How do I upgrade my current " very old " PC to get it doing common tasks smoothly.

[Raghav Raj Sharma]

Hi, I currently have a cih61mi v1.1 motherboard and an Intel Pentium. 

Basically I have a Lenovo H430. I'm thinking of upgrading the processor to an i5 3570k and upgrading the Ram to 2 × DDR3 1600 8gb. I want to do general every day tasks. I also want to upgrade the PSU but I don't know much about it and I'm not sure about upgrade compatibility. Can anyone please suggest anything ? 

[Fasauceome]

Start with an SSD upgrade, if you currently are using a hard drive for your operating system. That will provide the largest boost.

 

For daily tasks, a 3570K is more than you need, any non-K i5 from that generation would be adequate. You can go on Lenovo's website and see if an i5-3470 is compatible. If you want a very budget-friendly upgrade, a core i3-2120 might even work for you. I had a brief look online for this system and saw a user with one such CPU in their Lenovo H430.

 

What reason would you want to upgrade the PSU for? Typically those Lenovo machines are pretty proprietary, I doubt the motherboard has a standard 4 or 8 pin connector for the CPU power and a 24 pin for the motherboard.

[Raghav Raj Sharma]

5 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Start with an SSD upgrade, if you currently are using a hard drive for your operating system. That will provide the largest boost.

 

For daily tasks, a 3570K is more than you need, any non-K i5 from that generation would be adequate. You can go on Lenovo's website and see if an i5-3470 is compatible. If you want a very budget-friendly upgrade, a core i3-2120 might even work for you. I had a brief look online for this system and saw a user with one such CPU in their Lenovo H430.

 

What reason would you want to upgrade the PSU for? Typically those Lenovo machines are pretty proprietary, I doubt the motherboard has a standard 4 or 8 pin connector for the CPU power and a 24 pin for the motherboard.

Thanks,

The stock PSU is something like 250w will it be sufficient for an i5 or i3 2nd/3rd generation ?

[da na]

The RAM upgrade will serve you well, but first of all do an SSD. 

If you need a new GPU, I recommend an Nvidia 8800GT, you need a 6-pin psu connector but it supports Windows 10 and is good for most basic tasks.

[YoungBlade]

I'd start with the RAM upgrade first and see if that fixes the issues. The H430s that came with Pentiums had only 4GB of RAM, which just isn't enough for Windows these days. The Pentium G2020 isn't great, but for general computing tasks it should actually be enough. My laptop has an i5 3320M, which is basically on-par with the G2020, and has no issues with daily computing tasks. The difference is that the laptop has 10GB of RAM.

 

Also, if you aren't using an SSD, that would be another great upgrade. If you need the storage space of the HDD, just put Windows 10 on a 128GB SSD and store all your files on the original hard drive.

 

After those two upgrades, if performance is still below what you need, then any 2000/3000 series i3 or i5 will work fine. Also, getting an old dedicated graphics card could help. It doesn't need to be anything powerful. A Quadro 600 or GT 630 would be fine, and they draw all their power from the PCIe slot.

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, Raghav Raj Sharma said:

Thanks,

The stock PSU is something like 250w will it be sufficient for an i5 or i3 2nd/3rd generation ?

Yes, one of those processors will consume around 60 watts or less, and then the rest of the system would use less than 100 watts (HDD, fans, motherboard, ram, etc.) So you have plenty of PSU room for it all.

 

Also, for basic windows tasks, 8GB of ram instead of 16GB would probably be sufficient.

Edited June 12, 2021 by Fasauceome

[Raghav Raj Sharma]

3 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I'd start with the RAM upgrade first and see if that fixes the issues. The H430s that came with Pentiums had only 4GB of RAM, which just isn't enough for Windows these days. The Pentium G2020 isn't great, but for general computing tasks it should actually be enough. My laptop has an i5 3320M, which is basically on-par with the G2020, and has no issues with daily computing tasks. The difference is that the laptop has 10GB of RAM.

 

Also, if you aren't using an SSD, that would be another great upgrade. If you need the storage space of the HDD, just put Windows 10 on a 128GB SSD and store all your files on the original hard drive.

 

After those two upgrades, if performance is still below what you need, then any old i3 or i5 will work. Also, getting an old dedicated graphics card could help. It doesn't need to be anything powerful. A Quadro 600 or GT 630 would be fine, and they draw all their power from the PCIe slot.

Thanks for the suggestions definately helpful.

 

[Raghav Raj Sharma]

3 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Yes, one of those processors will consume around 60 watts or less, and then the rest of the system would use less than 100 watts (HDD, fans, motherboard, ram, etc.) So you have plenty of PSU room for it all.

Thank You

[Raghav Raj Sharma]

4 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I'd start with the RAM upgrade first and see if that fixes the issues. The H430s that came with Pentiums had only 4GB of RAM, which just isn't enough for Windows these days. The Pentium G2020 isn't great, but for general computing tasks it should actually be enough. My laptop has an i5 3320M, which is basically on-par with the G2020, and has no issues with daily computing tasks. The difference is that the laptop has 10GB of RAM.

 

Also, if you aren't using an SSD, that would be another great upgrade. If you need the storage space of the HDD, just put Windows 10 on a 128GB SSD and store all your files on the original hard drive.

 

After those two upgrades, if performance is still below what you need, then any old i3 or i5 will work. Also, getting an old dedicated graphics card could help. It doesn't need to be anything powerful. A Quadro 600 or GT 630 would be fine, and they draw all their power from the PCIe slot.

Thanks a lot.

[Action_Johnson]

16GB of RAM and a new install of Windows on an SSD will get you where you need to go. 

[SansVarnic]

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