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"Upgrading..."

Bought a Dell 2400 last summer (about 13 months ago). It was great for a while - but was a bit shoddy, overall.

For around £700 (I got jacked...) they gave me:

2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU
256 MB Ram
Intel Onboard Graphics (think 1024x768 max)
Intel Onboard Sound
6 USB ports
19" CTX monitor
Lexmark printer
SAMSUNG floppy drive
SAMSUNG DVD drive
SAMSUNG CD-RW (4x) drive

Ugh.

So I thought to myself - being the intelligent 14 year old I was - let's get a new graphics card.

So I shelled out £110 or so for a Connect3D ATi Raeon 9600XT. Whoo. AGP 8X.

Which my Motherboard didn't support. Sucks.

So in July I went to the US. Picked up a new Mobo - £82 for a Giga-byte GA-8IK1100 (6 Dual channel DDR 400 slots, 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP 4X & 8X slot, 4 USB slots, 1394 Firewire support (1 slot), 10/000 ethernet support - and heaps of other stuff, software and hardware - etc, etc.).

Wonderful.

So I come back and try to put it in. Whoops. Case is about 4 inches too small for the motherboard. So I go to PC World and get a new case. Nice. 4 5" slots, 2 3" slots, 2 fans. £40.

So all in all - specs aren't that great.

756 MB
Radeon 9600 XT
2.4Ghz P4
CD-RW drive
DVD drive
Floppy drive
120GB HDD

But I reckon it'll be looking great if I throw in another 512MB - even 256 - and a new CPU.

But I'm not mad on shelling out £200 (3.2 GHz P4 + 512 MB) just for a permance boost... But I want a smoother PC!

Your computer isn't slow. It may be that your Windows installation is brain-dead in some way, which is quite likely if you changed motherboards without reinstalling. You could try running some repair utils to see if they speed things up, but in your position I'd be tempted to flatten and reinstall Windows. Spyware, for example, can reduce the fastest computer to a crawl, and no processor upgrade is going to help that. Explore all your software options before putting down money for new hardware that isn't going to solve your speed problem (which it isn't).

Popsicle.

Hmmm...

How would I find out if my CPU is 4b or 4c?

I think the RAM is DDR 333...

At the moment I have one working case fan and a CPU fan (and heatsink)...


But not to worry, I'm getting a Hole Drill soon, accompanied by some new blowholes, a 120mm inhale fan, an 80mm exhale and a 120mm exhale fan...

(2x 120mm inhale (2:2) 1x 80mm exhale, 1x 120 exhale.)

Should be enough :D.

Also - does the processor make that much of a difference?

My 2.4GHz sucks, even at 2.6GHz... Is 3.2 too much? It just seems better, with only a £40 difference between it and a 2.8...

First up, what speed of RAM is it? DDR 266, 333, or 400? I doubt it is DDR 400 since it was a Dell.

Also, is the processor a Pentium 4b or 4c? A C works at FSB of 800, a B at 533.

The reason I'm asking these questions is to see what room you have for overclocking amongst other things.

More RAM is a good thing, up to a gigabyte, beyond which it can be slower due to addressing issues. You don't really need more than a gigabyte for most things yet, which is good, because whilst your board will support 4 GB, it would need to be ECC RAM beyond 1 GB.

You answer them, I'll keep reading the manual.

EDIT - and what sort of cooling do you have?

:D

Coin wrote:
> 6 Dual channel DDR 400 slots

Bloody hell. I would say something more meaningful, but Intel are evil.

Bought a Dell 2400 last summer (about 13 months ago). It was great for a while - but was a bit shoddy, overall.

For around £700 (I got jacked...) they gave me:

2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU
256 MB Ram
Intel Onboard Graphics (think 1024x768 max)
Intel Onboard Sound
6 USB ports
19" CTX monitor
Lexmark printer
SAMSUNG floppy drive
SAMSUNG DVD drive
SAMSUNG CD-RW (4x) drive

Ugh.

So I thought to myself - being the intelligent 14 year old I was - let's get a new graphics card.

So I shelled out £110 or so for a Connect3D ATi Raeon 9600XT. Whoo. AGP 8X.

Which my Motherboard didn't support. Sucks.

So in July I went to the US. Picked up a new Mobo - £82 for a Giga-byte GA-8IK1100 (6 Dual channel DDR 400 slots, 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP 4X & 8X slot, 4 USB slots, 1394 Firewire support (1 slot), 10/000 ethernet support - and heaps of other stuff, software and hardware - etc, etc.).

Wonderful.

So I come back and try to put it in. Whoops. Case is about 4 inches too small for the motherboard. So I go to PC World and get a new case. Nice. 4 5" slots, 2 3" slots, 2 fans. £40.

So all in all - specs aren't that great.

756 MB
Radeon 9600 XT
2.4Ghz P4
CD-RW drive
DVD drive
Floppy drive
120GB HDD

But I reckon it'll be looking great if I throw in another 512MB - even 256 - and a new CPU.

But I'm not mad on shelling out £200 (3.2 GHz P4 + 512 MB) just for a permance boost... But I want a smoother PC!