Help!! Trying to upgrade pc for my son...

[jennyjun02]

Hi,
I'm a non-tekkie trying to upgrade a pc for my son who wants to use it for games. I'm using Windows XP and Microsoft Office at the minute. I've around £300 to spend. If anyone could help with ideas (non technical lingo if possible), it would be much appreciated!

The spec of my pc is:

Motherboard: Asus ASUS P5B Pentium 4/Celeron/Pentium D/PentiumEE/65nm dual-core/Core2Duo/Core2EE(113965)

Processor: Pentium 4 2.6 non hyperthread

Memory: 128 Mb DDRAM (PC133)

Screen: Studioworks 775N 17"

Graphics Card: Geforce 2 MX

Keyboard: Standard Microsoft Natural QWERTY

Mouse: PS/2 compatible

Disk Drive: 30 GB Maxtor 7200 8mb

CD/DVD: 16* Liteon DVD-ROM

Modem: V90 K56 PCI Modem

Scanner: Colorado USB 9600 Scanner

Printer: Epson Stylus Photo 700

Soundcard: Soundblaster Audio PCI 64V


Thanks,

Jenny

 

[nismo91]

hmm... so may i know do you want to "upgrade" the computer to hi-er spec or sell it and buy a new one?

 

[honvetops]

please answer me this * Is this your motherboard ?
click on this link and let me know if the model you have looks something like this* ?

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/10...rboard_fighting_to_be_king_of_p965/index.html

This motherboard provides one x16 PCI Express slot, three x1 PCI Express slots and three standard PCI slots.

On the memory side, ASUS P5B has four DDR2-DIMM sockets, supporting up to 8 GB officially up to DDR2-800, however this motherboard supports DDR2-1066/PC2-8500 memories (we installed four DDR2-1066 modules and they worked just fine at 1,066 MHz). On this motherboard sockets 1 and 3 are yellow and sockets 2 and 4 are black. Configuring DDR2 dual channel on this motherboard is pretty easy: just install each module on a socket with the same color.

If this is what you think you have, did you but this retail or from a private seller?

 

[jennyjun02]

Hi, just to higher spec it so that my son can play games on it

 

[honvetops]

ASUS P5B has four DDR2-DIMM sockets ( I will assume your mobo has these specs)

get 2# sticks of (512) megs of 667 or 800 memory modules (run dual channel mode)

Buy a PCI-E graphics card with at least 256 of ram memory
example* 7600 GT card to give a much needed graphic capability to your system compared to the on-board graphic chip you currently have.
A higher clocked pentium chip like a 650 prescott will give game playing a huge boost as well. Start with the ram/ graphics card first, then better cpu (processor) if you can. Might think dual-core if multi -tasking .If not, the higher end pentium chip with HT is more than efficient.

that should be a nice upgrade compared to the unbelievably low 128 mb of ram you have now and the onboard graphics.

 

[jennyjun02]

Thank you! Will try this

Great, I'll have a go. Thanks for replying