My computer spec is in my profile. Is there anything glaringly obvious that people would say needs an upgrade?
I think the graphics card and the soundcard are the oldest parts of the system. RAM max on the mobo is 4Gb I think, but I don't know if that is dependent on a 64bit OS being installed, which isn't the case.
Any suggestions welcome :)
I think that is about a 2007 era CPU, dual core?
The Radeon a bit older?
Problem is--if you choose to upgrade CPU, you may have to upgrade motherboard and RAM as well---you can't just plan on upgrading 1 component.
Given its age overall, I'd be reluctant to save anything other than possibly the hard drive, case, monitor, and OS.
You may be able to drop in another AMD CPU into that motherboard. I didn't check nor do I know how much of an improvement that might make by itself.
I think that's about right, yeah. It's actually my brother's old system that he let me have when it wasn't working. The Radeon I think is around 2004.
That's sense talking there! :) You are right. As I said, the system actually was my brother's old one. My main computer is my laptop, so this is a secondary one (even though the laptop's actually not massively faster). Yes, the computer does do what I want it to do, it's just fun to tinker with stuff sometimes, isn't it
Your mobo is nearly 4 years old with a AM2 socket and will support a max of 4GB of DDR2 RAM. While many AM3 CPUs will fit the AM2 socket you won't get all the features available.
I would agree with ignatz and THW, save the core components and build a new PC with uop to date parts when possible, or just keep this one plugging along. there's not much you can do to upgrade and get a big bang for the buck.
A couple of years ago I started with this bare bones PC kit.
MotherBoard - Asus M2N68-AM SE2 µATX Motherboard
Processor - AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6GHz
Ram - 2GB Ultra PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Memory
And other assorted parts, case, power supply, hard drive etc.
I slowly upgraded to this.
MotherBoard - Asus M4N68T-M V2 µATX Motherboard
Processor - AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
Ram - 8GB 4GB X 2 Kingston PC10600 DDR3 1333MHz Memory
Video - NVIDIA Geforce GT 220 1024 Meg PCIe
I bought the video card first, then the M4N68-AM SE2 and DDR3. The M4N68 let me use my old Athlon II and all the other parts from the bare bones kit. Now that I've upgraded just about everything else I have two PC's. The original bare bones kit and what I'm using now thats in my profile. I went the way I did because money is tight and I have to buy things in dribs and drabs. My system is nothing to brag about but it does what I want. I can play all the games I like and run the programs I need. :)
There are always options.
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