Upgrade or replace PC?

heppy23

I am at a bit of a crossroads with my home PC and would appreciate some input.

The PC is 7 years old and had a new CPU about 4 years when I put XP on and it all went really weird.

The current spec is 1gig AMB athlon, 192meg of ram. It's got a 12gig hard drive which is 7gig full 5 gig empty.
It's got a DVD rom drive and a CD writer drive (one speed!).

I recently bought a lovely 19" TFT screen for it to replace the dead monitor.

At the moment I use it for web, email, home accounts, word processing etc.

I don't play many games on it and don't do much graphics work on it.

It is quite "clunky", sometimes it slows down and the hard drive will whirr for ages as if it is looking for something that it can't locate.

I want to use it more - for the stuff as above, also want to put all my cd's on there and turn them into MP3's. I want to link it to an MP3 player and burn MP3 cd's for the car (my car CD player can play MP3 cd's).
I would like to be able to link my turntables up and transfer my old vinyl but this is a way off as i do not have the time at the moment.

As far as I can see I need to add another hard drive (to move a lot of the sh1te from the main one and also to store all the MP3's), put a new quicker cd writer in and maybe a better sound card to allow the turntables to connect (I am an ex mobile DJ so have a mixer to do the phono pre-amp stuff). I suppose a bit more RAM would be worth a thought too.

I can see that I would be lucky to get much change out of £200 for that list so I wonder if I should save up a bit and buy a new PC that has all the stuff I need or should I upgrade what I have?

This PC wouldn't be scrapped, I would clear it out and put it to one side for my 7 month old son to use.

Any thoughts?

scheming_gypsy

i'd buy just a base unit and use your mouse, keyboard and monitor with it.

Can probably pick one up for the same kinda cost you'd pay to upgrade.


such as this one
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=106600

steveteach

Buy a new PC or build one. Upgrading a 7 year old PC will really not be spending money wisely. I teach IT in college and have built my own PCs for years and would not upgrade a 7 year old machine except as perhaps a backup machine. Hope that helps.

Steveteach

heppy23

steveteach wrote:

Buy a new PC or build one. Upgrading a 7 year old PC will really not be spending money wisely. I teach IT in college and have built my own PCs for years and would not upgrade a 7 year old machine except as perhaps a backup machine. Hope that helps.

Steveteach

I fancy the idea of building one. I look after a small network at work and am quite PC literate. I can also possibly get bits and bobs ordering through work.

Can you recommend any books or sites to help me?

heppy23

scheming_gypsy wrote:

i'd buy just a base unit and use your mouse, keyboard and monitor with it.

Can probably pick one up for the same kinda cost you'd pay to upgrade.


such as this one
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=106600

Thanks for that. I've only ever really seen PC's bundled with monitors, printer etc.

Need_More_Money_2

heppy23 wrote:

I fancy the idea of building one. I look after a small network at work and am quite PC literate. I can also possibly get bits and bobs ordering through work.

Can you recommend any books or sites to help me?

If you're fairly computer literate you probably don't need any books to help. It is incredibly straight forward. Just check on web sites like AMD for instructions relating to compatable mitherboards and how to install processor etc. I found installing CPU and heatsink the hardest as it is quite fiddly. Other than that it is easy

albertross_2

You could probably breath new life into it with a bit more ram crucial.com (that is probably why your HD is spinning all the time, it's swapping ram to HD), a new CD or DV-writer, and a new HD (when you existing one fills up, it's not there yet..) about £60-70 in total, but the RAM will make the biggest difference to the performance.