Question Asus P4-P5G41 Upgrades

[danitwelve91]

So I'm new to building/upgrading computers and I just got a Asus p4-p5g41 to kind of tinker around with and put some of my old software on and I'm trying to do some upgrades on it but I have some questions. First is it possible to put two hard drives in this computer especially with it's smaller forum factor? I was planning on getting the adapter to put one of the old laptop hard drives I have in it and was thinking about then putting a small ssd in it as well but I'm also wondering if putting an ssd in there will give it any performance improvement since it is a 10 year old computer? The other thing I'm trying to figure out is the guy I got the computer on said if I put one of my old hard drives in it that the computer would accept the operating system and I would not have to purchase one or a license but I always thought that the windows 10 was tied to a serial number or something of the original computer that the operating system was shipped with so what is actually the deal with that? Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[PC Tailor]

Welcome to the forums my friend! Glad to see you've made a dive into tinkering with PCs.

First is it possible to put two hard drives in this computer especially with it's smaller forum factor? I was planning on getting the adapter to put one of the old laptop hard drives I have in it and was thinking about then putting a small ssd in it as well

The motherboard of this only has 2 SATA ports, you you're limited to 2 storage drives. An SSD would still yield a good performance increase on this system regardless as to it's age, but the rest of the hardware will be limiting in actual application capabilities.

I was planning on getting the adapter to put one of the old laptop hard drives I have in it

You might not need an adapter for this, the HDD cage is made for 3.5, but many do also have 2.5 brackets to keep them there too, so it may be worth opening to see first.

I put one of my old hard drives in it that the computer would accept the operating system and I would not have to purchase one or a license but I always thought that the windows 10 was tied to a serial number

Windows 10 licenses associate themselves with your hardware, but usually only major hardware, so for example, if you changed the entire motherboard, there is little doubt that the original Windows 10 license would not be found and would need to be reactivated, however a simple HDD change usually makes little difference, and it should pick up on the original W10 license assuming that was what was installed on it originally.

 

[danitwelve91]

Thank you so much for your help. I kind of assumed that what the guy told me about the operating system preloaded onto the hard drive would just work because one of the hard drives was taken out of a toshiba laptop and the other out of a acer laptop into the asus desktop so again I thought that the product key was registered to some piece of hardware from the original laptop. Now when you say reregistered are you saying that like I just put my info in to some forum and registered to me or are you saying like purchasing a new product key? I'm putting some old games and adobe suite into this desktop and thats why I am thinking of the ssd as well as a regular hard drive. If your saying there would make some difference in speed or performance I may put one in later down the road.

 

[PC Tailor]

I don't recall saying reregistering - but I assume you mean about reactivating?
Reactivating means you'll likely have to buy a new W10 license being as it isn't your hardware originally.

If for example you changed your own motherboard and your W10 became deactivated, you could contact Microsoft to reactive it for you without buying a new one, this will likely be different with bought hardware, but in worst case, you can always contact microsoft still (through the help / support app) and ask them if they can reactivate it. They'll know if it was a legitimate copy of not.

If your saying there would make some difference in speed or performance I may put one in later down the road.

It will make a difference because ultimately the data transfer would be significantly faster, it's just that you'll only really see differences when data needs to be loaded, once data is loaded, the SSD won't make the program run any faster per se, until more data needs to be loaded.

 

[danitwelve91]

Yes you are right reactivating is what I meant the thing is I'm assuming this computer originally came with either vista or 7 but the label that normally shows that is missing and all that is listed on there is the serial number of the actual computer. I'm assuming that if I contacted microsoft to try and get the product key for whatever operating system either they won't have it because of the age or they may not be able to reactivate it. I have gotten the computer up and running and in some cases it is slow especially to start a program but after it gets started it runs just fine and realistically given the age of the computer that is to be expected and I'm sure an ssd would help with that and again that is why I'm looking at eventually upgrading to an ssd for it. The other thing I was going to ask since you seem to know a lot is it currently has 4gb of ram and that is I'm sure part of the reason why it's slow especially when opening more than one thing at a time. But I've looked at getting new ram and since it is ddr2 it's hard to find and costs $100 or more and I just can't justify paying that much for a machine that I paid $25 for and my not use a lot. Is there a way that I can use maybe ddr3 or some of the old laptop ram with an adapter or use it externally? I've heard there is a adapter that you can get to use an external graphics card anything like that or for a lack of a better term a way to "jerry rig" it for a cheaper cost?