P4 (celeron i think?)

helpimcrap · 1 Mar 2011 at 07:09

want someone who wants to increase speed. told him the cheap way around it is a RAM upgrade. he has 256mb P4 which is why i'm thinking celeron (haven't had a chance to look yet) and to get 2gb of DDR 400 RAM you're looking at about £50ish.

would that be the most suitable way of increasing speed on the cheap?

obviously a 6 core phenom or something would be better etc and i've told him i could build him a dual core for about £250 no probs.

anuraj · 1 Mar 2011 at 07:15

Cool we live near each other. What does he want case mobo and everything else or just cpu and mobo. Cpu and mobo:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £154.99
(£129.16) £154.99
(£129.16)
Asus P8H67-M Pro Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £87.98
(£73.32) £87.98
(£73.32)
Sub Total : £202.48
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £42.40
Total : £254.38

anuraj · 1 Mar 2011 at 07:28

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 840 "95W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £74.99
(£62.49) £74.99
(£62.49)
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.33
(£53.61) £64.33
(£53.61)
ASRock N68C-S UCC GeForce 7025 (Socket AM3/AM2+) DDR2/DDR3 microATX Motherboard £33.98
(£28.32) £33.98
(£28.32)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £30.98
(£25.82) £30.98
(£25.82)
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Ultra Low Voltage Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3P1600C9ELV4GK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.66) £13.99
(£11.66)
Sub Total : £206.89
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £43.38
Total : £260.27

No gpu because the motherboard has integrated ones and you can probably go fetch one for him later or give him your old one.

helpimcrap · 1 Mar 2011 at 11:43

But would upgrading the ram to 2gb from 256mb be beneficial? Or a wste of money?

Disco Boy · 1 Mar 2011 at 12:29

helpimcrap said:
But would upgrading the ram to 2gb from 256mb be beneficial? Or a wste of money?

Probably, but an easy way to tell is to use the pc and monitor the memory usage in task manager, if it goes to 100% then he needs more RAM.

eddyc · 1 Mar 2011 at 12:48

If cost is a factor I wouldn't bother going all the way to 2GB. An upgrade to 1GB would provide a huge performance increase. 256MB is the absolute minimum you can get away with (in my experience) with XP. I assume it is running XP.

LEUVEN · 1 Mar 2011 at 13:03

I agree, I would expect that it's constantly using the pagefile so another 256 would do wonders but I wouldn't go throwing much money at an old P4 either.

Have you got a USB stick with a 2.5 MB/sec random read speed you can use with "Ready Boost" ?

Edit: need something like eBoostr for Win XP.

Space Monkey · 1 Mar 2011 at 13:12

Defo go for at least 1gb but personally I would advise them to save the money and upgrade, could get a nice AMD chip, mobo & ram for not a lot, unless of course money is tight, then just the ram should really help

helpimcrap · 1 Mar 2011 at 16:36

thanks. i'll go 1gb then by the sound of it.

ta.

JasonKnights · 1 Mar 2011 at 17:35

That £50 could go towards some new DDR3 think ive seen 8GB for £66. tell him to get his hands in his pocket lol that pc belongs in a museam.

Surveyor · 1 Mar 2011 at 18:24

JasonKnights said:
That £50 could go towards some new DDR3 think ive seen 8GB for £66. tell him to get his hands in his pocket lol that pc belongs in a museam.

Or even a museum.

Ch3m1c4L · 1 Mar 2011 at 18:58

that board probably wont support 1gb sticks, unless it was a custom build.

Dave0w · 1 Mar 2011 at 19:18

helpimcrap said:
But would upgrading the ram to 2gb from 256mb be beneficial? Or a wste of money?

YES 256mb to 2gb = Huba jump

but if he want to jump into games and so on then a new system would be better or a new CPU as well as ram what socket is the motherboard?

K.C. Leblanc · 1 Mar 2011 at 20:04

Ch3m1c4L said:
that board probably wont support 1gb sticks, unless it was a custom build.

Also make sure it is DDR, some earlier P4 used SDRam. The very early ones used RDRam.