Revamping Old PC

Stoigeboiii · February 8, 2020

My friend has a really old HP Pavilion p6320y with a m2n78-la motherboard which is a AM3 socket. I believe it still has the Phenom II x4 820 it came with. He says it no longer boots up.

I an trying to make a pc for my parents who at most web browse and use Excel. Is this computer worth fixing and putting back to. Or should I not bother and look for something else like a raspberry pi 4?

Boinbo · February 8, 2020

Just now, Stoigeboiii said:

My friend has a really old HP Pavilion p6320y with a m2n78-la motherboard which is a AM3 socket. I believe it still has the Phenom II x4 820 it came with. He says it no longer boots up.

I an trying to make a pc for my parents who at most web browse and use Excel. Is this computer worth fixing and putting back to. Or should I not bother and look for something else like a raspberry pi 4?

So essentially you want a cheap PC for you parents who just brows the web and use excel sometimes. and you friend has an old pc. And as for the pi, I think it sounds like your best bet, as long as you have a monitor to hook it up to. I don't think you can get the excel app, but office 365 online should be fine. If they can't do the online one, then probably just get a cheap windows pc, because I'm not sure how usable a desktop as old as that can run anymore.

grss1982 · February 9, 2020

17 hours ago, Stoigeboiii said:

My friend has a really old HP Pavilion p6320y with a m2n78-la motherboard which is a AM3 socket. I believe it still has the Phenom II x4 820 it came with. He says it no longer boots up.

I an trying to make a pc for my parents who at most web browse and use Excel. Is this computer worth fixing and putting back to. Or should I not bother and look for something else like a raspberry pi 4?

When was the last time he was using it? Could just be a simple fix like maybe a reset of the BIOS or cleaning the RAM slots & contacts.

It's still pretty much capable of browsing the web and Excel. Although you might need to make key upgrades like an SSD and at least 8GB or even more.

Stoigeboiii · February 9, 2020

3 hours ago, grss1982 said:

When was the last time he was using it? Could just be a simple fix like maybe a reset of the BIOS or cleaning the RAM slots & contacts.

It's still pretty much capable of browsing the web and Excel. Although you might need to make key upgrades like an SSD and at least 8GB or even more.

He said it stopped working a while ago and would basically all light up but there was no display output. Which I assumed was either a bad graphics card or something. What do you think I should do? How fast will it run? What was the Intel Equivalent of the processor at the time, do you know?

grss1982 · February 24, 2020

On 2/10/2020 at 3:05 AM, Stoigeboiii said:

He said it stopped working a while ago and would basically all light up but there was no display output. Which I assumed was either a bad graphics card or something. What do you think I should do? How fast will it run? What was the Intel Equivalent of the processor at the time, do you know?

Depends on how much you're willing to spend. If your parents already have a monitor and other peripherals already you might want to go with the Dell Optiplex Gaming PC route.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxHiwq7QqJc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BIWIPBt18