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Is this spec any good? What do you advise?

rizla01
Posts: 7,260 Forumite


in Techie Stuff
Hi,
Just been given a rather interesting 'puter as a second machine.
I know it's a little dated but seems pretty good and it is BL@@DY heavy!!
Here is some of the specs. It's what i was given - no HD's or Op Sys so haven't run the system up yet.
What needs improving if anything?
How would this rate today?
It also came with a 23" Mitsubishi diamond plus Monitor. (Dunno about that but it is pretty high spec too.)
all advice appreciated.
Just been given a rather interesting 'puter as a second machine.
I know it's a little dated but seems pretty good and it is BL@@DY heavy!!
Here is some of the specs. It's what i was given - no HD's or Op Sys so haven't run the system up yet.
Chieftec Dragon MidiTower,door,Black, UK
Case w/340W, DX-01B-D, P4/AMD, w\door
Chieftec Dragon Medium Tower Black
Case w/340W Power
AMD Athlon XP1800+ 1.53 GHz 266 MHz bus
Socket A (Palomino) prosessor (OEM)
DDR-DIMM PC2100 512MB DDR CL2.5
Generic Memory 184-P (for DDR-PC266mhz)
Creative Audigy 2 (With remote control)
Belkin Wireless G
ATI Radeon
What needs improving if anything?
How would this rate today?
It also came with a 23" Mitsubishi diamond plus Monitor. (Dunno about that but it is pretty high spec too.)
all advice appreciated.
"Unhappiness is not knowing what we want, and killing ourselves to get it."
Post Count: 4,111 Thanked 3,111 Times in 1,111 Posts (Actual figures as they once were))
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
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Comments
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It's a bit like a worn out broom which needs a new head and a new handle!
It will be fine for Internet browsing, Office Applications and watching a movie, playing music etc.. but is is (by todays standards) no flyer!
There really isn't much you can upgrade, it would cost more to source the (now) out of date components, which would cost more than faster, up to date components.
The most I would do is put another 512Mb Ram stick in there (or more) and it will run Win XP with no problems0 -
I seem to remember those monitors being pretty good.
The rest of it is fairly ancient. I used to run XP on an Athlon XP1800 with 1Gb of memory, in fact my cousin's daughter still does. I wouldn't bother putting Vista on it though. If it's just a second machine and you want to experiment it should run Linux without any problems.It's my problem, it's my problem
If I feel the need to hide
And it's my problem if I have no friends
And feel I want to die0 -
The case is a pretty good building block and yes they are heavy. I would keep that.
Power supply 340W probably a little small especially if you want a decent graphics card in there so woill probably need an upgrade. buying a higher quality lower wattage is better than going for a huge wattage and it being of poor quality.
Board, CPU and memory unfortunatly they are dated, they will run Windows XP fine and linux but if you want to do more than office, web browsing and basic multimedia then your going to need a litte more power.
The sound card is a nice touch but event he cheaper sound cards and built in cards are very good now. I just scrapped a creative labs sound card I paid in excess of £200 for as the on board sound is fine for me now.
Graphics if your gameing buy a dedicated card if not then an onboard integrated card will be fine just put a little more memory in the PC to compensate for the chunk it will borrow.
Keep the wireless card if your going to use wireless networkign 54g is still widely used very few ISP's are provideing faster yet.
for about £300 you should be able to be quad core p45 chipset and 2GB easily probably 4GB dependant on the PSU you buy and it will fly.0 -
Little john, that sounds like putting a rocket on a donkey, it may fly but is it safe?0
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this is similar to my "spare" desktop, but I've got an Athlon 1900
I've just done a clean install of XP on it, and it runs fine for basics, so if I were you I'd pop in a HDD, install OS, and use it 'til it blows up
just noticed, you're lucky you've got DDR RAM, so upping it to 1GB would be pretty cheap...do it !! Mine is only SD RAM, so waaay too expensive nowadays to up it, so I'm not......Gettin' There, Wherever There is......
I have a dodgy "i" key, so ignore spelling errors due to "i" issues, ...I blame Apple0 -
The Audigy 2 is still a good soundcard too. I still use mine and I would class myself as a heavy gamer and spend money on components most people would think obscene - not crazy amounts, just more than normal people would be comfortable paying.0
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Same as...upgrade to 1 gig of ram, shove a hard disk in there, add windows XP and you have a nice little 'office' machine with a great monitor. Really not worth spending money to upgrade whichever GPU is there, the PC is never going to be a gaming system.
(I have 2 similar machines sat in my loft...I really ought to do something about that!)
If you want a fast PC for vista you'll have to start againUtinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.0 -
OK. It sounds like a keeper then.
Thanks for the greatly appreciated input, chaps (Or chapesses)
Will have to check the memory of the other(older) machine to see if compatible or buy some more.
Will probably ebay the HUGE monitor as I have a widescreen LCD gathering dust.
Should get £50 plus for it?
I am not a games player (At the mo) so it should suit my purposes rather well.
Just need to get a copy of Xp (Anyone got a spare?:)) and will also experiment with Ubuntu, I think.
It's more powerful than my old one but perhaps not as good as my Dell Dimension E520 (Although the Dell onboard sound is a bit limiting)"Unhappiness is not knowing what we want, and killing ourselves to get it."Post Count: 4,111 Thanked 3,111 Times in 1,111 Posts (Actual figures as they once were))Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.0 -
>Should get £50 plus for it?
You would have to pay for it to be removed now, you could not give it away I'm afraid.0 -
What needs improving if anything?
How would this rate today?
It also came with a 23" Mitsubishi diamond plus Monitor. (Dunno about that but it is pretty high spec too.)
all advice appreciated.
I gave a similar spec to my mother. I stuck another 512MB RAM in it to bring it up to 1GB. It's got Windows XP on. It's currently employed doing web browsing, email, her business accounts, knocking up flyers for her business and playing around with photos and seems to be quite happy doing that.
Its actually higher spec than the Dell C600 my son has which is a P3 with 512MB RAM and is happily doing web browsing, IM and playing music.Conor
Unstoppable.....0
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