Best Upgrade Option on Old Computer?

[sabot00]

My dad has a old HP Desktop that I want to upgrade for him. The Core 2 E4500 (2.2GHz, 2MB Cache, 65nm) is really starting to feel its age.

As it's an HP Desktop the mobo is really shit, so my options are:

1. Keep the mobo, upgrade to a Core 2 E6xxx (the best CPU supported)
2. Toss the mobo, buy another LGA 775 mobo and overclock the E4500 (the cooler is actually pretty beefy)
3. Buy another mobo and CPU, keeping the case, GPU (4670), DDR2 RAM, PSU, etc.

What experiences have you guys had with ebay? A lot of the older Core 2 and AMD cpus are really cheap.

 

[kooks147]

Well you can put in an ssd, that'll speed up even the slowest of computers. But of course it depends what he's using it for. It won't help with games for instance, but opening up programs will be super fast.

an ssd wont be a good upgrade sorry. what you would want to make it faster will be a better cpu, RAM, or maybe the mobo.

 

[CTurbo]

A ssd is without a doubt the best upgrade you can do to an old computer. All forms of normal usage will be faster. Doing a clean install of whatever Windows he's using will speed things up quite a bit too. Maxing out the RAM will help. I wouldn't upgrade the cpu unless you find a much better Core 2 for well under $50 as you are not going to notice a difference.

 

[sabot00]

Well the reason I wanted to upgrade the CPU was because I noticed in task manager the CPU would reach 100% usage quite often, so I thought a faster CPU would help.

 

[CTurbo]

It will help, just not as much as you think. Your hard drive is almost certainly your current bottleneck. A ssd combined with a clean install of windows would be huge upgrade that you will notice all the time.

Which Windows is he using? How much RAM does he currently have and what is the system max?

 

[sabot00]

Currently it is 4GB RAM, Windows Vista.

 

[CTurbo]

Ok so RAM is not the issue. I say try an ssd. Check to make sure he at least has sata II ports.

 

[beyondlogic]

My dad has a old HP Desktop that I want to upgrade for him. The Core 2 E4500 (2.2GHz, 2MB Cache, 65nm) is really starting to feel its age.

As it's an HP Desktop the mobo is really shit, so my options are:

1. Keep the mobo, upgrade to a Core 2 E6xxx (the best CPU supported)
2. Toss the mobo, buy another LGA 775 mobo and overclock the E4500 (the cooler is actually pretty beefy)
3. Buy another mobo and CPU, keeping the case, GPU (4670), DDR2 RAM, PSU, etc.

What experiences have you guys had with ebay? A lot of the older Core 2 and AMD cpus are really cheap.

personally i would scrap it

theres a 3rd option everyone seems to miss this alot but you would have to reinstall vista for this to work

motherboard supports older devices newer tech has a ide port on the board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157323

cpu
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=FX-4300BOX&c=CJ or go to max supported fx 6300
ram

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-PC3-10600-Unbuffered-240-Pin-CT2KIT25664BA1339/dp/B001R4BT1M/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1390778386&sr=1-2&keywords=2x2+ddr3+1333mhz

whats your psu rated as ?

this will stomp all over your dads old rig lol

 

[kooks147]

It will help, just not as much as you think. Your hard drive is almost certainly your current bottleneck. A ssd combined with a clean install of windows would be huge upgrade that you will notice all the time.

Which Windows is he using? How much RAM does he currently have and what is the system max?

if he is able to get a decent cpu that is a lot faster than it wont be easily maxed out from normal tasks so he is right in wanting a cpu upgrade. As of storage youll be fine with a regular hdd you will get faster performance with RAM or cpu upgrade.

 

[PEJUman]

What CTurbo said... and if the SSD does get him the speed he wants; then he can entertain additional upgrades, and carry the SSD foward. SSD is a single best upgrade money can buy at the moment, slow CPU or not.

This is coming from an OC freak that was pleasantly surprised with the speed improvement on AMD C-60 + SSD, FYI C-60 is atom level performance. Yes, CPU still pegs, but the system response is substantially improved to the point I can get reasonably quick laptop experience under 100% CPU load.

