Basic desktop required

closed

disk image backup (not clone), and macrium rescue disc are always useful

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

prowla

mr_fishbulb wrote: »

So I can go up to an E6700 in there? I think I need to stick with the 1066MHz FSB speed to match with the 533Mhz RAM in there?

Yes, 1066 MHz is the maximum; I tried a faster one (an E6550 at 1333 MHz and it didn't work), so I've got an E6420 (2.13 GHz) in instead, which is sufficient for my needs.

It's quite straightforward to do; you only need a medium Philips screwdriver to undo the screws at each corner of the heatsink, a tissue or cloth to clean off the old gunk, and some new thermal paste (I use "Arctic Silver 5"); my 14-year old son was interested so I let him do the swap on this one. The key things to know are (a) you don't need to force anything, (b) don't touch the pins on the bottom of the CPU, and (c) you only need a thin coverage of paste and if you use too much paste it'll just squeeze out when you tighten the heatsink.

Some say that a Q6600 (2.4 GHz quad-core) will go in, but cooling might be marginal.

You can check out prices on ebay and figure the bang for buck ratio.

I'm going through an exercise of saying that my machines need to be at least 2 GHz; the next one under the knife is my aging Mac Mini which I use as a DVD player...

NiftyDigits

chunter wrote: »

in the seven or eight years since your pc was new, the size of the software packages (eg antivirus) have doubled if not trebled. If you have 512 Mbyte of RAM, it'll be next christmas by the time the thing starts.
....no matter how many times you reinstall..

There is a time when you just have to stop flogging dead horses.
More information needed.

The machine in question is running an Intel Pentium E5300 with 4GB of DDR2 RAM.

It can run Windows 7 or 8.1 all day. Add an inexpensive graphics card and there is little that you couldn't throw at it, other than specialist design programs and games, for quite some time yet.

mr_fishbulb

prowla wrote: »

Yes, 1066 MHz is the maximum; I tried a faster one (an E6550 at 1333 MHz and it didn't work), so I've got an E6420 (2.13 GHz) in instead, which is sufficient for my needs.

It's quite straightforward to do; you only need a medium Philips screwdriver to undo the screws at each corner of the heatsink, a tissue or cloth to clean off the old gunk, and some new thermal paste (I use "Arctic Silver 5"); my 14-year old son was interested so I let him do the swap on this one. The key things to know are (a) you don't need to force anything, (b) don't touch the pins on the bottom of the CPU, and (c) you only need a thin coverage of paste and if you use too much paste it'll just squeeze out when you tighten the heatsink.

Some say that a Q6600 (2.4 GHz quad-core) will go in, but cooling might be marginal.

You can check out prices on ebay and figure the bang for buck ratio.

I'm going through an exercise of saying that my machines need to be at least 2 GHz; the next one under the knife is my aging Mac Mini which I use as a DVD player...

E6600 (with thermal paste) and a dell copper heatsink (I read that the aluminium one that came in the 745s with the E6300s and E6400s wasn't good enough) ordered for a grand total of £24

I was looking at the Q6600, but because I've got 4 sticks of RAM and a replacement graphics card, I was worried that the extra power requirement for the Q over the E would be more than the little 275W PSU can handle. Plus it was 4x the price.

It's been years since I played with a CPU, so I'm looking forward to getting my geek on again!

So this little 745 will have had a new CPU, HDD replaced with SSD, ram upgrade, and graphics card replaced. It has turned into Trigger's broom!

andydiysaver

enkoda wrote: »

Avoid this like the plague.
Why replace a 7/8 year old desktop with one that is 7 years old?

I said bargain basement cheap did I not