Advice on upgrading a HP dx2810

[MegaBender]

Hi all,

First, apologies if this is in the wrong forum. I'm a newcomer.

Anyways, I have an old HP dx2810 Microtower PC, and currently looking for an upgrade. I know that this PC is quite old and cannot be turned into a beast, and thus I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of performance. My goal is to get this PC run most new games (AC: Unity, Watch Dogs, Doom IV etc.) around low-to-medium settings at a playable frame rate.

On to the specs, it's got a Pegatron 0B1Ch motherboard which has an LGA775 socket. The current CPU is a Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 2.4Ghz, which I'm thinking of upgrading to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz. (What is your opinion on this?)

Now here's my problem, I've been looking for a suitable graphics card, but unfortunately I've little idea in this field. The specs from the manufacturer say that it has one PCIe-16 slot but describes it as "low profile". I'm trying on a GTX 750Ti (since from my "research" it appears to be a low profile card).

And finally the case and the PSU, it is a micro ATX case (the motherboard specifications say the dimensions are 9.6 x 9.6 inches, so I guess that would tell a lot about it's size), and the PSU is 300W. Since I'd be upgrading both the CPU and the GPU, I'd guess 300W would definitely not be enough. But most 500W PSUs I've seen in the market are sold for ATX cases. Would these fit in a micro ATX case or will I have problems?

EDIT: I do not have a specific budget in this case. If I were, however, to give a number, $400-$500 would be enough.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Pentium4User]

Hi The core 2 quad is a good choice but if you can you should get a faster clock speed rather than 2.4 ghz like 3 ghz and above is better since oem boards can't over clock and you should upgrade the ram to 4gb most lga775 oem boards only support 4gb ram so don't go over 4and it ddr2 and power supply get at least a 450 watt power supply with plugs for the gpu so like a rosewill stallion power supply is a good psu for you it cheap but quality and low profile are for itx cases not atx that is yours but good luck.

 

[bambiboom]

Hi all,

First, apologies if this is in the wrong forum. I'm a newcomer.

Anyways, I have an old HP dx2810 Microtower PC, and currently looking for an upgrade. I know that this PC is quite old and cannot be turned into a beast, and thus I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of performance. My goal is to get this PC run most new games (AC: Unity, Watch Dogs, Doom IV etc.) around low-to-medium settings at a playable frame rate.

On to the specs, it's got a Pegatron 0B1Ch motherboard which has an LGA775 socket. The current CPU is a Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 2.4Ghz, which I'm thinking of upgrading to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz. (What is your opinion on this?)

Now here's my problem, I've been looking for a suitable graphics card, but unfortunately I've little idea in this field. The specs from the manufacturer say that it has one PCIe-16 slot but describes it as "low profile". I'm trying on a GTX 750Ti (since from my "research" it appears to be a low profile card).

And finally the case and the PSU, it is a micro ATX case (the motherboard specifications say the dimensions are 9.6 x 9.6 inches, so I guess that would tell a lot about it's size), and the PSU is 300W. Since I'd be upgrading both the CPU and the GPU, I'd guess 300W would definitely not be enough. But most 500W PSUs I've seen in the market are sold for ATX cases. Would these fit in a micro ATX case or will I have problems?

EDIT: I do not have a specific budget in this case. If I were, however, to give a number, $400-$500 would be enough.

Thanks in advance.

MegaBender,

I'm a big fan of the old bangers and still have my 1998 Dell T700R Pentium III and 2004 Dell Dimension 8400 in excellent working condition.

However, to play modern games, I'd say that investment in the HP dx2810 especially with a smaller format case is not going to yield good results. Adding a modern GPU can solve a lot, but it may well be too large to fit the case and the power supply will have to be changed. The CPU even an overclocked one will not push the calculation cycles over a wide enough bandwidth (=throttling the GPU), the RAM is slower, and the disk system will need a substantial boost in the form of a PCIE RAID 6GB/s RAID controller card. And so on.

For the upgrade budget of $400-500, a significantly better performance is possible be starting with a newer system in an appropriate format case and power supply. .Consider as an example:

Dell Optiplex 990 Core i7-2600 3.40Ghz 8GB Memory 500GB Hard Drive > sold for $225 (6.23.16)

And there you have a mid tower with an i7 4-core @ 3.4 / 3.8Ghz and 8GB DDR3- 1333. To that add a used GTX760 for about $125, a Samsung 120GB 850 Evo for about $65. Total is about $450.

Compare:

On Passmark Performance Test, the highest rated HP dx2810:

Rating: 916
CPU: 1807 (Core2 Duo E7500 @ 2.9GHz)
2D: 530 (GeForce 210)
3D: 234
Mem: 684 (2GB)
Disk: 657 (Seagate ST3160318AS)

From the results- only two systems tested, t it seems that there have not been enthusiast upgrades to the HP dx2810,

On Passmark Performance Test, the highest rated Optiplex 990 with i7-2600:

Rating: 4293
CPU: 8574
2D: 690 (GTX 970)
3D: 8570 (I'm estimating that a GTX 760 would have a 3D mark of about 5100)
Mem: 2353 (16GB)
Disk: 4715 (Samsung 850 Pro 256)

If these two system represent a similar cost- the advantages of starting with three generation newer technology are clear.

Cheers,

BambiBoom