Help on upgrading old desktop pc

[ollie7]

Hey,

Im pretty new to the computer scene and have decided to give upgrading an old PC (Advent 3117) a go as it is just gathering dust. Plus I thought it would be more cost effective (hopefully) than buying a new desktop.

I was hoping to get a dual core processor of some kind and around 4gb of ram as I would like it to handle some HD video editing software as well as the general browsing stuff.

Well here are it's specs as I am guessing this will help you guys determine what I need and advise me:


CPU Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (Hyperthreading)
BIOS Phoenix-Award BIOS. Press the Delete key to enter
Motherboard TriGem IT865GE (MS 6743)
Memory 512MB DDR PC2700 RAM (4 memory slots. Max 4GB)
Hard Drive 80GB 7200rpm UDMA
CD Drive 16 x DVD-ROM
52x CD-RW
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive fitted
Video Card nVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (128MB)
Sound Card C-Media 9739A AC'97
Speakers Advent stereo powered speakers
Modem Generic Soft 56K modem
Network Card Intel 82562EZ
Ports - Front 1x IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
2x USB 2.0
1x Headphone
1x Microphone
Ports - Back 1x PS/2 mouse
1x PS/2 keyboard
1x IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
4x USB
1x Parallel
2x Serial
1x LAN
1x Audio Line in
1x Audio Line out
1x Microphone
1x VGA
1x S-Video (TV-out)
1x DVI
1x Telephone
1x Modem
Case D1
Keyboard Advent multimedia keyboard
Mouse Standard PS/2 mouse

My budget is around £200-250 roughly and I know this is bound to get bigger!

Thanks in advance!

 

[Indigo]

Based on what I (can't) find for your motherboard, it's probably best to just toss the motherboard, CPU and RAM and buy those from scratch. You can do a fairly decent mATX AMD board and a dual or quad core AMD + 4GB of RAM for about the price you're stating. Sadly, the video card can't be reused, but even some of today's onboard chips are better than that FX5200 you have.

What is your upper limit as far as funds go?

Here's what I could do: (Prices are US $)

Motherboard: Newegg.com - MSI 760GM-E51 AM3 AMD 760G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

RAM: Newegg.com - Patriot 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model PSD34G1333K

CPU: Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDX945WFGMBOX

Total in US: $244.97

The CPU has more than enough horsepower for what you'd like to do, and helps keep you as up to date as possible, the motherboard while not top of the line is basically the same integrated AMD GPU as on the newer 8x series chipsets, and the RAM should be more than enough for a while. The motherboard would support your old hard drive, but you'd have to buy a new CDROM to plug into SATA, but those are cheap enough. If you really want to add more speed to the system, getting a modern 500 GB+ hard drive for about $40 on top of this would help things out a lot (in addition to the CDROM upgrade)

So not too bad, but there's a place to start.

 

[ollie7]

Based on what I (can't) find for your motherboard, it's probably best to just toss the motherboard, CPU and RAM and buy those from scratch. You can do a fairly decent mATX AMD board and a dual or quad core AMD + 4GB of RAM for about the price you're stating. Sadly, the video card can't be reused, but even some of today's onboard chips are better than that FX5200 you have.

What is your upper limit as far as funds go?

Here's what I could do: (Prices are US $)

Motherboard: Newegg.com - MSI 760GM-E51 AM3 AMD 760G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

RAM: Newegg.com - Patriot 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model PSD34G1333K

CPU: Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDX945WFGMBOX

Total in US: $244.97

The CPU has more than enough horsepower for what you'd like to do, and helps keep you as up to date as possible, the motherboard while not top of the line is basically the same integrated AMD GPU as on the newer 8x series chipsets, and the RAM should be more than enough for a while. The motherboard would support your old hard drive, but you'd have to buy a new CDROM to plug into SATA, but those are cheap enough. If you really want to add more speed to the system, getting a modern 500 GB+ hard drive for about $40 on top of this would help things out a lot (in addition to the CDROM upgrade)

So not too bad, but there's a place to start.

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, but what would I look out for when buying a new motherboard. For instance what numbers and things so I can make my old parts fit apart from the memory. I would have liked to have ordered it from new egg but they don't ship outside the US.

Thankls

Actually I was thinking this:

MOTHERBOARD BUNDLE | AMD ATHLON II 260 3.2GHz DUAL CORE | eBay UK

What graphics card would be a good match for this and could I transfer my sound card and everything else like the old hard drive?

 

[Indigo]

I only use Newegg as a point of reference, I was aware you were outside of the US. The bundle you linked isn't too bad, but be sure you buy the right type of RAM afterward, you can't reuse the RAM You have now on that bundle.