help with upgrade

N

niceandeasy

Member
Sorry im new at working on computers!! But i have been looking in to doing my computer. Well i have a emachies t5048 running vista. I want to upgrade the whole thing ram, slave hard drive, and video card. can some one piz help me. and im sorry like i said im a dumb A..............
 
your ram wont be hard your computer comes with 512MB of ddr pc3200 with a max capacity of 2GB unless there is a bios upgrade available to increase that.

I dont know how many slots you have (probably 2) but you could pop it open and see and then add on to the ram you have or replace the stick with 2 new ones.

the hard drive will be simple just buy a hard drive that has the same interface as what your computer has Im going to guess its an IDE drive but it could be SATA you would have to just look and see.

I would need to know what kind of bus you have AGP or PCIx and let us know for the video...

also do you have a video card now or is it an onboard card.
 
Old Emachine. I would not put any money in it. Power supply is probable crap, which would limit your choice in video cards. Means upgrading your power supply. Just save some more up and just build a new stack.
 
well im going to be buying a case With a new power supply real soon. My power supply fan is really loud as well i wanted to do a slow build or upgrade/replace this computer bit by bit
 
niceandeasy said:
well im going to be buying a case With a new power supply real soon. My power supply fan is really loud as well i wanted to do a slow build or upgrade/replace this computer bit by bit
Click to expand...

i would probably do that first. like strangehold said, a bad psu is probably one of the worst things for a pc. if it goes, it could take other components as well, so it's best to not stress it (at least generic brand ones). what case/psu combo are you looking at?
 
What is your budget for parts you want to upgrade? Like someone mentioned if I were you I wouldn't invest any money into that computer and I would just build one and recycle your OS with that new pc.

Well I guess it depends on what you need your computer for, too. But if you want to do some light gaming I would just make a new pc.

3200 ram is almost as expensive if not more than how newer ram is now, pci video cards aren't that cheap since they are not that common anymore.
 
I was going to ask if you have a Fry's around, but I see the time zone here is GMT and It's 4:00am+ while its 9:00am+ here in CA, USA.
 
RAM - Instead of getting 2 x 1GB DDR RAM, I would recommend 1 stick of 1GB DDR 400 make it 1.5GB RAM to save some money

HDD - IDE is what you need. However, if you are purely after storage, I would recommend external harddrive instead as you would probably not keeping IDE drive for next machine.

Video card - you have a PCI-E slot. What is your budget for video card?
Also, when upgrade for video card, make sure your PSU powerful enough to push it.
 
ok this is what i was looking at off of tigerdirect.com

NZXT Guardian 921 Black ATX Mid Tower Case $80.00
700w coolmax $44.00
and sorry i look once more and i need a pci express video card

or would a bare bone kit or a motherboard cpu bundles be better off of tigerdirect.com If so piz tell me what you would do/ buy or best buy for the money. I do light gaming (WoW, Diablo2, and Diablo3 when it comes out) and itunes and web thats all i do
 
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What i am thinking of doing is getting 2x 1GB ram and a Asus- ATI Radeon HD 577 1GB GDDR5 PIC Express video card with a Corsair - 650w ATX CPU Power Supply and a Thermaltake - Soprano Mid-Tower Case. I think that will give me a good start. What yall think? looking at about $450
 
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