Repurposed PC question

[JQam]

Hello tech gods!

 

So my grandma is starting to see her last days and is in that mood of giving things away.  She gave me her HP pc for my kids. It was kinda crappy for her and gave myself headaches when I had to get her out of jam. It was just a crap computer with 4GB ram.  I kept telling her to not just carelessly clink links and download stuff. 

 

HP model and Motherboard

 

To get on with it, I had to bring it more life.  Documentation was limited on the interwebz with this mobo but through searches, it was almost certain it would take 16GB memory so I took the chance.

 

I probably put more money into it than I should of but it was fun. It serves my 7 year old daughter just fine.

 

$80 Full modular 500 watt PSU

$20 CPU upgrade

$35 1 TB 7200 RPM 64mb cache HDD

$80 low profile graphics card

$50 16GB ram kit

$30 8GB ram kit not being used now  since i took the risk of 16GB working lol

$20 case and CPU fans

Free SSD from old build

 

Eventually I bought another SSD to transfer the PopOs! off of the HDD drive.

 

The problem I have now is my problem.  I look over and see that plain ugly HP tower and cringe. I have been thinking of getting her a pretty purple and black case with some LED fans.  Buuuuut if I am going to do that then I may as well get a better AM3 mobo. Do you think I should bother and just slap the crappy limited hp mobo into a new case?

 

[XAIXER]

That OEM system is pretty bad. I don't think it will take 16GB of RAM and its PSU is trash. Best to just scrap it.

[jaslion]

Can you return that gt 710? Like if you went used you could have gotten a card that is well over 10 times as powerfull for that price or got a more powerfull card for like 15$. At this point a cheapo i5 dell from ebay would be far better than this system and those can be had for as low as 60$.

[Stargaze obama]

2 minutes ago, JQam said:

Hello tech gods!

 

So my grandma is starting to see her last days and is in that mood of giving things away.  She gave me her HP pc for my kids. It was kinda crappy for her and gave myself headaches when I had to get her out of jam. It was just a crap computer with 4GB ram.  I kept telling her to not just carelessly clink links and download stuff. 

 

HP model and Motherboard

 

To get on with it, I had to bring it more life.  Documentation was limited on the interwebz with this mobo but through searches, it was almost certain it would take 16GB memory so I took the chance.

 

I probably put more money into it than I should of but it was fun. It serves my 7 year old daughter just fine.

 

$80 Full modular 500 watt PSU

$20 CPU upgrade

$35 1GB 7200 RPM 64mb cache HDD

$80 low profile graphics card

$50 16GB ram kit

$30 8GB ram kit not being used now  since i took the risk of 16GB working lol

$20 case and CPU fans

Free SSD from old build

 

Eventually I bought another SSD to transfer the PopOs! off of the HDD drive.

 

The problem I have now is my problem.  I look over and see that plain ugly HP tower and cringe. I have been thinking of getting her a pretty purple and black case with some LED fans.  Buuuuut if I am going to do that then I may as well get a better AM3 mobo. Do you think I should bother and just slap the crappy limited hp mobo into a new case?

 

I personally wouldn't spent anything more on that PC, for what it's worth, your pouring money into something that's never going to give you a remote return on your money not perform like that money spent should, if you really want you could buy a new Mobo since they aren't too expensive, but there's no benifit to be had from it, unless the board serves the purpose of prolonging the life of you PC, for instance a CPU upgrade or something that your current board doesn't support, then no, you shouldn't buy a new board, maybe get creative and make it some armour or whatever they call it, plasticoat it even? Add some rgb?

[Biomecanoid]

11 minutes ago, JQam said:

Hello tech gods!

 

So my grandma is starting to see her last days and is in that mood of giving things away.  She gave me her HP pc for my kids. It was kinda crappy for her and gave myself headaches when I had to get her out of jam. It was just a crap computer with 4GB ram.  I kept telling her to not just carelessly clink links and download stuff. 

 

HP model and Motherboard

 

To get on with it, I had to bring it more life.  Documentation was limited on the interwebz with this mobo but through searches, it was almost certain it would take 16GB memory so I took the chance.

