Upgrade Old PC

brianorb

Hi

My Dad has a Dell Dimension 8400 P4 Processor

It has 1024MB PC-4200 DUAL CHANNEL DDR2 533MHZ memory
128MB PCI EXPRESS ATI RADEONTM X300 SE graphics card
and
160GB (7200RPM) SATA hard drive

What I'm wondering is how can I speed things up without spending a terrific amount of money?

He does lightish browsing, watches some movies, nothing intensive.

It's running windows 7 with minimal features.
1. What graphics card can I get? (I'm assuming I should get one; they seem cheap and may make a difference) Will any PCIe card fit?
2. Could I get a SSD, say 128gb? These seem to really improve things.
3. Can I fit 4gb of DDR2 RAM? There are four slots available.

I'm thinking that for <€200 he'll have a decent functioning PC?

Thank you for your time.

Defiler Of The Coffin

brianorb wrote: »

Hi

My Dad has a Dell Dimension 8400 P4 Processor

It has 1024MB PC-4200 DUAL CHANNEL DDR2 533MHZ memory
128MB PCI EXPRESS ATI RADEONTM X300 SE graphics card
and
160GB (7200RPM) SATA hard drive

What I'm wondering is how can I speed things up without spending a terrific amount of money?

He does lightish browsing, watches some movies, nothing intensive.

It's running windows 7 with minimal features.
1. What graphics card can I get? (I'm assuming I should get one; they seem cheap and may make a difference) Will any PCIe card fit?
2. Could I get a SSD, say 128gb? These seem to really improve things.
3. Can I fit 4gb of DDR2 RAM? There are four slots available.

I'm thinking that for <€200 he'll have a decent functioning PC?

Thank you for your time.

No point going for 4GB of RAM unless he is running the 64-bit version of Windows (right click 'Computer' in the start menu and click 'Properties' to find out). I wouldn't bother with the SSD or the graphics card (unless he wants to play games), try inserting two sticks of 1GB RAM and see how you go, if performance is still sluggish then you could try other measures. I suspect the RAM will be enough though

Defiler Of The Coffin

Actually OP, I've got 2GB from an old PC that I'm not using anymore, I'd be happy to send it on to you for nothing.

brianorb

Defiler Of The Coffin wrote: »

Actually OP, I've got 2GB from an old PC that I'm not using anymore, I'd be happy to send it on to you for nothing.

That's a tremendous gesture ; I'll PM you.

Gumbi

Do a cleanup of the comp too. Run virus scans, delete unnecessary programmes, make sure only necessary programmes run on startup, defragment the hdd etc.. That and the RAM should speed things right up.