Give an old machine a new lease of life

[TheRetroChief]

Hello all,

Long-time reader, first-time poster.

I'm having a shiny new PC soon, but I thought I would give my current machine to the good lady to replace the absolute dog she is using now.
I'm not terribly up on the intricacies of RAM and motherboards etc, but do realise that there are an awful lot of factors when deciding the best choices.

The key factors here are;
MB: Asus M4A78-EM.

OS: Windows Vista 64-bit home premium.

My understanding is that I could have a maximum of 16gb based on the above.
However, it seems that 4Gb sticks of DDR2 ram are very expensive considering.

Currently I have 4Gb of 800MHz Corsair

Bearing in mind cost and what I currently have, what would be your recommendations for RAM in this machine to give it a bit of a boost? 8Gb/16Gb? Is it even worth putting 16gb in?Generic/Branded.

Also, what's with the significance Yellow/Black slots for the RAM?

The machine also has a GTX260 in it. I plan to swap that out for a used GTX570/660 as well if that makes any difference.

Thanks everyone 🙂

 

[Mr Kagouris]

16GB in such a machine isn't worth it in 2016.

RAM slot color indicates channel. One color is the first channel, the other color is the second.

A better GPU might help, yes.

 

[TheRetroChief]

16GB in such a machine isn't worth it in 2016.

RAM slot color indicates channel. One color is the first channel, the other color is the second.

A better GPU might help, yes.

It will only be used for light gaming, so it shouldn't be taxed too much.
The processor is AMD Phenom X4 II 940 AM2+
It will be more than enough for what she want to use it for I would have thought. I'm just looking for a quick boost. RAM and GPU seem the easiest to change to me. I don't think I have the skills to change out the CPU.
So would 16Gb be overkill for this set-up then? Would Two more of the same RAM as I currently have be the best option maybe?

*Ooops, misread your post completely, you didn't say CPU at all!*

 

[Mr Kagouris]

Ideally you want identical RAM sticks unless a full 8GB kit is cheaper. And yeah there's nothing you could do with this system that would require that much RAM without being bottlenecked by the CPU.

 

[TheRetroChief]

Ok...sounds good. The exact RAM I have is harder to find than others similar. That crazy heat sink and "Dual-Path Heat Xchange" nonsense seems to come at quite a premium.
For now I shall be hunting for good value on 4x2gb sticks of some other DDR2 then.
Thank you Sir.

 

[das_stig]

8GB + SSD, more than enough.

 

[TheRetroChief]

8GB + SSD, more than enough.

Oh yes....an SSD, I hadn't thought about that. Good call.