Came into possession of old computer

Thedesolateone · 28 Sep 2009 at 20:17

So recently my girlfriend's parents were getting rid of their old computer and monitor and I jumped at the chance to have my first real mess around with some hardware.

Anyway, I got it to my house and gave it a little examine. It's an HP Pavillion m1150.uk; Pentium 4 2.93ghz 516 LGA775 CPU, 2X256mb DDR RAM (I haven't had a chance to boot it up, and it doesn't say the frequency on it), a DVD-RW drive, stock PSU, stock case fans, and some kind of coolermaster CPU cooler, presumably integrated graphics, sound. [They took the hard drive out and it's in an external caddy now.]

I am currently saving up for my first ever PC build (budget £700-£1000, depending mainly on how expensive a GPU i go for, and whether I decide on that X-25M/M225 I always wanted). Anyway, there are obviously certain components I could theoretically incorporate now; CPU cooler (thinking Zalman 9700), Case Fans, SSD or HDD, PSU (thinking OCZ SilentXStream 700W).

My question is: should I buy these components now, and attempt an overclock (my first), or is there not much point/is there no chance the mobo HP included will even be able to OC?

PermaBanned · 28 Sep 2009 at 20:19

Are you asking us if you should get a new rig or for suggestions for one?

Zenduri · 28 Sep 2009 at 20:40

I think he means should he buy some of the components for his future new rig now e.g psu, hd, ssd, fans, cpu cooler and put them in this old pc and have a mess around clocking with it etc to get some experience.

In answer to my assumption you could do but you run the risk of killing your new PSU for example before you get your full new rig.

SlugForAButt · 28 Sep 2009 at 21:47

I'd personally keep my nice, shiny, new bits and bobs a million miles away from anything cobbled together by HP or Dell.
Just my opinion.

Tolmekian · 28 Sep 2009 at 22:09

Buy everything at the same time when you can afford it all, it will save you money in the long run.

SkodaMart · 28 Sep 2009 at 22:15

I'm running parts of a Dell Dimension 9200, in my first build. I just bought a new mobo, overclocked my E6600 to 3.4Ghz, used my 2 Dell Hard Drives, which are 250Gb WDs and made a raid 0 array for my games. Fitted a 3rd hard drive for my OS, bought a new case and PSU. Incidentally I sold my Dell bits for £90, so it worked a treat for me.

melbourne720 · 28 Sep 2009 at 22:58

SlugForAButt said:
I'd personally keep my nice, shiny, new bits and bobs a million miles away from anything cobbled together by HP or Dell.
Just my opinion.

+

Jason_AJB said:
Buy everything at the same time when you can afford it all, it will save you money in the long run.

= common sense approach. Get an old hd off the bay and use this box as a NAS (FreeNAS), print server, htpc, or clock (fliqlo

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Came into possession of old computer

SkodaMart

SkodaMart