Am I Shooting Foot Off By Upgrading Old PC?

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oathmark1

oathmark1

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May 15, 2016
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I'm thinking that I can take old CPU's on old Mobo's, and increase their RAM. I might add an SSD too.

Is there a limit to the benefit of adding hardware upgrades, and how can I tell what it is in every computer I come across?


Thanks
 
Solution
cherry blossoms
I'm unaware of a single site that can tell you all that info for all manufacturers, perhaps someone else can chime in. Please note, you won't always be able to find an FCC number, so the govt FCC lookup site may be of no use.

A quick look at the Motherboard MIGHT tell you what you need to know. If no PCIe and Sata connectors, you're looking at a machine you might run windows 95 or xp if retro gaming is your thing. Consider the difficulty of sourcing working PATA drives, DDR2 memory, etc. Also, if it is an AIO and uses a nonstandard power cable to the motherboard or doesn't have standard pinouts for power/reset switch, pc speaker, etc, you'd have to source another case, power supply, and cables particular to that model for testing...
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oathmark1

oathmark1

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What do you do to figure it out?

Say you get a bunch of hardware, and basically you want to upgrade it, and send it back out. Pit stop1

What would you do to find out what's compatible with what you have got, and what are the limits of it as in how many Gigs, cores, etc?
 
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oathmark1

oathmark1

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May 15, 2016
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These are not running computers though. I'm talking worst case scenario I find a piece of hardware of a half built computer at a flea market, I get it home, and now it's asking me, "What?" I don't know what. How do I find it out?

I hear there are some websites that I can go to, dump in the model numbers or FCC numbers, and it comes back with a make and model. I think I can go from there to the Googled, and that'll give me the lowdown about what it can or can't ever do.

Sound familiar?
 
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cherry blossoms

cherry blossoms

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Apr 13, 2016
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I'm unaware of a single site that can tell you all that info for all manufacturers, perhaps someone else can chime in. Please note, you won't always be able to find an FCC number, so the govt FCC lookup site may be of no use.

A quick look at the Motherboard MIGHT tell you what you need to know. If no PCIe and Sata connectors, you're looking at a machine you might run windows 95 or xp if retro gaming is your thing. Consider the difficulty of sourcing working PATA drives, DDR2 memory, etc. Also, if it is an AIO and uses a nonstandard power cable to the motherboard or doesn't have standard pinouts for power/reset switch, pc speaker, etc, you'd have to source another case, power supply, and cables particular to that model for testing if it doesnt work.

If it DOES have standard connectors, and PCIe and sata ports, then a Wolfdale Core 2 Duo might be considered marginal at best for 1024x768 resolution, and may not support the ram amounts you want, or really benefit from a ssd r/t not being sata 3, and possibly not being properly setup even for sata2 depending on manufacturer.

You'll need to look on the motherboard for model and pull the heatsink to see what CPU you have.

You'll also need to source drivers for everything, and an OS appropriate to the hardware once you do identify it.
 
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Solution
CountMike

CountMike

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Oct 31, 2015
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Fist thing would be to avoid some parts, like MB and PSU, of brand name computers, (Dell, HP etc.) as they are usually specifically made for their computers and have non-standard parts and/or BIOS. Processors may be OK. RAM could be some for servers and may not work with "ordinary" MBs.
 
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