Hi people,
I have an old old PC which I plan to use for a couple more years. It has an Asus P4P 800 SE Mobo (it's a SATA 1 Mobo, doesn't have SATA 2 or 3) with an Intel P4 3.4 ghz EE CPU and 2x ddr 400 512 mb of ram. It wouldn't give me much headache if the HDD wasn't ailing. I need a new HDD, and can't do a complete upgrade (Mobo+CPU+Ram) since I have a tight budget.
So here it goes: I opened a topic here looking for some advice. SATA 3 and SATA2 drives are backwards compatible with SATA1 so theoretically I can go buy a SATA 3 HDD and be done with it. The problem is, my mobo (P4P 800 SE) won't work with a 1TB HDD, the highest amount of storage it supports is 500 GB. And they're a fair bit harder to find than 1 or 2 TB drives. In the other topic I mentioned above, I've been tipped that a PCI EXPRESS SATA 3 expansion card can solve this, but again the limiting factor is the Mobo itself since it doesn't have a PCI EXPRESS slot
So I figured... What the hell. Why don't I go ahead and buy an SSD ? ~120 GB ones found here , here and here kinda fit my budget, especially the last one since it's a bit cheaper. But I've read in some places that SSDs can be far from straightforward. I just need something to plug and play and not have to fumble with firmwares and stuff.
I've been encouraged by this guy's story but his config and mine couldn't be any further apart I guess. I need to know if an SSD will work with my current Mobo (Asus P4P 800 SE) without problems, hence the topic.
Thanks to all who take the time to read !
I have an old old PC which I plan to use for a couple more years. It has an Asus P4P 800 SE Mobo (it's a SATA 1 Mobo, doesn't have SATA 2 or 3) with an Intel P4 3.4 ghz EE CPU and 2x ddr 400 512 mb of ram. It wouldn't give me much headache if the HDD wasn't ailing. I need a new HDD, and can't do a complete upgrade (Mobo+CPU+Ram) since I have a tight budget.
So here it goes: I opened a topic here looking for some advice. SATA 3 and SATA2 drives are backwards compatible with SATA1 so theoretically I can go buy a SATA 3 HDD and be done with it. The problem is, my mobo (P4P 800 SE) won't work with a 1TB HDD, the highest amount of storage it supports is 500 GB. And they're a fair bit harder to find than 1 or 2 TB drives. In the other topic I mentioned above, I've been tipped that a PCI EXPRESS SATA 3 expansion card can solve this, but again the limiting factor is the Mobo itself since it doesn't have a PCI EXPRESS slot

So I figured... What the hell. Why don't I go ahead and buy an SSD ? ~120 GB ones found here , here and here kinda fit my budget, especially the last one since it's a bit cheaper. But I've read in some places that SSDs can be far from straightforward. I just need something to plug and play and not have to fumble with firmwares and stuff.
I've been encouraged by this guy's story but his config and mine couldn't be any further apart I guess. I need to know if an SSD will work with my current Mobo (Asus P4P 800 SE) without problems, hence the topic.
Thanks to all who take the time to read !