Can a Pentium II desktop pc be upgraded to a Pentium IV?

Question

Hmm...i have this old piece pentium II lying at home collecting dust so i was thinking i want to put it at use.
I thought of maybe upgrading it myself as a self experiment from a pentium II to a newer version Pentium IV.

So,is it possible?
I have to change every part of it ?

Pls suggest and also suggest sites too.

Thank you ppl

Answer 1

as a learning experience this would be ok, however you would really be ending up buying a whole system. and most probably you want a new case so it looks new as well.

so before proceeding, think about it, do you want to gain the knowledge or have easy access to a new PC.

if you do want to go ahead, if your PII is still working, why not donate it to a charitable organization and maybe get a tax rebate which you can use to purchase a new mouse. hopefully not a new mousepad. ;-)

Do they still sell Pentium IV's? In any case, would you still have the parts for it like a mother board, the video grpahics board, external I/O's etc. if in your location you can still get this and you still feel very strongly about the task ahead and the learning experience, then go ahead purchase your processor, mother board, video board, I/O BOARD, HRAD DISK, floppy disk, CD and DVD combo, power supply and case, then the FAN and cooling kits.

Buy the tools as well, screw drivers, pliers, long nose pliers, sockets, allens, crimpers, cable connectors, glue gun.

have fun

Answer 2

The most important part of your question is the motherboard - what kind of motherboard (ideally the make and model) does that old Pentium II have? And then google the make/model to find the specs - ideally from the manufacturers site.

Generally the answer is no, the architecture has changed too much to run a P4 on a computer that was designed to run a P2. It might be possible to purchase some kind of daughter-board CPU, but again that depends on the hardware. You might be able to upgrade it to a high level P3. Again, depends on the motherboard.

You may want to consider using that old computer to run linux, and learn that as an educational experiment. Almost all versions of linux will run great on that 'older' hardware.

Answer 3

In theory, you could do it by replacing the motherboard and CPU, but you could reuse the RAM only under two conditions:
1) The Pentium II CPU would have to be either 350, 400, or 450 Mhz, and
2) The Pentium IV would have to be a first generation Pentium IV, with a motherboard that supports PC100 SDRAM. If you wanted to move to a later version Pentium IV, you would need to replace the RAM as well.

Answer 4

I don't think you can upgrade it since Pentium II and IV have different slot of processor. I believe your motherboard will not support pentium IV as well. Maximum you can upgrade it to pentium III.

Answer 5

You'll need to change the motherboard, PII systems used slot 1 or socket 370 while PIV used Socket 423, Socket 478 or LGA775 at various times.

You won't be able to put a recent processor on the PII motherboard.

Answer 6

Yes, because Pentium 2's mobo is different with Pentium 4's mobo. If you change the mobo, you must change another part, because Pentium 2's mobo just have DDR slot, PCI/AGP slot, etc. But now, most of Pentium 4's mobo have DDR2 slot, PCIe x16, etc.

Try to find the correct part in :
http://www.amazon.com/computer-pc-hardware-accessories-add-ons/b/ref=sa_menu_pc3?ie=UTF8&node=541966&pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1SFJ2HDYWH8ZS3YGGEJC
http://www.tigerdirect.com/