Upgrading an old Dell Dimension e521 for a smoother ride

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powerlinerouter

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Mar 13, 2015
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Hi all. I'll get the standard "I know nothing" bit in first:

I know nothing. As experts, I was hoping someone here might be able to help me with a potential upgrade project. My current system:

Windowx XP Pro Version 2002 SP 3 (LOL)
AMD Athlong 64x2 Dual Core Processor 4200+2.2Ghz
2.93 GB RAM (interesting decimal)

So you experts probably know how old this thing is. The little graphics card that it came with (nVidia 6800 LE) recently packed up so I'm rocking the VGA off the motherboard at the moment and my eyes are getting a little blurry.

I've done a little reading and see different opinions about just buying a new machine etc, however I'm not really looking at that just yet. I'm interested to explore a worthwhile upgrade that would acheive two main things:

1.
Run some games that are newer than C&C Red Alert 2 (LOL awesome game but think that 16 years on, a new game is in order!) I like strategy games, enjoy the Total War games however years ago got Shogun 2 and it was just a total no-go on the current setup.

2.
Allow for a smoother and faster general use experience of office/browsing/video playback


I saw something that looks like it may be the sort of thing I'm after where a guy has upgraded to:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 5600+ 2.8 ghzs AM2 socket
GPU: PNY Geforce GT 740 1 gb PCI-Express
Ram: 8 gbs of DDR2 667 mhzs
Hdd: Western Digital Blue 1 TB hdd
O.S.: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2WBereMl40)

I am a little unsure whether I could upgrade to this as I recall my RAM being limited to 4GB. All I've ever done in terms of changes to a computer is putting in more RAM, adding the hard drive, replacing a hard drive cable and unplugging and plugging in video cards.

So I'd like some advice on whether the above would be an appropriate and workable upgrade for my machine or if there's anything I'd have to do differently to acheive my goals. I have noticed many experts mentioning the need for a power supply upgrade but this is another uncertainty about the above upgrade as there is no mention of that.

As an extra bit of information, I happen to have an old Digidesign Mbox 2 from when I studied music production. Would having this plugged in in anyway aid the performance of my computer?


Many thanks for your time and help!
 
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Titan
Mar 25, 2010
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Unless you are just buying one part for the system, you are better off just selling the computer and getting a new or at least a newer one.

Upgrading our computer to run newer games is a bit like taking a 80 year old man and buying him $200 sneaker and some spandex pants to run in the Olympics. Won't really do much good.

What is your budget for the upgrade? You can find a used core i5 tower and get a low end video card for it for about $250. Much better than spending even half that upgrading a 10+ year old system.
 
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powerlinerouter

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Mar 13, 2015
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Hi and thanks for your reply. That might be the thing, because I'm looking to spend more like £100/£150. Being a total computer noob, I have no idea what the best thing to spend with that kind of money is.
 
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Titan
Mar 25, 2010
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Depends on your local market. Your old system won't run a good CPU, but you can upgrade the video card. Issue there is that just getting a better video card won't help you because the CPU will be too slow to run the games.

You need to start with a base setup for upgrades for it to do any good. You can get a low end video card and see how things run, it may be better, it may not. If not, you can just take that card and move it into a newer system. A used Core i3 or i5 tower shoud be about $150, maybe you can find one for less. Just don't get a small form or a desktop system with a tiny power supply. Best systems for upgrade ability are small/mid/full tower systems with a 300 watt or so power supply. 280 is also OK.
 
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powerlinerouter

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Mar 13, 2015
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Thanks for that. I'm a little unsure where I am at the moment as I don't know what a "good CPU" really means.

From a bit more reading, it seems that if I were to proceed with an upgrade on my machine and aim for a newer 64 bit Windows OS, I would need to potentially change the motherboard, which would be useful anyway to allow for more RAM. At which point my CPU options would change? Having a very brief look at motherboards, I have no idea what boards would fit in my case or if they are all the same size or not. Looking foward at GPUs, if I were to upgrade the PSU again, I don't know what would fit? Seems like a perfect opportunity for a website with lots of drop down menus filtering options as you go along! :)
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
60,387
1,081
152,940


For your budget there is nothing very good you can do to make the system faster. A newer Windows will cost you alomost $100 alone, that is pretty much all of your budget. You need about $600 to replace the system.

You can upgrade your existing system to run faster a bit for basic uses like email and watching videos, maybe some older games from the era of the CPU you have for about $100, get a small solid state drive and a cheaper video card like the R7 240 or GT 730 GDDR5. Forget about trying to get your current system to run newer games, you need a new OS, more RAM, faster CPU, newer motherboard, a new system in other words.

 
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