Making an HP a 6400f more awesome

[Lothar]

Hey everybody.
I bought this HP a6400f for about 400.00 and I was wondering if anyone had some thoughts as to where I should go with it. I basically just want to be able to play Everquest 2 and sort of thing. Here are the specs...

HP pavillion Model A6400F(KJ379AA)
Processor Intel Pentium dual-core E2200(2.2GHz)
Memory 3GB DDR2 800
Hard Drive 500GB SATA 7200RPM
Optical Drive 1 SuperMulti DVD Burner with LightScribe Technology
Graphics Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 128MB
Vista Home Premium
Motherboard Chipset Intel G33 LGA 775
Memory 3GB DDR2 800 DIMM 240-pin 1GB x 2 & 512MB x 2
Memory Slots (Available/Total) 0/4
Maximum Memory Supported 8GB
PCI Slots (Available/Total) (0/1) PCI slot
(1/1) PCI-E x16 slot
(2/2) PCI-E x1 slots

I was thinking....

1.) Replace the 250W PSU with a 450-600W PSU. I'm going to try and cannibalize one somewhere. Could this damage the system in some way?

2.) Get a nice HD4850 and stick it into the single PCI E 16x slot I have. (Hopefully it will fit.) OR I could just try and find a decent GPU that will run at 250V. Any suggestions?

3.) If it's possible, upgrade from 32 bit vista to 64 bit vista. (I can worry about this later but eventually I would like to be able to upgrade to 8 gigs.)

4.) I plan on trying to overclock the e2200 so I guess I'll need a CPU cooler. Probably one of the Xig coolers everyone here seems to like.
I'd like to one day replace the PCU with an e8400 if that will work. This motherboard looks cheap as hell. (new motherboard?

I really don't want to spend alot of money and end up wishing I had just built the whole thing.

And what do you think of my decision to buy it in the first place?

And thanks, by the way. I've learned so much from you people. Love this forum

 

[royalcrown]

okay, prob the oem motherboard wont allow overclocking, a 4850 would be wasted on a 2200, and you need to go to hp's website andf look up th maximum spec'd processor.

if your going to oc the 2200 i bet you are going to have to "pin mod" actually "pad mod your cpu in any case...gl.

 

[random1283]

For the E2200 proc try going with the 9800GT (aka 8800GT) if you're getting a new psu. You could try a 9500GT on the existing psu if you wanted but I'm not gauranteeing anthing

 

[runswindows95]

Better off saving the money and building a new computer. HP's are not designed for overclocking or major upgrading.

 

[Lothar]

Preciate the advice. I think I'll look into the fairly inexpensive 9500GT and forget about screwing around with anything else for now.

Hopefully this will work until that day when building a nehalem system makes sense.

 

[Graz73]

Hey Lothar, I just read this thread. I was given a 6400f for Christmas and am looking to fix it up. How did your upgrade work? What upgrades did you end up going with?