Please help me upgrade this old HP!

[apav]

Hi guys,

Just built a computer for a friend, and they want their old computer to go to their niece. However, this computer is by today's standards a dinosaur, so I told them I would seriously have to upgrade it if they wanted to make it an everyday use computer.

This is it:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...skId=101&prodSeriesId=450204&prodTypeId=12454

It's just as you'd suspect for an old computer. Freezes for 15 minutes once you boot it up, and still runs slow after that. I was thinking about getting a bigger hard drive and memory, but the hard drive is IDE and the max supported RAM is 1GB DDR1. There really is no room for upgrade. I would have to get a new processor, motherboard, and hard drive, maybe even a new power supply depending on the wattage and a new disk drive if I can't find a Sata female to IDE male adaptor for the disk drive.

Currently, what is the cheapest newer cpu (with integrated graphics) that I can get for everyday use with Windows 7? Nothing more, it's for a kid, so we want to be as cheap as possible. I'm looking at both Intel and AMD. Do you think I would need a new power supply as well? And is there an adapter that plugs right into the back of an IDE drive, that I can plug SATA into on the other end? So far I've seen either external or PCI-E drives that do this.

Thanks!

 

[tiraides]

I believe that it's not worth the effort upgrading that dinosaur.

If you want to keep things simple, there are some deals on a few prebuilt systems. For example:

(From TechBargains) Acer Aspire X AX3995-UR20 - $349.99 Free Shipping after Coupon Code: "VME20BTS" (Exp 9/9, must checkout with V.me by Visa). Tax in CA, NJ, TN.

Specs: Intel Core i3-3220 3.3GHz Dual-Core Ivy Bridge; 6GB RAM; 500GB HDD; DVD burner; 802.11n wifi + gigabit; Windows 8; 1yr warranty

 

[Dangman]

What tiraides said +1: Not worth upgrading that PC. You're basically looking at an entirely new PC build since there would be no reusable part in that old PC.. Since you have to get a new OS anyway, a prebuilt is going to be your best bet if you want something cheap.

 

[Quartz-1]

I don't see what's particularly wrong with that PC. With 1 GB RAM a clean install of Windows XP will run very nicely. And the Radeon 4650 and 4670 are available in AGP. The former for less than £20. Do take the opportunity to change the CMOS battery.

Yes, it's not going to run the latest and greatest, but is that really a problem?

 

[Dangman]

I don't see what's particularly wrong with that PC.

Let's see:
1) Nine year old HP/Compaq Power Supply whose quality wasn't good to begin with in 2004 let alone 2013
2) Support for Windows XP is going to end in April 2014
3) The AGP cards will not allow for the decoding of HD flash content due to the PCI-E to AGP bridge on those cards. So adding that video card won't help much with Youtube content
4) Still uses an IDE hard drive which means it's going to be run slow even with a fresh XP install.
5) A CPU that was slow even when used with XP.
6) Nine year old Compaq motherboard
7) Just to bear repeating: It's a 9 year old PC that was sold as a "budget" PC in 2004. Which means the quality of the parts weren't that good to begin with.

Just too many issues to recommend spending any sort of money upgrading it.

 

[Quartz-1]

That all depends upon what it's to be used for. I recently rebuilt - just a reinstall of XP and apps - a very similar system: all she used it for was email and the web and it worked just fine for that.

 

[Dangman]

That all depends upon what it's to be used for. I recently rebuilt - just a reinstall of XP and apps - a very similar system: all she used it for was email and the web and it worked just fine for that.

Yeah, the hardware is just too old and too low quality for us to recommend reusing no matter what the practical usage is.