Need help with upgrading old pc...

[Marko_Slb]

I have an old pc, and I'm wondering what I can do to improve it. It has a ASRock P4VM890 (yup thats how old it is) and I was wondering what upgrades I could do with it or what more recent motherboards I could replace it with.
1. What best graphics card to use on it
2. What best harddrive to replace the current one (if it supports ssd?)
3. Any other useful upgrades
4.or a different motherboard to replace it with.

It's just for the kids so dont wanna be be buying a new one.

 

[Jaxem]

What else is on the machine? (cpu, ram, gpu)

 

[Marko_Slb]

What else is on the machine? (cpu, ram, gpu)

Intel Celeron D 2.8Ghz
Integrated VIA® UniChrome Pro 3D/2D Graphics
Realtek ALC653 5.1 channel AC'97 audio codec
Plus ordered 2 x 1Gb ddr400 pc3200 non ecc ram to put in it

 

[Jaxem]

Any current hard drive would probably be a big upgrade, especially if you're using an IDE drive right now. You probably could use an ssd, but i'm guessing your board doesn't support AHCI which negates some of the benefits and increases the maintainence you'd have to do. Also you have SATA I ports on that board, so an SSD would be severely speed capped. I'd just get a modern 7200 rpm drive.

Graphics wise, i wouldn't put anything more powerful than a radeon HD 5570/6570 or whatever the nvidia equivelent is. Your CPU will probably bottleneck even one of those a bit, which brings me to...

The CPU, you could squeeze a bit more here for not too much, a 3.4 GHz hyper-threaded Pentium 4 will run you about $20 on ebay which should nearly doubly your performance there:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pentium-4-Socket-478-P4-3-4-GHz-SL7PP-865-875-Chipset-Upgrade-CPU-/321110539868?pt=CPUs&hash=item4ac3adfe5c

 

[Marko_Slb]

Any current hard drive would probably be a big upgrade, especially if you're using an IDE drive right now. You probably could use an ssd, but i'm guessing your board doesn't support AHCI which negates some of the benefits and increases the maintainence you'd have to do. Also you have SATA I ports on that board, so an SSD would be severely speed capped. I'd just get a modern 7200 rpm drive.

Graphics wise, i wouldn't put anything more powerful than a radeon HD 5570/6570 or whatever the nvidia equivelent is. Your CPU will probably bottleneck even one of those a bit, which brings me to...

The CPU, you could squeeze a bit more here for not too much, a 3.4 GHz hyper-threaded Pentium 4 will run you about $20 on ebay which should nearly doubly your performance there:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pentium-4-Socket-478-P4-3-4-GHz-SL7PP-865-875-Chipset-Upgrade-CPU-/321110539868?pt=CPUs&hash=item4ac3adfe5c

Thanks for your suggestions. Will I need to change my fan for the new processor or will the old one do just fine?

 

[Jaxem]

i'm guessing the old one should do you fine.

 

[Marko_Slb]

i'm guessing the old one should do you fine.

Another question, will the 2gb ddr be able to use the full 3.4ghz? With ram to spare?

 

[Jaxem]

the cpu doesn't affect how much ram is used at all, that's dependent on the OS. 2GB is plenty for XP, but on the low end for vista/7/8 (will still run though, 7 idles at about 1700MB usage)

 

[Marko_Slb]

the cpu doesn't affect how much ram is used at all, that's dependent on the OS. 2GB is plenty for XP, but on the low end for vista/7/8 (will still run though, 7 idles at about 1700MB usage)

So what affects ram mostly? Programs running?

 

[Jaxem]

the OS gets loaded into ram on startup, and takes the bulk of what will be used, but programs are what take the rest, lots open or certain ones open will take lots of ram

 

[Marko_Slb]

Any current hard drive would probably be a big upgrade, especially if you're using an IDE drive right now. You probably could use an ssd, but i'm guessing your board doesn't support AHCI which negates some of the benefits and increases the maintainence you'd have to do. Also you have SATA I ports on that board, so an SSD would be severely speed capped. I'd just get a modern 7200 rpm drive.

Graphics wise, i wouldn't put anything more powerful than a radeon HD 5570/6570 or whatever the nvidia equivelent is. Your CPU will probably bottleneck even one of those a bit, which brings me to...

The CPU, you could squeeze a bit more here for not too much, a 3.4 GHz hyper-threaded Pentium 4 will run you about $20 on ebay which should nearly doubly your performance there:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pentium-4-Socket-478-P4-3-4-GHz-SL7PP-865-875-Chipset-Upgrade-CPU-/321110539868?pt=CPUs&hash=item4ac3adfe5c

I'm in the UK and Ebay wont let me purchase the one you sent me, is it possible to send me a UK link for the same cpu?

 

[Jaxem]

just search the model number of that one on ebay and you should get a list of one's buyable to you