Upgrading PC's

thegills

I'm looking at buying a PCwith a 600MHz processor and 128mB RAM on the cheap. Is it difficult or expensive to upgrade to higher specs?

Quigs Snr

It very much depends.

Chances are as follows:

If you upgrade to one of the current processors out there at some point in the future, you will more than likely need to upgrade the Power Supply in your current case. If the 600 is a celeron in a small tower case, in future if you are buying an athlon or even a P4 you will almost certainley need to change the case as well (bigger boards in some cases, but more importantly the Athlons need a bigger case in my view to help keep them cool - more room inside to get the airflow right.

You will more than likely need a new motherboard if you upgrade to anything decent. It depends if your current one is socket A (I doubt it, probably slot A or P3, Celeron type thingy).

If you have an AGP slot, you will be able to upgrade to the latest graphics assuming it is a 4X AGP slot. Be warned a lot of boards that suported 600mhz processors came with onboard graphics, especially the ones which you bought in shops like PCWorld Compustore, ESB etc.....So you may not have an AGP slot at all.

Finally RAM, if your 600 is a celeron, chances are it's PC66 RAM, otherwise more than likely PC100, this means if you want the latest and greatest Athlon, your current ram won't hack it. If it's PC100, you might be able to upgrade to a 200FSB Athlon 1.3 at best or perhaps a Duron 1.2, but you are very limited there and these machines are already history.

In summary, you will probably need,

1. New PSU (Maybe a case too)
2. Motherboard
3. Processor
4. Graphics card
5. RAM

If you are upgrading, so a new PC then really. Still Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Drives and modem should be OK. This machine won't be very upgradeable, so don't buy it thinking it is. If the price is right it may still be worth getting though.

You could always bump up the RAM a bit, if its a Duron 600, you'll get a Duron 1000 pretty cheap (less so if it's intel), if it's an Athlon 600 it's probably slot A, and very difficult to get upgrades for.

If it's got AGP you can always get a reasonable gfx card too, so in that respect its probably not too bad.

eg: In the case of the machine being a Duron 600 with AGP you could get a Duron 1000, 256MB PC100 SDRAM, GF4 MX440 for about 250 Euro inc Delivery from Ebuyer.com. You might also get a good deal from Komplett.ie.

Do you have any more specifics on this machine ?

thegills

Thanks Quig Snr.
Here are the full specs as I have been given.
CUSTOM BUILT 600MHZ PC - AMD 600MHZ CPU. 128MB RAM, 20GB HARD DRIVE, 17" MONITOR, 4X CD WRITER, ATI 32MB EXPERT 2000 AGP GRAPHICS CARD WITH TV OUT.

Thanks

Saruman

How much are you being charged for that? Its an OK spec if you just want a basic system but its not worth much more than €400, and at that if you upgrade a current system it might cost you abotu the same for a more powerful spec and a 600! Also bear in mind if thats a P3 600 it will be a slot 1 which is very difficult to source these days so if it goes......

thegills

He is looking for 650. He is throwing in a low spec printer and scanner

Quigs Snr

Its an AMD, can you find out if it's athlon or Duron ? If it's athlon, I think it is slot A, which is very hard to find these days, if it's socket A it's Duron (Which is easier to upgrade, you never know it may even be able to support 266fsb athlon chips !)

It sounds like you could have an AGP slot too. That card isn't very good at all for gaming though, Half Life and Quake will be no problem, Medal of Honor will be.

How much are you going to pay ?

It would be ideal if you can find out the following:(it's custom built so the guy should be able to tell you).

Amd Duron or Athlon ?
Motherboard Make/Model ?

If you get this info I can easily tell you how far this can be upgraded. In fact, if you can just get the motherboard model/make this will do.

Xterminator

Gills,

You havent mentioned what it is your going to be doing with this pc!

The reason i say this is, if you are going to do basic office stuff, eg word docs, and print and scan small documents etc. The machine will probably be adaquate to your needs.

If you add a dvd drive (should be a free drive bay) you can play dvd movies to your tv or monitor, and can play most existing games at an ok level.

Newer games will probably not run well on your pc, and soon they wont run at all.

So if games are not a concern, bargain your mate down to between €550 and €600 which would be acceptable, if he throws in the scanner and color inkjet printer.
Consider doubling your ram (less than €50) and if the dvd's sound good, get a dvd drive ( Actima DVD-drive IDE 16x/40x Tray
€68.06 at komplett.ie).

If its an entry level games machine youre looking for, i'd say no to this offer, and look for a better spec machine, instead of a printer and a scanner. For €650 you can do better.

