Would it be better, or even reasonable, to build a new computer using mostly my old computer parts?

Question

I have about a five year old HP Pavillion. The only thing I've done to my computer is add RAM and a video card so I don't have much experience with this. I want to save money so I just want to upgrade over time. I figure it would be best to start off with a motherboard, processor, and RAM. I'm not sure if my Pavillion case is compatible with LGA 775 types so I would buy an ATX case as well. I would then move all my other drives from my Pavillion to the new case. Does this seem like it would work? Are there any apparent problems that I could come across?

Answer 1

If you're using a 5-year old PC and want to get up to date on a budget, this is what you do:

Sell your oldie for $100 if you're lucky on craigslist.

Buy these from newegg and pirate a copy of XP pro.

$60 - AMD x2 3600+ dual-core CPU
$70 - 2 x 1gb sticks of DDR2-800 RAM
$60 - basic motherboard with onboard video/sound/etc
$30 - case
$30 - power supply
$30 - DVD burner
$40 - 80gb SATA hard drive

That's $320 for a decent PC that is upgradable.

If you want to game, the current bang for the buck champ is the ATi x1950pro at $120, a cheaper alternative is the Nvidia 7600gt at $75. You'd also want a better power supply with the x1950pro (450watt with over 18amps on the +12v rail). The 7600gt well work with cheap 300watt Dell power supplies, so they'll work with almost anything.

Answer 2

I'll be honest with you, once you buy the CPU and the memory, that is usually at least half the cost of the PC right there.

And you want to buy the motherboard and the case, that is going to total around 75% of the cost then.

Also, you will need a new power supply. Stock PSU's typically provide minimum power needs, and the newer electronics are hungry for more wattage, so you will absolutely need to ensure you have at least a 400-450 Watt PSU.

You would have to check around, but I'm guessing that you have either a PCI, or at the most, and AGP video card. If it's AGP, you might not find a motherboard that accepts that, so you would have to add a video card to your list of items to purchase up front.

That's basically the PC. You still need a hard drive and optical drives. And of course the monitor and peripherals. And an operating system. If you transfer your old hard drive, you can use the operating system that is on there....or should be able to anyways.

But as you can see, building a system from scratch is pretty much an all or nothing affair.

I would either keep using your computer as is, or buy another stock system from HP, Dell, or whatever. That would be cheaper than building your own.

Answer 3

5 years old? I personally doubt it is worth upgrading. Now, what OS do you intend to install and which applications do you have in mind?

But you are right to start with a new casing - it is probably of a proprietary design that does not fit anything out on the market. That is why I never like any branded pc.

It is likely to be using an AGP video card; so you may have to add a new one using the PCI Express format especially to be totally compatible with Vista and DirectX 10.

And yes, you need new RAM which are now DDR2 (and soon DDR3) and actually cheaper!

The other thing you may consider purchasing is a good, reliable brand power supply if the new casing comes with a generic one.

The hard disks and cdrom drives,etc you could change later but take note that many systems are now switching to using SATA drives which have better data transfer.

So that is something you want to keep in mind.

Answer 4

About all I can see you salvaging from your current pc would be the hard drives , optical drives like DVD/CD , and the video card assuming it is PCI-X and not AGP - it is hard to find modern mainboards still with AGP.
If you are heavily into gaming then you will just have to accept that you need to spend a few thousand dollars every 5 years to stay up with things.
If you are not a heavy gamer , why update?
I have an old P4 3Ghz box with only 512MB ram and onboard video and this does all my office , internet , and dvd burning and never crashes or slows down.
Of course I am running Linux on it which probably helps a lot!

Answer 5

You are really wasting your time. My guess is your computer and the Operating System, Including the Motherboard and Ram are outdated by a factor of 2 to 5 years.
This means simply you are behind the times and there is No way to economically do what you want to do.
Computers that were $3,000 dollars 5 years ago are now selling for $700. so you be the judge if it would be cheaper to by the latest up-to-datest, or try and make a Volkswagon, a Mercedes.
Don

Answer 6

I'm not an expert, but I'm not a noob either. Not bad of a choice.