 

[kooks147]

What CTurbo said... and if the SSD does get him the speed he wants; then he can entertain additional upgrades, and carry the SSD foward. SSD is a single best upgrade money can buy at the moment, slow CPU or not.

This is coming from an OC freak that was pleasantly surprised with the speed improvement on AMD C-60 + SSD, FYI C-60 is atom level performance. Yes, CPU still pegs, but the system response is substantially improved to the point I can get reasonably quick laptop experience under 100% CPU load.

A cpu shouldnt be maxed out at 100 though. If you have a faster cpu than you can get more processes done thus making the pc faster. If it is at 100% than that means that everything that comes in after to the cpu will be put on the back burners untill the cpu is able to assess them. And yes that includes processes coming from your storage whether it is an SSD or an HDD. If i am playing a game and I am getting terrible fps and i look at what is happening and it tells me that my cpu is 100% and my gpu is 20% my last thought would be oh... i need more storage. no. that only affects load times and with simple tasks it doesnt make a difference. What I would want is to get a faster pc so than all the processes can be processed faster making the pc faster and hand tasks better

 

[PEJUman]

What CTurbo said... and if the SSD does get him the speed he wants; then he can entertain additional upgrades, and carry the SSD foward. SSD is a single best upgrade money can buy at the moment, slow CPU or not.

This is coming from an OC freak that was pleasantly surprised with the speed improvement on AMD C-60 + SSD, FYI C-60 is atom level performance. Yes, CPU still pegs, but the system response is substantially improved to the point I can get reasonably quick laptop experience under 100% CPU load.

A cpu shouldnt be maxed out at 100 though. If you have a faster cpu than you can get more processes done thus making the pc faster. If it is at 100% than that means that everything that comes in after to the cpu will be put on the back burners untill the cpu is able to assess them. And yes that includes processes coming from your storage whether it is an SSD or an HDD. If i am playing a game and I am getting terrible fps and i look at what is happening and it tells me that my cpu is 100% and my gpu is 20% my last thought would be oh... i need more storage. no. that only affects load times and with simple tasks it doesnt make a difference. What I would want is to get a faster pc so than all the processes can be processed faster making the pc faster and hand tasks better

You're right! but for day to day use (key word here is Dad), I think the PC spends more time waiting on slow HDD more than it's being pegged at 100% CPU. what I am and and I believe CTurbo is saying, you spend more time waiting on HDD than 100% CPU. Thus best bang for the buck would be SSD, then processing power. A 100% pegged multicore CPU does not equal an unresponsive PC, that's what interrupt supposed to do.

I honestly cannot tell the difference on loading 1 app (say chrome/word/excel) from idle using any of my SSD(s) equipped PCs (from the lowly 1Ghz C-60, to the 4.2 Ghz hexacore i7 970 and 4.9GHz quadcore i7 4770k). The high power ones shine on compressions, gaming, heavy multitasking, matlab/video editing.

My wife, dad, sister/brothers (i.e. normal people) don't really care if the PC takes an extra 20 seconds to un-zip a file, as long as it does not feel like it's stuck being unresponsive...

since the PC is old, the only sensible upgrade is CPU-motherboard combo, but that would also means DDR3. thus he would be hard pressed to keep it under $200. for around $100 he can get 128 SSD OS drive, and keep the old HDD for data.

one thing I should've add, OP's CPU should be under 5% at idle (doing nothing), otherwise it might have some bloatware(s) issue.

 

[CTurbo]

I bought my wife a 11" Acer netbook with 2GB RAM, the AMD C60 1.0ghz cpu, and a 320GB 7200rpm hdd. It was so super slow it was almost unusable. I upgraded the RAM to 4GB and swapped out the hard drive for a 180GB OCZ Agility ssd. These two upgrades (combined with the clean install of Win7) turned that netbook into a pretty damn quick little laptop. Battery life went from about 5.5hr to about 9hr too.

I have a 17" Dell laptop with an 3rd gen i7, 16GB 1600mhz RAM, and a 1TB 7200rpm hdd. Doesn't sound like I needed an upgrade right? Well, I moved that 1TB hdd over to the 2nd slot, and put in a 128GB Samsung 830 ssd into the first slot, did a clean install of Win7 and it made a huge difference. Everything is faster.

