Looking to upgrade Dell Dimension 4600... Suggestions?

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danyal711

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
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I have had my Dell Dimension 4600 for the last 5 years or so and it has served me well. It's 2.8Ghz with HT and has 1GB of ram along with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. I know it's pretty outdated overall but it serves almost all my purposes and is still pretty quick.

Lately though, I have been noticing there are a few things it has problems with (mainly x264 videos). So I have decided that I want to upgrade it if it is economical (vs. buying a new one). I know new comps are pretty cheap now days but I am really quite happy with the case, I have plenty of HDs and my CDroms etc are all working fine. So really what I am thinking is I just want to get a new Mobo that supports quad core, along with a slightly better video card (PCIE) and ram to go along with it and I should be set.

What do you guys think / what is a good price I could do all this for (I don't want to go cheap, I want really reliable stuff, but it doesn't have to be the latest top of the line). I can be a couple gens old... I can even settle for dual core with HT if that drops the price a ton.

-Danyal
 
Realistically, there's nothing you can do to that PC that would bring it up to anywhere near the performance of a modern rig. It would be far more economical to put your money toward a full set of new parts. I don't believe your motherboard idea will work, since IIRC your CPU is a socket 478 chip, so there's nothing out there that will support both it and a modern CPU.

The good news is that it really doesn't take a lot of cash to put together a decent modern system, so put up a budget and we'll see what we can do for you.
 
danyal711 said:
Do you mean that a new mobo wont fit in the case?
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No, I mean that you won't be able to get a new mobo that works with all of your parts and will also support modern components. Your current stuff is just too outdated.
 
doubt I could get much cash for this one...

Which components wouldnt work? I would upgrade the mobo, CPU, PSU, RAM, vid card? I know it sounds like im pratically buying a whole new rig but at least I avoid case and HDDs.
 
At that point, you might as well just forget the case and HDs. The case probably won't fit a lot of components anyway, especially if it's one of Dell's older designs. As for the HDs, depending on the capacity, it may be more worthwhile to just replace them all with a single larger drive, since a modern SATA2 drive will be significantly faster than anything you've got in that box.
 
it looks like it's a standard mATX motherboard. Is it one of the slim cases or one of the full size cases? Theoretically, you could just drop in a mATX board with a new processor and RAM and hook up most of your old components. you'd probably need a PCI IDE adapter, and it's probably easier to get new drives, but it could be done. Also, you'd very likely need a new power supply. Nothing fancy, but just something with more power.
 
Personally I'd just get a Dell Vostro 200 w/19" monitor for $350 shipped. It has a e2200 Pentium Dual Core and 160GB HDD. Sell the monitor for $125 and maybe your old components too and your upgrade would be less than $150.
 
Firstly, the 4600 case is not suited for upgrading. If you're looking to bring your pc up to todays gaming standards, I would get a new, larger case.

The Dimension 4600 was shipped with a mere 250w psu (granted a few of them came with a 300w, but you would still need more power), so if you hope to power any good video card along with multiple hdds, a stronger psu is vital.

I just upgraded my 4600 myself, more for nostalgic reasons than anything else. With a new p4 3.0ghz cpu. a Fortron Source Blue Storm II 400W, Active PFC, 2xSATA, ATX, PCI-E, 20/24pin a new video card: 1 XFX GeForce 7600GS 512MB DDR2, AGP8X, DVI-I/Tv-Out, 400/533Mhz
also 4 gigs of Crucial PC3200 DDR-DIMM.



I'm pretty happy with it and it runs great as a 2nd pc, but if it's your main computer and you intend to use it for gaming, you're better of starting from scratch
 
Not planning on using this for gaming at all... just want some more cores in the proc since mine is single core with HT... also a video card that can do 1080P mkv vids...

If I can get a deal on a new dell for a 300-400 that can do this... thats probably a better option.
 
There are no multi-core Socket 478 CPUs, so you will need to get a new computer for that.
 
Is there any mobo I can get that will support a newer dual core cpu but also support all my old components (existing ram, existing agp video card, etc)? I will also upgrade the power supply because this one is making noises...

Otherwise what is the fastest cpu I can get for my existing motherboard. Also what power supply would work if I want to replace the current one?
 
What if I got a Intel Extreme for socket 478? Anyone know where to find these. That would probably let me play 1080p vids etc with no problem. Could my mobo handle it if I tweaked the bios settings?
 
The fact is, there are no upgrades you can perform with your current components that would really be worth it.

How much money do you have to spend on this?
 
danyal711 said:
What if I got a Intel Extreme for socket 478? Anyone know where to find these. That would probably let me play 1080p vids etc with no problem. Could my mobo handle it if I tweaked the bios settings?
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Not a good idea either since a fast single core CPU is not enough to watch certain HD content. You would also have to check the CPU support list for your motherboard. Since it's an OEM mobo, more than likely it would not support the Extremes.

I concur with Zero82z: There aren't any cost-effective upgrades for that kind of system. A new PSU would be a good idea since you can then take that PSU and use it in a new system. For $200 for the basics, you can easily get a system that's more than capable of watching HD content:
AMD Athlon X2 4850E CPU - $56
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2HP AMD 780G mATX Motherboard - $80
Kingston KVR800D2N5/2G 2GB DDR2 800 RAM - $20
Antec Earthwatts 430W PSU - $40
----
Total: $196 plus tax and shipping.

The onboard video on that mobo is more than capable of handling HD content while the X2 4850e is enough just in case the onboard video can't offload most of the HD decoding.
 
Here's my advice as a former Dell Dimension 4400 owner. Either sell it, or keep it as a secondary system. I recommended the latter. The hassles you would go through trying to upgrade are simply not worth it.
 
Ahh, if my current OEM mobo doesnt support the extremes then its useless to try and upgrade the whole system. In that case I would just wait and buy a whole new system. How do multicore chips help decode HD? Are the x264 codecs designed for multicore?
 
danyal711 said:
Ahh, if my current OEM mobo doesnt support the extremes then its useless to try and upgrade the whole system. In that case I would just wait and buy a whole new system. How do multicore chips help decode HD? Are the x264 codecs designed for multicore?
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Current multi-core CPUS are significantly faster than your Pentium 4. Thus they can decode HD content better in addition to the fact that some codecs are multi-core aware. However, nowadays, you'd want the the GPU to offload the decoding of HD content, thereby freeing up your CPU for other tasks. Try to get mobos based on the following chipsets if you want HD decoding done by the onboard GPU:

For AMD CPUS:
- AMD: 780G, 790GX
- Nvidia: 8200, 8300

For Intel CPUs:
- Nvidia 9300, 9400
 
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