Upgrading home-office PC

[dan_man555]

A family friend asked me to upgrade this computer as it was running slow, especially at startup.

 

Current setup:

 

CPU: Intel - Pentium E5200 2.5GHz Dual-Core OEM/Tray Processor

Motherboard: Asus - P5KPL-CM Micro ATX LGA775 Motherboard

Memory: Kingston - ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2-800 Memory
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Sapphire - Radeon HD 5450 1GB Video Card
 

It's only used for email, chrome, office and some accounting software, so I'm not even sure why there is a graphics card in there.

 

Budget is probably around the $200 range, but the main concern is not to change the workflow, so I want to avoid a full reinstall of windows.

 

My only thought was to upgrade the HDD to an SSD.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ordinarily_Greater]

Get used Core2Quad / Core2Extreme and get it overclocked to 4GHz and get used GTX 970/980. This is my plan though we are in the same track

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

8 minutes ago, dan_man555 said:

A family friend asked me to upgrade this computer as it was running slow, especially at startup.

 

Current setup:

 

CPU: Intel - Pentium E5200 2.5GHz Dual-Core OEM/Tray Processor

Motherboard: Asus - P5KPL-CM Micro ATX LGA775 Motherboard

Memory: Kingston - ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2-800 Memory
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Sapphire - Radeon HD 5450 1GB Video Card
 

It's only used for email, chrome, office and some accounting software, so I'm not even sure why there is a graphics card in there.

 

Budget is probably around the $200 range, but the main concern is not to change the workflow, so I want to avoid a full reinstall of windows.

 

My only thought was to upgrade the HDD to an SSD.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

given the used case:

add an SSD as boot drive - upgrade total ram to 8GB

and sorry but: make a new clean windows install and be done with it. Will "feel" twice as fast at least :-)

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

5 minutes ago, Ordinarily_Greater said:

Get used Core2Quad / Core2Extreme and get it overclocked to 4GHz and get used GTX 970/980. This is my plan though we are in the same track

because thats what you need these days. even better dedicated grafphics and extreme CPUs for "email, chrome, office and some accounting software"

 

dude ?!?!!??

[Ordinarily_Greater]

Just now, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

because thats what you need these days. even better dedicated grafphics and extreme CPUs for "email, chrome, office and some accounting software"

 

dude ?!?!!??

Yeah i am going for that but i can only find Q8400 for $22

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

1 minute ago, Ordinarily_Greater said:

Yeah i am going for that but i can only find Q8400 for $22

that doesn't help op in any way though :-)

[Ordinarily_Greater]

1 minute ago, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

that doesn't help op in any way though :-)

Yeah but i already said something before (at least)

[Ordinarily_Greater]

6 minutes ago, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

given the used case:

add an SSD as boot drive - upgrade total ram to 8GB

and sorry but: make a new clean windows install and be done with it. Will "feel" twice as fast at least :-)

Oh yeah the usage, i agree with this quote

[Gaurav S Rao]

30 minutes ago, dan_man555 said:

A family friend asked me to upgrade this computer as it was running slow, especially at startup.

 

Current setup:

 

CPU: Intel - Pentium E5200 2.5GHz Dual-Core OEM/Tray Processor

Motherboard: Asus - P5KPL-CM Micro ATX LGA775 Motherboard

Memory: Kingston - ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2-800 Memory
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Sapphire - Radeon HD 5450 1GB Video Card
 

It's only used for email, chrome, office and some accounting software, so I'm not even sure why there is a graphics card in there.

 

Budget is probably around the $200 range, but the main concern is not to change the workflow, so I want to avoid a full reinstall of windows.

 

My only thought was to upgrade the HDD to an SSD.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Simplest Upgrade:Get a SSD 

 

or

 

Get a Core 2 Quad for it,and a HD 6670,since the E5200 will soon become obsolete,not too soon,And even if it is Office tasks,some stuff might just need a better CPU,and the multitasking would be much better,due to the extra cores,on the other hand,just get a i3 from webuy.com and a good board from ebay and and some good ram from webuy.com,you're good then if you want a much better thing than a E5200 for cheap,all that in/under $200

 

Honestly,the cheapest upgrade is a Q6600,some ram and if u wanna spend a little extra,SSD ftw since we all know who likes em' and admits the reason

Spoiler

Druaga1  

 

[Gaurav S Rao]

Also,the reason I said to get a HD 6670,since it can game even today,and a Q6600 for better stuff,since we might never know when he will get into gaming.

[Ordinarily_Greater]

3 minutes ago, Gaurav S Rao said:

Also,the reason I said to get a HD 6670,since it can game even today,and a Q6600 for better stuff,since we might never know when he will get into gaming.

What about GTx 970 in it? And maybe we can talk in PM because some questions are heading to you

[Gaurav S Rao]

1 minute ago, Ordinarily_Greater said:

What about GTx 970 in it? And maybe we can talk in PM because some questions are heading to you

Ok,sure PM Me.

[Drake10114]

5 hours ago, Ordinarily_Greater said:

What about GTx 970 in it? And maybe we can talk in PM because some questions are heading to you

How would upgrading the GPU help OP speed up the PC? Is OP trying to get 120fps in MS Word?

 

As far as the build goes:

1. Get an SSD for booting

2. Increase RAM to at least 8gb if not more. Edit: NVM, your board supports 4gb MAX.

3. If possible try and find a faster CPU.

 

Those 3 should speed up the processing power of the computer, graphics aren't going to slow it down, since it has a dedicated card already that can handle a monitor.

[Drake10114]

Another option after seeing how overpriced some items are in Australia and the availability of parts is a rebuild onto a more modern system, i.e. pentium g4560 system. But that would probably cost more (but you can reuse a good portion of parts). But idk how long that would take, and the timeframe your working in.

Also another thing to consider is, how much ram the mobo can support, it appears some LGA775 boards can support either 4gb or 8gb of ram.

Edit: The mobo supports max 4GB.

If you want to upgrade though, I imagine someone could part out a list.

 

 

 

 

[Ordinarily_Greater]

9 hours ago, Drake10114 said:

How would upgrading the GPU help OP speed up the PC? Is OP trying to get 120fps in MS Word?

 

As far as the build goes:

1. Get an SSD for booting

2. Increase RAM to at least 8gb if not more. Edit: NVM, your board supports 4gb MAX.

3. If possible try and find a faster CPU.

 

Those 3 should speed up the processing power of the computer, graphics aren't going to slow it down, since it has a dedicated card already that can handle a monitor.

Yeah i did not read the usage before, it is been warned by someone before you