Motherboard /processor upgrade ?

[robgraham]

I've Dell Dimension 5000 which must be in the order of 7 or 8 years old. There's no problems with it apart from it being bit slow on photo processing, which is the only processor intensive activity I do apart form a bit of SketchUp and that seems OK.

Is it new wine into old bottles to consider a motherboard/processor upgrade ? If it's worth doing how do I work out what board type is in it at the moment and what would I be best to look for ? I'm quite happy to go the Ebay path and look for someone else's upgrading cast- off.

Thanks for any help

Rob

[Tim Watts]

Yes - for that age...

[David WE Roberts]

You will need a new mother board, processor, and memory - which is most of the cost of a new PC. You may well need a new PSU because the older MoBos had less power requirements and fewer connectors so the PSU may not have enough connectors. The hard discs may be PATA and small - somee modern MoBos only do SATA.

So you may be only saving the cost of a case.

Just keeping a friend's Dell staggering on and have been contemplating much the same thing - with the conclusion that he'd be better off with a new laptop. :-)

Cheers

Dave R

[Stephen H]

I build PCs as a hobby all the time. I used to at first save quite a bit of money doing the self build route vs buying a ready built system.

Also at the time, laptops were more expensive than similar specced desktop PCs.

Now, there's no saving in it doing self build compared to buying a system box from Tesco's as you can re-use the keyboard, mouse and monitor and printer. Laptops now seem to have reached parity price wise with their similar specced desktop equivalents.

The price premium seems to have moved to the tablet and smartphone market now. An Apple Ipad costs more than a laptop now.

Tesco do system boxes from 300 quid upwards and laptops from 270 quid upwards. I could not match let alone beat that price wise for a self build now.

[SteveW]

Older Dells (and possibly newer ones) use none standard motherboards and fixings, so a generic motherboard won't be a straight replacement.

SteveW

[Bob Eager]

And some use non standard PSUs, but with a plug that fits. Lots of magic smoke.

[GB]

The copy of Windows you got was a machine is locked to the Dell BIOS on the motherboard, so if you change that to a generic motherboard you will also need a new copy of Windows.

Have you checked to see whether you can put an upgraded processor on the existing motherboard? That particular machine takes Pentium 4HT processors.

I thought of upgrading the processor in my own 4 year old Dell, but I am finding that people are asking silly money for what are now second-hand out of date CPUs.

[RJH]

I did a complete system change a couple of years back and, when locked out of Windows, I phoned MS and was given a new key. ISTR something like

2 or 3 major hardware changes were allowed, bless 'em. I can't remember the details, other than it was surprisingly painless.

Rob

[Brian Gaff]

The working machines are probably best left as they are, as they could be turned into handy little servers on the network or just used for non demanding stuff on the network. the main issue will be keeping any anti virus up to date when microsoft stop supporting the xp systems. I recall when 98 was stopped nobody made an anti virus after about a year or so.

Brian

[Stephen H]

I agree totally on SteveW's point on Dells.

[Stephen H]

Agree with the point regarding Windows being locked to the Dell Bios....

[geoff]

In message , Stephen H writes

But you can tailor it to your requirements (to an extent)

[Sam Plusnet]

Are you still using the same photo processing software? If so, and photo processing has slowed down over time, you might get away without spending much money - perhaps none.

Run CCleaner[1], remove any unused applications & games etc, tidy up the Registry. Defrag your hard disk.

If that doesn't do it, check how much RAM is fitted & see what it would cost to double it. (if your using 32 bit windows, there's a limit on how much RAM it can use).

[1] When installing CCleaner, it will suggest adding a (Yahoo?) toolbar to your browser - just say no.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Not so. My XP Pro I ran for years was an ex-Dell OEM disc which didn't ever ask or give a stuff about the hardware.

[stuart noble]

It seems that big corporate users throw stuff out after 4 years so there's usually a glut of Dells on EBay

[Mark]

And you can install decent components rather than an unnamed PSU and an ECS motherboard from the cheap box shifters.

[Mark]

And uninstall all the software that you don't use any more.

I hate this. I would not use software that attempts to trick people to install crapware.

[Man at B&Q]

My employer now crushes absolutely everything (used to be just the HDDs) due to an attack of corporate IT paranoia. Hugely powerful machines when new, still very powerful after 4 years. They used to sell them off to employess for charity...

MBQ

[The Natural Philosopher]

The problem I have had in the past is that old cases don't fit new motherboards, and cases are in any case cheap.

So I generally ask the question of my PC builder, and if the answer is 'it wont fit' get a new case.

The RAM doesn't fit either, and in fact usually the only components that are reusable are the disk and CDROM drive, and if its that old, generally I don't want the disk anyway.

So unless you can simply replace the CPU Id say replace the whole machine.

Its less expensive than you think. A CPU/board/RAM/Case/Disk/GPU setup is generally sub £250 where I buy. I buy what's cheap and as fast as the money will afford.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My brother in law is the man who gives the order to crush..

"The cost of taking them apart to remove and crush the disks alone is greater than the cost of crushing the whole box: And the overhead and cost of selling the box would negate its actually resale value, without a disk and a windows license."