again for your sage advice in advance.