Upgrading An Old Computer

I would personally say rather than "upgrade" a 8 year old machine I would say save up some money, new machines can be built for as little as 500! It wouldn't be economical to try and upgrade such archaic technology

Hi, welcome to the forums.

Well let me break it down for you. You've got an old as dirt system, one which is probably going to struggle with average web browsing/video playing.

If you wanted, you could give it a few minor upgrades to bring it to date. I don't know how big the performance increase will be though.
-Bump up the ram to 2GB DDR3 (if mobo supports it, which I doubt)
-Drop a cheap old video card in there, like a 4670 or a newer one like a 5450/6450

That said, I think it's beyond the point if salvaging. It'd probably make more sense to start anew, using the old case/dvd drive.

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news   I just don't think the PC is worth uprading, really.

Thanks, but I am building a gaming PC at the moment as well. I just wanted this as a "on the side" project. I don't want to upgrade it and completely bring it up to date, I just want to get it going a bit faster then at the moment. And also, how do I find out how much RAM I could possibly add and if the 5450 or the 6450 is compatible with it? Thanks.

Actually, I just found out that up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM is compatible with it, but I am not sure about the graphics card. DO you think that the 6450 would be compatible with it?

your good for most cards, but I'd stick to a 5450, 5570, 5670 or 6450, 6570, 6670, as anything more will be severely bottlenecked by that CPU. all those cards are fairly cheap as well.

Thanks man! And if I decided to go with the 5450, would I need to buy a better power supply or am I good? The PC is a Dell Dimension 4700.

The 5450 pulls like 17w at load. You'll be fine, no matter what's under the hood.

Best answer selected by HomemadeChair.

Yeah, You can't really upgrade a CPU with that socket.. (Maybe you could find one on eBay but it really wouldn't be worth the money.)
Yeah, you can upgrade the ram Windows XP kinda sucks if you have less than 1 GB but you can get 4 times that amount in one ram stick of DDR 3 really cheap.

You need to upgrade:
-Your CPU
-Your Motherboard to support the new CPU
-Your RAM to be compatible with the new motherboard
-Your Power Supply because you likely won't have enough power for a video card.
-A new video card

So the only thing that you would be replacing is the mouse, keyboard, speakers and computer case (outter shell). But even that you might have to replace if the pins for the power and reset buttons aren't compatable with the new motherboard.

So in the end to upgrade you need to replace almost everything!

...
Yeah, don't waist your time/money. Just buy a new computer.
Here's a nice one that is also cheap...

High speed 6 Core CPU with 8 times the ram your computer has - $439
http://www.pcdirectsource.com/Item.cfm?ID=2622
OR
Intel Core i5 is an even better choice - $429
http://www.pcdirectsource.com/Item.cfm?ID=2661
Then just buy an HD 6770 or better.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey