About to upgrade what can I expect?

[Timruins]

So basically I've been running two old and I mean old desktop pcs, I had to resort to using both of them in sort of a make shift side by side 2 screen set up so I was able to use the programs needed with out totaly taxing one of the pcs.

 

One of the towers is an old dell form factor with a pentium 3 and 500 Mb of DDR with a 100gb ide HDD. The other is a. Hp tower with a pentium 4 single core 3.2ghz with hyper threading, 1 gb of ddr2 upgraded to 3gb (of mixed brand mixed speed) , 160 gb sata 1 HDD, 80gb ide HDD booth of the computers are running on board graphics through the vga or d-sub port on the motherboard and both are running an outdated version of windows xp professional.

 

Up in till recently I've managed to scrape by with this horrible setup but with xp support being obsolete and many of my drivers and software being out of date are causing issues I've since attempted to upgrade the OS but have failed to get windows 7,  8 or 10 to correctly boot or install.

 

Now that I'm sure you've given your head a shake or laughed at the sadness that is my computers here's what I'm looking to upgrade to, I'm looking at a used I5 3330 3.2ghz quad core, 8gb ddr3, 1tb sata HDD, windows 8.1, with intel hd 2500, I intend to add a r7 240 2gb or a hd 8750 2gb for the time being as I recently acquired them for free but couldn't get the drivers to install on my old devices so they have just been collecting dust.

 

I also intend to upgrade to 16gb of ddr3 and swap the optical drive out for an ssd in the future as well as possibly upgrade to a gtx1050 or gt1030.

 

The total cost of the I5 as it sits is $75 cad.  

 

What kind of difference should I expect in overall performance?

 

will the addition of the r7 or hd gpu be a step up from intel hd? 

 

And how much would doubling the ram and adding a ssd improve the system? 

 

Sorry for the long post I can talk forever, any input is appreciated.. 

Edited February 17, 2018 by Timruins

[deXxterlab97]

1. Should be a really noticeable difference
2. No, not much 
3. Depending on work load, video editing benefits from extra RAM. SSD greatly improve load speed of programs and Windows

[NQSD]

1 minute ago, Timruins said:

So basically I've been running two old and I mean old desktop pcs, I had to resort to using both of them in sort of a make shift side by side 2 screen set up so I was able to use the programs needed with out totaly taxing one of the pcs. One of the towers is an old dell form factor with a pentium 3 and 500 Mb of DDR with a 100gb ide HDD. The other is a. Hp tower with a pentium 4 single core 3.2ghz with hyper threading, 1 gb of ddr2 upgraded to 3gb (of mixed brand mixed speed) , 160 gb sata 1 HDD, 80gb ide HDD booth of the computers are running on board graphics through the vga or d-sub port on the motherboard and both are running an outdated version of windows xp professional. Up in till recently I've managed to scrape by with this horrible setup but with xp support being obsolete and many of my drivers and software being out of date are causing issues I've since attempted to upgrade the OS but have failed to get windows 7 8 or 10 to correctly boot or install. Now that I'm sure you've given your head a shake or laughed at the sadness that is my computers here's what I'm looking to upgrade to, I'm looking at a used I5 3330 3.2ghz quad core, 8gb ddr3, 1tb sata HDD, windows 8.1, with intel hd 2500, I intend to add a r7 240 2gb or a hd 8750 2gb for the time being as I recently acquired them for free but couldn't get the drivers to install on my old devices so they have just been collecting dust. I also intend to upgrade to 16gb of ddr3 and swap the optical drive out for an ssd in the future as well as possibly upgrade to a gtx1050 or gt1030. The total cost of the I5 as it sits is $75 cad 

What kind of difference should I expect in overall performance?

will the addition of the r7 or hd gpu be a step up from intel hd? 

And how much would doubling the ram and adding a ssd improve the system? 

Sorry for the long post I can talk forever, any input is appreciated

Expect it to possibly be dusty inside and a faster boot/load time. Unless you end up running into some problem(s). Yes the graphics performance will increase. Finally adding more ram will give you more room to launch more programs or browser tabs, while the ssd as I have said will increase boot/load times.

[Timruins]

5 hours ago, NQSD said:

Expect it to possibly be dusty inside and a faster boot/load time. Unless you end up running into some problem(s). Yes the graphics performance will increase. Finally adding more ram will give you more room to launch more programs or browser tabs, while the ssd as I have said will increase boot/load times.

Im not overly worried about dust as the pictures show the pc with the side panel removed and it looks very clean on the inside as well it remained up on a desk that was cleaned regularly.  More so Iam concerned with how the pc functions as the reason it's only $75 is because it's not running as fast as it was when it was new and may need to have old files deleted.

 

Now I'm hopeful as the seller seems unaware of the importance of formating any hard drives before selling them they probally don't know to optimize the drive or how to clear the cache and cookies so I'm betting on it being a simple fix that will require minimal effort to fix. 

 

It'd be nice if a data wipe and windows repair followed by a total system scan and some new anti virus will have it working like new. 

Edited February 17, 2018 by Timruins

[Tz000]

2 hours ago, Timruins said:

So basically I've been running two old and I mean old desktop pcs, I had to resort to using both of them in sort of a make shift side by side 2 screen set up so I was able to use the programs needed with out totaly taxing one of the pcs. One of the towers is an old dell form factor with a pentium 3 and 500 Mb of DDR with a 100gb ide HDD. The other is a. Hp tower with a pentium 4 single core 3.2ghz with hyper threading, 1 gb of ddr2 upgraded to 3gb (of mixed brand mixed speed) , 160 gb sata 1 HDD, 80gb ide HDD booth of the computers are running on board graphics through the vga or d-sub port on the motherboard and both are running an outdated version of windows xp professional. Up in till recently I've managed to scrape by with this horrible setup but with xp support being obsolete and many of my drivers and software being out of date are causing issues I've since attempted to upgrade the OS but have failed to get windows 7 8 or 10 to correctly boot or install. Now that I'm sure you've given your head a shake or laughed at the sadness that is my computers here's what I'm looking to upgrade to, I'm looking at a used I5 3330 3.2ghz quad core, 8gb ddr3, 1tb sata HDD, windows 8.1, with intel hd 2500, I intend to add a r7 240 2gb or a hd 8750 2gb for the time being as I recently acquired them for free but couldn't get the drivers to install on my old devices so they have just been collecting dust. I also intend to upgrade to 16gb of ddr3 and swap the optical drive out for an ssd in the future as well as possibly upgrade to a gtx1050 or gt1030. The total cost of the I5 as it sits is $75 cad 

What kind of difference should I expect in overall performance?

will the addition of the r7 or hd gpu be a step up from intel hd? 

And how much would doubling the ram and adding a ssd improve the system? 

Sorry for the long post I can talk forever, any input is appreciated

I just sold my old PC with similar specs.

 

i5-3450 4core/4thread

16gb ddr3 1333mhz

gtx 560ti 1gb

2tb hdd

gigabyte b75-d3h socket 1155 mobo.

 

The performance was excellent and the PC is great for everyday use, esports games and basic work flow. 

 

Adding a discrete GPU over intel's onboard graphics will greatly improve performance.. on board graphics are only good for displaying the desktop imo.

 

an SSD will give you that "wow" factor turning on your computer and opening programs I wouldn't even build a PC without one.  You can pickup 128GB SSD's for quite cheap on amazon I would highly suggest getting one.

 

 

[Timruins]

3 hours ago, Tz000 said:

I just sold my old PC with similar specs.

 

i5-3450 4core/4thread

16gb ddr3 1333mhz

gtx 560ti 1gb

2tb hdd

gigabyte b75-d3h socket 1155 mobo.

 

The performance was excellent and the PC is great for everyday use, esports games and basic work flow. 

 

Adding a discrete GPU over intel's onboard graphics will greatly improve performance.. on board graphics are only good for displaying the desktop imo.

 

an SSD will give you that "wow" factor turning on your computer and opening programs I wouldn't even build a PC without one.  You can pickup 128GB SSD's for quite cheap on amazon I would highly suggest getting one.

 

 

Yea an ssd is probally the first upgrade I will do I wish the mobo had more sata support so I wouldn't have to choose between an optical drive or a hdd when I add the ssd to the system.

 

As it's a form factor it seems they decided to save on cost and add space by only adding the 2 ports and 2 bays but when you find a used i5 for the $10 more than the local price for a used core 2 duo with the same ram and HDD you tend to let issues like lack of i/o. 

 

I guess I could always use an external optical drive if need be or leave the optical in the case and mount the hdd in an external case. 

Edited February 17, 2018 by Timruins

[Canada EH]

2 hours ago, Timruins said:

.

A little helpful hint.

 

Post structure is important, it gives structure to a post, a beginning middle and end.

 

For example......

 

1st paragraph would detail the problem at hand

 

2nd paragraph would detail your views on a possible solution

 

3rd paragraph would detail any closing remarks

 

Also a paragraph on any questions you have, that are spaced equally apart. Called white space, it pleases the eye.

 

Otherwise its too hard to read and people wont even bother reading your post.

It shows you dont care much so others wont care neither.

 

[LordofGangsters]

text wall. see ya

[Canada EH]

7 minutes ago, LordofGangsters said:

text wall. see ya

gotta help out the newcomers!

[Timruins]

3 hours ago, Canada EH said:

A little helpful hint.

 

Post structure is important, it gives structure to a post, a beginning middle and end.

 

For example......

 

1st paragraph would detail the problem at hand

 

2nd paragraph would detail your views on a possible solution

 

3rd paragraph would detail any closing remarks

 

Also a paragraph on any questions you have, that are spaced equally apart. Called white space, it pleases the eye.

 

Otherwise its too hard to read and people wont even bother reading your post.

It shows you dont care much so others wont care neither.

 

Thanks for the advice, I've gone back over my previous posts in the thread and attempted to correct the structure. 

 

Hopefully they don't seem to run on so long with the correct spacing, and are more pleasing to the eye. 

[VEXICUS]

15 hours ago, Timruins said:

So basically I've been running two old and I mean old desktop pcs, I had to resort to using both of them in sort of a make shift side by side 2 screen set up so I was able to use the programs needed with out totaly taxing one of the pcs.

 

One of the towers is an old dell form factor with a pentium 3 and 500 Mb of DDR with a 100gb ide HDD. The other is a. Hp tower with a pentium 4 single core 3.2ghz with hyper threading, 1 gb of ddr2 upgraded to 3gb (of mixed brand mixed speed) , 160 gb sata 1 HDD, 80gb ide HDD booth of the computers are running on board graphics through the vga or d-sub port on the motherboard and both are running an outdated version of windows xp professional.

 

Up in till recently I've managed to scrape by with this horrible setup but with xp support being obsolete and many of my drivers and software being out of date are causing issues I've since attempted to upgrade the OS but have failed to get windows 7,  8 or 10 to correctly boot or install.

 

Now that I'm sure you've given your head a shake or laughed at the sadness that is my computers here's what I'm looking to upgrade to, I'm looking at a used I5 3330 3.2ghz quad core, 8gb ddr3, 1tb sata HDD, windows 8.1, with intel hd 2500, I intend to add a r7 240 2gb or a hd 8750 2gb for the time being as I recently acquired them for free but couldn't get the drivers to install on my old devices so they have just been collecting dust.

 

I also intend to upgrade to 16gb of ddr3 and swap the optical drive out for an ssd in the future as well as possibly upgrade to a gtx1050 or gt1030.

 

The total cost of the I5 as it sits is $75 cad.  

 

What kind of difference should I expect in overall performance?

 

will the addition of the r7 or hd gpu be a step up from intel hd? 

 

And how much would doubling the ram and adding a ssd improve the system? 

 

Sorry for the long post I can talk forever, any input is appreciated.. 

For ur case....I would say no fr that i5...it won't be worth an upgrade...

It seems that u HV an lga775 motherboard

Get urself a core 2 quad q6600 or q9650

Get a CPU cooler- hyper 212 Evo or cryorig h5

Q6600 go around fr $10-15

Also pop in a 4gb ram stick

Nd for gpu... I'll suggest...get an old used GTX 960 or 970 or 770

They go around fr $100-200

Nd u'll HV a decent gaming PC...

Note- u can run most of the games at med too high using this rig

 

Or if u wanna upgrade platforms...then invest in something recent like a ryzen 5 2400g.