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What upgrade parts are compatible?
What upgrade parts are compatible?
| What upgrade parts are compatible? |
| Posted By: DJNafey | Date Added: 26-11-2005 10:25 AM | Views: 1126 |
The price of new PCs has fallen dramatically over the last few years and, as such, most people with PCs that are a few years old are simply giving them away and buying a new one rather than bothering to carry out an upgrade.
If you really want to upgrade your old system, then you will probably need a new system case, or at least a new power supply, in order to support a Pentium 4 motherboard and processor and give the system enough power if you are planning on fitting a lot more memory or a powerful graphics card.
To be able to give you detailed advice, you need to have some idea of what you want to buy already. There are literally thousands of products out there so it's hard for us to make a general statement about compatibility if we aren't sure what you want to buy.
But here goes .....
CD-ReWriter, DVD-Writer or DVD-ReWriter - no issues if you get an IDE drive and have a motherboard with an IDE slot for the cable to plug into. Note that IDE cables are normally sold separately.
Memory (RAM) - no issues usually as long as you buy the same type and speed that is supported by your motherboard, e.g. DDR 400MHz or DDR2 667MHz RAM.
Processor (CPU) - no issues if you buy a model that is supported by your motherboard. As long as your not going for one of the fastest processors on the market, any new motherboard is likely to support any new processor that you buy ASSUMING that it's the same socket type, e.g. socket 775. If it isn't, then the processor simply won't fit into the socket on the motherboard. The two main players in the CPU market are Intel, which are great for typical applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, email, Internet .... and AMD, which can be better for gaming and multimedia. Note that most processors on the market are now 64-bit, rather than 32-bit (which we've been used to for the last 10 years). Your Windows operating system and applications will need to be 64-bit enabled in order to take advantage of the extra power that this can offer.
Graphics (video) card - no issues normally as long as you get the right slot type, e.g. AGP or PCI-Express (PCI-X). Note that PCI-X graphics cards tend to use a 16-speed PCI-X slot, not a 1-speed slot. As with most PC components, all of the numbers have gone up - 5 years ago, a 16Mb graphics card was typical for gaming, whereas 128Mb is now common. 256Mb cards are available for those that want to allocate a bit more of their budget to fantastic graphics.
Hard drive - almost anything goes as long as it's the correct interface - Serial ATA is now the most common standard rather than IDE. 40Gb or 80Gb is now the minimum size fitted in most new PCs. It is now possible to upgrade your hard disk space without even opening up your PC - it will cost more but plugging an external hard drive into a USB port in your PC is a very easy way of getting more space with minimum hassle.
Motherboard - get one with a CPU socket that matches the CPU you want to fit and make sure that it has the features you want, e.g. on-board sound. If you're new to this, pay a little extra to get a better brand such as Intel or Gigabyte - they are easier to set up and come with a good manual. Also, make sure that it's the right size to fit your case! ATX is the easiest to work on as it's full-size, mini-ATX can be fitted into a smaller case but you get fewer expansion slots and everything packed in a bit more tightly, BTX is a new format that has been released this year and requires a specific BTX-compatible case.
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