Reviving an Old PC

[Kenpachi]

Hey all

Seeing my really old PC being wasted away, I wanted to revive it so it can be used too for some general purposes. I use my main build for most purposes but having a another general purpose PC like for writing documents, using office, using YouTube, reading PDFs etc. could really help.

It has a Core 2 Duo, 3 GB Ram and Quadro 2000
This old PC was pretty usable 7-8 years back, it was running a Windows 7 just fine for basic stuff and some flash games. It's performance started degrading slowly and now it's to the point that I have to run Kali Linux on it :3 for making it "usable" for coding HTML :3

I maybe wrong but as far as I analyzed, I thought that the problem should be with the Hard Drive for the PC is 13-14 years old. So I went up and ordered a 250 GB Samsung 860 Evo for it. Do you think that alone would restore it's performance or something more would be required?

Thank you

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, Kenpachi said:

something more would be required?

Both actually. The SSD will certainly help, but I"d also max out the RAM, just because old RAM is cheap these days.

Maybe look into what the max CPU will fit on the board, old C2Q chips are also dirt cheap.

 

Every little bit helps

[Kenpachi]

@Radium_Angel
Thank you so much for the reply!

I wanted to ask how much RAM would be sufficient and if I had to replace both the CPU and RAM, what according to you would be the max cost?

[Radium_Angel]

6 minutes ago, Kenpachi said:

@Radium_Angel
Thank you so much for the reply!

I wanted to ask how much RAM would be sufficient and if I had to replace both the CPU and RAM, what according to you would be the max cost?

Well it depends on the mobo of course, most (but not all) C2D era boards maxed out at 4GB ram, even if the CPU could support more.

If I knew the mobo, and where in the world you lived, I could get you some pricing.

[Giblerrr]

get a ssd, maybe upgrade the processor to a xeon or core 2 quad so you can multitaska  bit better. And if you're comfortable with learning linux its a great way to revive a old pc as it uses very few resources

[Kenpachi]

@Radium_Angel
Thank you again!
I don't know about it's mobo/cpu model myself, only know it's a C2D because of the sticker on the cabinet lol. Will need to see it's specs again and will let you know!

@Giblerrr
Thanks for your reply!
Yep, I may be doing doing the CPU shift if it's available for a reasonable price and yep, I surely felt the performance gap b/w Windows and Linux. Going to install the SSD today, hope the performance is like it was 7-8 years ago (when I could use Win7 smoothly) or maybe even better.

[Giblerrr]

15 hours ago, Kenpachi said:

@Radium_Angel
Thank you again!
I don't know about it's mobo/cpu model myself, only know it's a C2D because of the sticker on the cabinet lol. Will need to see it's specs again and will let you know!

@Giblerrr
Thanks for your reply!
Yep, I may be doing doing the CPU shift if it's available for a reasonable price and yep, I surely felt the performance gap b/w Windows and Linux. Going to install the SSD today, hope the performance is like it was 7-8 years ago (when I could use Win7 smoothly) or maybe even better.

ebay is a great place to find used core 2 quads, i have bought one on the used market too, seen some people give them away too, i would suggest finding a core 2 quad q9400, your motherboard might need a bios update if ut was made before a certan generation tho