X

ps if you decide to look for another machine, better suited to games, pm me. I may have something suitable.

thegills

I have just set up as a soletrader and need a fairly decent PC for home. I've no interest in games but I'll need internet connectivity and I'm big into downloading MP3's and burning CD's when I've the time. I'll only really use standard MS packages with Powerpoint and Project being the most powerful. The TV out on the graphics card is a bonus as I've a mate who can burn DVD's onto DivX.

thegills

Guys - Its a Duron CPU

Inspector Gadget

I think that maybe I should point out something here, as no-one else has so far...

That guy is trying to sell you a machine comprised of old bits he's got lying around in his bins, by the looks of things...

AFAIK the 600 MHz Duron isn't available to buy new any more, www.komplett.ie (for example) don't stock anything lower than an 850, and that's three euro more expensive than a 1GHz (current) Duron part, based on the newer, faster Morgan core. (The 1GHz part is E60 inc vat)

4x CD Burners went out with the stone age; most these days support a minimum of 16x up to about 32x for the fastest ones. komplett have a "burn-proof" (this is an important feature in any cd burner you choose to buy, look up what it means for yourself) 24x write/10x rewrite/40x read device on sale for E102 inc vat, and that's the cheapest/slowest internal drive they stock!

Almost anyone will recommend at least 256MB of RAM for satisfactory performance with current operating systems and applications (I assume you'll want Windows, Office, etc. etc.) - 128MB isn't enough, and RAM is quite cheap. 256MB of generic PC133 RAM is about E50, whereas 128MB is about E26 - twenty-odd euro isn't a whole hill of beans for a significant increase in how fast the computer "feels".

The ATi Xpert series of cards are based on the later ATi Rage chipsets, which are now (officially) obsolete - and have been for a couple of months now. All of ATi's current offerings are based on their "Radeon" series of chipsets - even the slowest/cheapest of these offer a significant performance improvement over the Rage/XPert cards, especially in 3D stuff - although, having said that, all ATi cards that have TV-out won't disappoint in terms of picture quality.

As regards the printer and the scanner, a couple of points:

1. There are a number of different ways that you can plug a scanner into a PC - check that yours is USB, as the alternatives (SCSI and Parallel) will be much more troublesome - parallel in particular because your scanner may have to share a port with your printer (this is a very bad idea, believe me)
2. Printers - inkjet printers are cheap and are often thrown in as a sweetener on deals like this, but be advised that while none of them are truly crap for printing text, some offer seriously shoddy graphics printing, and if you're intending on printing a lot of stuff, a cheap home laser printer will be cheaper to run (and more professional looking, as the print quality is better and doesn't streak) in the long term.
3. Personally, I think you'd be better off getting the printer and scanner (assuming you need a scanner - do you really?) yourself and get something you know you won't regret rather than just accepting what he/she throws at you without knowing what they add to the price of your package.

Anyway, it sounds to me like someone's trying to pull a fast one on you - shop around and see if someone else will do it cheaper. Bear in mind as well that if someone's offering to build a PC on the cheap and is as vague as your contact seems to have been, you can be sure that the parts are as cheap as he/she can find them while fulfilling those parts of the spec he/she has volunteered. You'd probably be advised to spend a couple of hundred more and get something a bit more solid.

Just my 2c...
Gadget

steve-hosting36

€650 gets you:

Mini Tower ATX Case 230W PSU
AOpen AK77 Plus A M'board
AMD Duron 1.2GHz CPU Socket A
1 x 128Mb DDR RAM
1 x Western Digital HDD 20Gb 5400 UATA 133
CD ROM 52 Speed LG
3.5" 1.44Mb Standard Floppy Drive
ATI 8Mb Xpert 98 Pro
Iiyama 17" Vision Master 1401 (LS702U)
Logitech Deluxe Keyboard
Microsoft Mouse Ver 2.0
2 Year on site Corporate

At www.encom.ie

Or:

PC Partner/Lex/ECS/Intel (Poso Case)
128MB DIMM/DDR(133), 40GB HDD (5400)
On Board 32MB or On Board AGP Video,
on board sound, Desktop / Minitower Case,
USB & PS2, 15" .28dp SVGA Monitor
Mouse / Floppy, Euro Keyboard (.85kg)
With an Intel p4 2.0Ghz

From www.ccity.ie

These days, machines are great value, you should never pay more than 300-500 for a second hand machine,

HTH, Steve

thegills

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply. its back to the drawing board.
As a soletrader I can also claim the VAT back so perhaps a new PC with a VAT receipt and warranty is better business...