New Guy

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 22:10

Evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

I have been having a look around your wonderful forum and would like to say hello to you all!

My reason for joining, however, has to do with the computer I built myself a while back (out of second hand parts, bits of old computers etc., as I was on a tight budget)

Now I am after some advice. What is slowing this computer down? It's a few years old, do I need a new processor? motherboard? Here is the spec at the moment...

Asus P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard
Intel Pentium D945 processor
6GB DDR2 PC2-6400
ASUS ATI Radeon HD 5570 PCI-E Graphics Card - 1GB
500GB Hard Drive

If there's any more information you need, then just ask!

Thanks in advance people, I look forward to your suggestions, because you lot seem to know your stuff!

Thanks

Rhys

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 22:23

greywolf said:
Hello and welcome to the forum.

I would say the processor is slowing you down the most there. Swap it out for a Core 2 Duo, E8500 etc should do the trick.

I thought it might be the processor, it has 2 cores but it's so old that it's just so jumpy! the rest of the hardware should be alright should it?

Yeah it doesn't support quad core

Thanks for the advice mate,

Rhys

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 22:35

yeah it's 3 x 2gb of RAM, and basically, I don't use it that much because it's slow now and won't run any decent games. But if it was able to play some games, then I would. I would use it for my programming too lol

the OS is windows 7 ultimate, 64bit.

Thanks

Rhys

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 22:37

SonicUK said:
Hello friend and welcome. I've found the people on this forum to be extreamely helpful and friendly so I'm sure they could help you out.

Your Pc - I'd upgrade to a good dual core. You will see a major boost in performance, and having recently upgraded to one myself I can tell you they are pretty cheap and easily avaliable. I got mine used on Ebay for a good price in mint condition so look around for a bargain as I'm sure you will find one.

Other things to try...

Make sure you've got a decent Spyware and Antivirus program and do a full system check.

Run Defragmenter and defrag if nescessary.

Run disk cleanup.

Delete browser cookies, history etc from your browser.

Scan and delete any .tmp files.

Hope this helps you out.

I only just recently did a clean install, so I don't think the speed was down to the software. but yeah thanks for the advice, it looks like a dual core CPU it is!

Thanks

Rhys

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 22:46

greywolf said:
On top of this I would also remove 2GB of RAM and go for 4GB dual channel over 6GB single.

I'm sorry, I don't know that much, but why would that be beneficial? Do you mean take the one stick of RAM running by itself out? And keep the other 2 in? If it will make a difference then I will definitely do this!

Thanks gents for all your help!

Cheers!

Rhys

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 23:07

thanks, as it was my first build, I didn't really know about all this stuff!

Does anyone want to buy some RAM?! hehe

What about the rest of the hardware? would it be ok to run decent games well? or should I start again?!

Thanks

Rhys

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 23:17

the news I was dreading. Well I will try to do the things mentioned in this thread first I think. At least then I can sell it as a semi decent computer can I?

Rhys

Hog1986 · 1 Jan 2011 at 23:33

It's going to look that way I think, hopefully, with all the spare parts I have got etc, I can sell it all for £230.

Would I get more money if I split everything do you think?

Thanks