The 12 volt power requirements of more recent processors have gone way up, requiring new power connectors on the motherboards and new power supplies with higher amperage on the 12 volt rail(s), going to these new motherboard connectors. To the best of my knowledge there is not a single power supply made five years ago that I would put on a new motherboard today.
The memory interfaces have changed, requiring new DIMMs.
The hard drives have mostly gone from IDE (PATA - the wide cumbersome ribbon cables) to SATA (the narrow cables.) You can still work with the older IDE drives, but your old drives will be slower and smaller. Any future disk drives you purchase should be SATA.
If you really like the old case, you can keep that. But that's the lowest cost part of an upgrade. Cooling is likely to be a problem with an older case. The number one way to keep equipment running long and stable is keeping it cool.
The main keys to performance:
You sound pretty convincing.
I think I got the largest/ heftiest/ most durable power supply available in Taiwan 5 years ago.
The case is about 23” X 23” X 8” with lots of extra fans—though I keep one side off and a 9” personal fan blowing on the mother board.
I never partition my HD’s and have several.
If I have to get a new power supply and HD’s so be it. Though I wonder at what point it makes more sense to go to SAMS and get an HP or as someone suggested, order a Dell.
But I like being able to swap things in and out myself without as much trouble as an HP or DELL would entail.
Sounds like there’s no cheap way to upgrade to a fairly hefty machine.
I use my machine mostly for word processing; surfing/posting net—primarily FR and ATS as well as Xcel for my grade sheet for my college classes.
I store a lot of pics on it. Starting to store music and a minor amount of short videos. The videos could grow. The pics grow steadily. Will probably dedicate a couple of HD’s for pics and videos when I upgrade—primary and backup.
Am a little curious . . .
there are 8 gig flash drives . . . would XP-64 BIT reside and run from those? I’m all for minimizing movement in hardware.
darkwing—Red Hat Fedora Core 8. X64 is better than UBUNTU in that ???
Isn’t UBUNTU more user friendly now? Have been dragging my feet for diving into Linux given learning curve and Microslops supposed sabotaging of such . . . But what do I know.
Sadly about a year ago, I had the Geeks at Best Buy check everything out, wipe everything and reinstall everything. Sigh. $500 down the drain.
Sure appreciate the kind responses of both of you.
Blessings,