motherboard upgrade

sharkbite1983

Hi,

I have a dell dimension 4700 for a good few years now and its gone very slow and keeps freezing. Ive done a clean install & was thinking about upgrading the RAM until a friend told me the processor would default to the slow 512mb its made for, regardless of RAM. He reckons I need a new processor/motherboard if I want to bring my 4700 up to speed with modern PC's

I was looking at motherboards but im not sure what would be compatible. Most sites are saying it is ATX, but im in over my head here!!
Is there a number on the board I should be looking for?
I dont mind if the external connections dont line up, I'll modify the tower accordingly.

Or would any motheroard do me & I'll just plug in the hard drives & RAM & mod the PSU if needs be?

Any help appreciated

Telchak

According to this website, that motherboard supports up to 4GB of RAM.

However, you likely have a slow processor, so just adding more RAM alone won't bring your system "up to speed with modern PC's".

sharkbite1983

Thanks for the speedy reply. So any idea or recommendations what processor I could get? And is it an easy job to change it? I'd be confidant enough opening & swapping bits like ram, drives etc.

Serephucus

If you download Speccy, and post your system specs for us, we can advise you on what's compatible with your system.

stevek93

from what i can see your motherboard has 4 memory slots each can hold up to 1gb id recommend no more than 2gbs

http://www.dabs.ie/products/kingston-1gb-dimm-240-pin-ddr2-533-mhz---pc2-4200-cl4-1-8-v-unbuffered-non-ecc-memory-38K6.html?refs=55210000-4294944963-4294944962

sharkbite1983

stevek93 wrote: »

from what i can see your motherboard has 4 memory slots each can hold up to 1gb id recommend no more than 2gbs

http://www.dabs.ie/products/kingston-1gb-dimm-240-pin-ddr2-533-mhz---pc2-4200-cl4-1-8-v-unbuffered-non-ecc-memory-38K6.html?refs=55210000-4294944963-4294944962

But would ram alone speed it up? I want to run some fairly large programs. Like autocad. It's a big ask from an old Pc but I don't have the money for q new one. I'll download speccy tomorrow & let you know the spec.
Cheers

stevek93

yes and no, ram alone will speed up your pc a fair bit as you only have 512mb and also programs that dont rely that much on the cpu in your case autocad will crave the cpu, your best bet is to also upgrade the cpu if the motherboard supports it

sharkbite1983

OK, put a bit of research into this, if I was to buy a motherboard bundle, with fan, board, processor etc, there shouldnt be any compatibility issues right?

I was thinking maybe something like this;
http://cgi.ebay.ie/AMD-250-3-0-Dual-Core-CPU-2GB-DDR3-Motherboard-Bundle-/360312916444?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item53e452c9dc

I'll keep my 2x160 Hard Drives & PC Tower & use this motherboard, ram, processor & fan...... well I will if somebody who knows what Im on about reckons it'll work??? Thanks

Or should I get new intel processor & buy RAM seperatly?
It will work out ablout the same price.
Ive been told the max processor my PC will take is 3.8 & it wont support dual/quad cores.