 

I probably put more money into it than I should of but it was fun. It serves my 7 year old daughter just fine.

 

$80 Full modular 500 watt PSU

$20 CPU upgrade

$35 1GB 7200 RPM 64mb cache HDD

$80 low profile graphics card

$50 16GB ram kit

$30 8GB ram kit not being used now  since i took the risk of 16GB working lol

$20 case and CPU fans

Free SSD from old build

 

Eventually I bought another SSD to transfer the PopOs! off of the HDD drive.

 

The problem I have now is my problem.  I look over and see that plain ugly HP tower and cringe. I have been thinking of getting her a pretty purple and black case with some LED fans.  Buuuuut if I am going to do that then I may as well get a better AM3 mobo. Do you think I should bother and just slap the crappy limited hp mobo into a new case?

 

I am into old PCs myself but that system does not have much hope. That PC did not need a fancy modular PSU, or extra fans or 16gb of ram, you could have repurposed that money into buying a better GPU for games the 710 is terrible. I guess you did it for the fun of it.

 

This is my thread on upgrading/restoring an old HP Z400 workstation:

 

 

[JQam]

4 hours ago, Stargaze obama said:

I personally wouldn't spent anything more on that PC, for what it's worth, your pouring money into something that's never going to give you a remote return on your money not perform like that money spent should, if you really want you could buy a new Mobo since they aren't too expensive, but there's no benifit to be had from it, unless the board serves the purpose of prolonging the life of you PC, for instance a CPU upgrade or something that your current board doesn't support, then no, you shouldn't buy a new board, maybe get creative and make it some armour or whatever they call it, plasticoat it even? Add some rgb?

Right.  About the only benefit would be a better LAN chipset and USB 3.0 and maybe faster SATA connection as this rig seems bottlenecked?

[JQam]

4 hours ago, Biomecanoid said:

I am into old PCs myself but that system does not have much hope. That PC did not need a fancy modular PSU, or extra fans or 16gb of ram, you could have repurposed that money into buying a better GPU for games the 710 is terrible. I guess you did it for the fun of it.

 

This is my thread on upgrading/restoring an old HP Z400 workstation:

 

 

Yeah it was fun and certainly brought more life to it.  It's way more usable.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

21 hours ago, JQam said:

I probably put more money into it than I should of but it was fun. It serves my 7 year old daughter just fine.

 

$80 Full modular 500 watt PSU

$20 CPU upgrade

$35 1GB 7200 RPM 64mb cache HDD

$80 low profile graphics card

$50 16GB ram kit

$30 8GB ram kit not being used now  since i took the risk of 16GB working lol

$20 case and CPU fans

Free SSD from old build

 

Eventually I bought another SSD to transfer the PopOs! off of the HDD drive.

 

The problem I have now is my problem.  I look over and see that plain ugly HP tower and cringe. I have been thinking of getting her a pretty purple and black case with some LED fans.  Buuuuut if I am going to do that then I may as well get a better AM3 mobo. Do you think I should bother and just slap the crappy limited hp mobo into a new case?

Honestly, I wouldn't bother trying to make the system into something that is not. I would keep the old HP case. A Phenom II system is still plenty fast for normal use. I for one am still using a X6 myself. So for your kids, it will be heaps good enough. I wouldn't go for a low profile GPU myself because I'm assuming you got a GT 1030 or something? Yea, those are pretty much trash. You can get a much better GPU on the used market. And while used GPUs in that price won't be the best at the AAA titles kids are into nowadays, it will be descent and far better than anything new in the same price bracket.

 

And I hope that 1GB HDD is a typo hahahaa. You'll be hard pressed to find a 1GB HDD that'll work on that machine. 

Edited August 10, 2020 by BlueChinchillaEatingDorito
Note to self, do not make fun of peoples' typos when you make one yourself... while pointing out said typo...

[JQam]

4 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

And I hope that 1GB HDD is a type hahahaa. You'll be hard pressed to find a 1GB HDD that'll work on that machine. 

Oh wow!  hahaha yeah totally didn't mean to type that.