pimp my old pentium 4

[turtle3]

Hi all,

I have an old ''workhorse'' computer thats been sitting in the living room for over 4 years, its full of rubbish tbh but is hooked up to a fairly decent printer and scanner and its on a network so I leave it on so I can print from my decent PC. My wife and boy use it quite a bit but its forever crashing and freezing, so what I would like to do is pimp it up a bit and do a fresh install and maybe speed it up and overclock it a bit in the process. I would like to replace the motherboard and GPU but keep the same ram HDD and of course the P4 2gig processor. Can anyone recommend a decent available Mboard & GPU for this old processor? I did have a programme called lavalys home edition which I cant get anymore and I am ashamed to say Ive no idea what board a P4 2gig uses I think I remember the Mboard is a microstar 745? does this sound right? I would rip it apart to look myself but its still in use by the family, im gonna do the upgrade in a couple of weeks when the wife goes away..

thanks

 

[semi-pro waster]

I think this is the sort of motherboard you need Epox EP-4PDA3I which is the only one in the B Grade section. Get someone else to check that though as I am not very sure on Intel systems at all You can check more about the CPU by using a program like Aida32 which ought to be able to identify it.

I don't know what your budget is here but I'd probably suggest something around the 6600gt/6800 range from Nvidia or an X800series(not the X800se) card from ATI, possibly even a 9800pro depending on how undemanding the uses of the PC will be. If you take a look in Members Market you should be able to pick up a suitable AGP card pretty cheaply.

 

[tom_nieto]

I'd be looking at second hand and B grade stock. It'll be socket 478 no doubt. I'm sure a lot of people are getting rid of their old systems on MM, so just keep checking or put a wanted out. You never know, you might even get a CPU upgrade as well for not much cash at all.