upgrading old p3 help please

[tamalsen]

i have a 7 year old pentium 3 550mhz computer, with 128 mb sd ram, 20 gb hard disk and internal graphics card.
what i want is to upgrade the computer enough so that it can at least play movies, music and occassionally capture videos from a handycam through firewire.
i dont want to invest too much in such an old computer so what should i go for, if i was to put in 7000 rs for upgrading the core hardware? like say i dont replace the chip, i want to upgrade the mobo, ram and hard disk.
what would you suggest? i will be using win 98 to avoid the OS eating into the resource.
i am not too keen on buying a 2nd hand comp, i want to make do with what i already have and also,i will be buying a laptop in a few months, i just want to keep this comp in the hostel for minimal work.
HELP PLEASE!!!!

[Ankur Gupta]

Well you can get an decent AMD mobo+procy for 5k which will be more than enuf for the requirements that you have mentioned...
You can couple it up with 512MB RAM for 800-900bucks..
And sell of the old parts for 1000 bucks and get a 80GB HDD which is about 1800-2000 bucks...
And yeah mobo these days have firewire ports so that issue also gets solved out
You have a kickass PC to run XP or maybe Vista basic!!

[a_tif]

refer this thread

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/show...y+a+new+system

[gulgulumaal]

I did the same thing recently for my bro. Just do what Ankur suggested.Dont try to do any upgrades on the old PC. It'll be a waste of time and money.

[dOm1naTOr]

Here's a low end config for upgradation which seems perfect sor 7k
AMD Athlon 64 3200+: 1.6k
MSI K9AGM2: 2.4k
512 DDR2: 0.8k
160HDD: 2.1k
total 6.9k
u can add a DVDRW LG for 1.3k is u wanna watch DVDs also. The proccy has excellent value for money. Also u can opt for 3000+ which is some 300 bucks cheaper that 3200+.
So investing for 900 more, u can get a DVDRW also.
The system cud work with a 20 pin PSu also if ur config is strictly da same. If u add more ram or a gcard then it should be a mun of 400W 24pin PSu[350~400 bucks]. Now u can get the system workin with ur current one[even a 300w 20 pin].

[satyamy]

All Parts you have to bring NEW
expect of Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse (also UPS)

[The Unknown]

Originally Posted by tamalsen

i have a 7 year old pentium 3 550mhz computer, with 128 mb sd ram, 20 gb hard disk and internal graphics card.
what i want is to upgrade the computer enough so that it can at least play movies, music and occassionally capture videos from a handycam through firewire.
i dont want to invest too much in such an old computer so what should i go for, if i was to put in 7000 rs for upgrading the core hardware? like say i dont replace the chip, i want to upgrade the mobo, ram and hard disk.
what would you suggest? i will be using win 98 to avoid the OS eating into the resource.
i am not too keen on buying a 2nd hand comp, i want to make do with what i already have and also,i will be buying a laptop in a few months, i just want to keep this comp in the hostel for minimal work.
HELP PLEASE!!!!

Hi, i also have an old P3 500 Mhz (more primitive than yours ). At first, it had 10 GB, 128 mb ram, 200 W SMPS. We upgraded it to 50 Gb (+ 40GB new), 384 mb ram, 450 W SMPS. It is working fine now.

TIP: To use your system effectively without overloading it, use Linux. It is light on the CPU. I run an HTTP, FTP, MySQL Server, + GUI User system, On this old system !!!!!!!!!!!!

Amazing na ? In Windows (98,xp) system used to freeze every minute. Linux is superb. Also what you want from your PC, is possible on Linux. [Movie Playing=VLC, Music Playing=VLC, Capture Videos=(forgot software ]

NOTE: This is only a TIP. I am NOT forcing Linux on you.