I have a 10-11year old Gateway laptop that is still usable. It came with 1GB RAM, a single core 2.6ghz AMD Athlon 64 4000+, and a 4000rpm hdd. I maxed out the RAM to 1.5GB, swapped the hard drive for a 7200rpm hard drive, and did a clean install of WinXP. It made a huge difference. It's reasonable quick for such an old laptop.

Years ago, I had an old Dell Dimension E521 desktop that came with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3600+ 1.9 GHz. I was gifted a desktop for parts that had a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5400+ 2.8 GHz. I swapped the cpus and even added another fan to the case. It was decently faster, but it didn't make as big of a difference than I expected. It was a free upgrade, but I think it would have probably been worth about $50. But that is a 900mhz x2 upgrade. You will notice a small improvement in such a large clock speed difference. Even still, it did not compare to a ssd upgrade. The hard drive is almost always the bottleneck in any system.

My cousin had an i3-2100 in his desktop and I put in an i5-3470 for him, and he was not happy with the performance increase. He sold that rig, and had me build him an all new system with an A10-5800k. I insisted he get a ssd for windows from the start so he took my word for it. Not only is he happy with his system, he swears it's faster than his i5 setup was. We all know an A10-5800k is NOT faster than an i5-3470.

If you can find your dad a better Core 2 that is at least 700-800mhz faster than his current 2.2ghz, but doesn't cost like $100, get it. 300-400mhz faster is not going to make very much difference, and may not even be noticeable. Even still I don't think I would pay more than about $50 to upgrade a cpu on such an old platform. Especially considering you can buy a brand new Intel g1610 + motherboard for about $80 that would destroy his current system.

Windows can only operate as fast as your hard drive will let it. With a ssd, windows can run at 100%. Everything is instant. Booting, starting, loading, installing, scanning, saving, searching, sorting, opening, closing, hibernation, sleep, and data transfer speeds are all considerably faster. Literally everything windows does is faster. It was even noticeable going from 4000rpm to 7200rpm. The only thing a ssd won't do is make a game play better.

 

[aylafan]

If your motherboard supports a Core2Quad then I highly recommend you swap your E4500 out for it. My Core2Duo E6420 (2.13GHz) in my Dell computer was constantly hitting 80-100% for both cores and making the whole computer feel slow and laggy when I tried to open several programs. I found a Core2Quad Q6600 (2.4GHz) for $50 on Craigslist and it made a huge difference in multi-tasking and playing games. All 4 cores in my Q6600 rarely go above 50% and it usually idles below 10% multi-tasking doing day-to-day stuff like browsing the web, listening to music, watching a HD movie, etc. I would not spend more than $50 on a Core2Quad though since it's old technology. Building a whole new system that is some-what decent would cost you at least $450 and that's with the cheaper components (lower-tier processor, cheap motherboard, new memory (DDR3), maybe a new video card, etc.).

 

[Guest]

My dad has a old HP Desktop that I want to upgrade for him. The Core 2 E4500 (2.2GHz, 2MB Cache, 65nm) is really starting to feel its age.

As it's an HP Desktop the mobo is really shit, so my options are:

1. Keep the mobo, upgrade to a Core 2 E6xxx (the best CPU supported)
2. Toss the mobo, buy another LGA 775 mobo and overclock the E4500 (the cooler is actually pretty beefy)
3. Buy another mobo and CPU, keeping the case, GPU (4670), DDR2 RAM, PSU, etc.

What experiences have you guys had with ebay? A lot of the older Core 2 and AMD cpus are really cheap.

i have bought several good processors off ebay. any where from $8.00 to $25.00. most are pulled from working pc some have been new in box. i would try cleaning all the not needed crap off the hard drive before i would do any upgrading. someone gave me an old dell with an e6300 core 2 duo in that they said ran slow and i just did a raw install windows 7 32 bit and it runs like a brand new desktop. poorguy

 

[WhiteSnake91]

I cannot highly recommend an SSD and a fresh install of windows enough. It's a night and day difference, and, if you can get a higher clocked core 2 duo or ideally a quad that would help too. CTurbo was spot on in his post