Since I was already ordering stuff from Newegg (the new hard drive for the backup PC) I finally decided to break down and order some upgrades for the main PC. Nothing earth shaking, but enough to provide a reasonable - for the price - improvement in performance.
The upgrades included:
An A-DATA 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Desktop Memory Model ADBGC1A16 - Retail to replace the existing 512 MB (2 x 128MB) of PC2100 DDR memory.
An Intel Pentium 4 2.8 Northwood 2.8GHz Socket 478 Processor Model RK80532PE072512 - OEM to replace the existing 2.2 GHz Celeron processor.
and
A BFG Tech BFGR5500OC GeForce FX 5500 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail to replace the existing 32MB MX-400 NVidia card.
Total bill (after a $35 dollar rebate for the video card) came to less than $140.00. Much cheaper than I could get a new PC for, and none of the hassle of having to reinstall all of the software that would have come with a new PC. If I were to get motivated, I could reduce the cost of the upgrade even more by selling the old processor and video card on Ebay - although I doubt I'll get that motivated - more likely they will just gather dust along with all the other bits I have stashed in my parts bins.
Most amazing of all to me, all three upgrades installed without a hitch. I decided to retain the existing processor heat sink, but I did take the time to scrape off the gunk from the bottom of the old heat sink and to use a liberal glop of new heat sink compound. I did actually take the precaution of wearing a grounding wrist strap for the installation of the processor and memory. I elected to remove both of the old DIMMs and just go with the new memory, as I didn't want to slow down overall memory access by leaving one of the old chips in. I actually did read the directions first before installing the video card, which guided me to remove the old video driver prior to installing the new card, then canceling the Windows new hardware wizard and running the install from the supplied CD.
The machine still won't be blazing, and won't be beefy enough to run any games made in the last couple of years, but it definitely does handle my mundane daily chores with a bit more zip.
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Posted by David at August 25, 2007 05:49 AM