Reviving an older comp..... help me organize my list of things to buy!!!!!!!!!

[rickytan]

OK well I found my old compaq desktop up in my attic the other day and I figure id give it a "face lift" and just toy with it. The issue at hand is that I dont know what I should be looking to buy for it first cause I would like to stay on my tight budget at the time. Here are the specs on the computer

Windows XP
AMD Sempron 3000+ 2.00GHz
256 MB ram
80gig harddrive

the computer is basically stock all around. I know im going to have to upgrade the RAM but what Im not so sure about is what i should do about cooling, video cards....ext.

I'm not a huge gamer but I want a computer that I can multi task with and have the ability to game a little.

 

[zmatt]

Im guessing its s754. For starters its a rule of thumb that s754 machine shad about 2gigs max ram on the motherboards, you really didnt much more thna that back then, and you still don't for the most part. Anyways Ram is cheap so jsut grab some name brand ram in 512 or 1 gig sticks. To find out what the biggest size of ram each slot will take, take the max ram the mobo will accept and divide that by the slots. ex: if you have 2 slots with 2 gigs max, each slot will take 1 gig.

as for video card you can grab a geforce 6800 for cheap now, that should complement it fine.

 

[Aragorn2316]

Yeah, with the prices now, you can put together a fairly nice computer for under $400. Check out tigerdirect.com, they have really good prices. I just picked up a pack of 2 1GB DDR2 RAM for 69.99 and they also have good deals on video cards. zmatt mentioned the 6800 and I think you can get that for around 50. Be careful with your motherboard though and make sure its compatible with this stuff, as a lot has changed.

 

[rickytan]

should i upgrade the motherboard

 

[rickytan]

anyone?

 

[veg1992]

no... heres the reason.... thats far to outdated to even want to upgrade.... but you could always get a new board (some random socket 939) and get an Opteron 165 and reuse your ram and such, but you'd then need a new vid card...

 

[san21893]

With all this changing you may be off getting a new case and starting a new build.

 

[rickytan]

true....