Question Should I upgrade an old Compaq PC for general use?

[TheMasterOfNone]

Hi,

I have an old Compaq Presario SR5000 (SR5790AN) series PC lying around, and I want to see if I can spend a hundred or two to make it useable again.

It doesn't need to run like an absolute beast, just enough to satisfy my dad, an average PC user, for web browsing, email, media consumption, and occasional use of Adobe Illustrator.

Back in its day (2008-ish), it was pretty top spec:

Intel Core 2 Quad (6600 I think)
4GB Ram
1TB Hard Drive
Some sort of Nvidia Graphics Card...

If I swap out the Hard Drive for an SSD, bump the RAM to 8GB, and put in a better graphics card, would this PC be 'decent' (also taking account the $100-$200 upgrade cost)?

Cheers,

 

[mdd1963]

PCs that old still run Linux MInt just fine....and are great for general surfing, email, office use, etc...

4 GB of RAM is somewhat marginal for even Windows7, and even more-so for Win10..

Depends on your need for Adobe Illustrator...; if you need it, try it on Win10 and, if it runs, albeit slowly, on Win10, give it a shot, nothing to lose, and, you can download WIn10 for free from MS...

At least any 2.5" SATA SSD you can buy, even if it runs at half speed, will indeed still be a vast improvement over a spinning drive, and, the SSD can always be taken with you on a future build...

 

[TheMasterOfNone]

PCs that old still run Linux MInt just fine....and are great for general surfing, email, office use, etc...

4 GB of RAM is somewhat marginal for even Windows7, and even more-so for Win10..

Depends on your need for Adobe Illustrator...; if you need it, try it on Win10 and, if it runs, albeit slowly, on Win10, give it a shot, nothing to lose, and, you can download WIn10 for free from MS...

At least any 2.5" SATA SSD you can buy, even if it runs at half speed, will indeed still be a vast improvement over a spinning drive, and, the SSD can always be taken with you on a future build...

It was running Windows 10 very acceptably around 2018, when it was kind of 'discontinued' at my house.

I really want to know whether I can and I should chuck in a 'new' GPU, and if so what should I use?