On 18/12/2012 22:31, GB wrote:
On 18/12/2012 20:46, robgraham wrote:
I've Dell Dimension 5000 which must be in the order of 7 or 8 years
old. There's no problems with it apart from it being bit slow on
photo processing, which is the only processor intensive activity I do
apart form a bit of SketchUp and that seems OK.

Is it new wine into old bottles to consider a motherboard/processor
upgrade ? If it's worth doing how do I work out what board type is in
it at the moment and what would I be best to look for ? I'm quite
happy to go the Ebay path and look for someone else's upgrading cast-
off.

The copy of Windows you got was a machine is locked to the Dell BIOS on
the motherboard, so if you change that to a generic motherboard you will
also need a new copy of Windows.

Have you checked to see whether you can put an upgraded processor on the
existing motherboard? That particular machine takes Pentium 4HT
processors.

I thought of upgrading the processor in my own 4 year old Dell, but I am
finding that people are asking silly money for what are now second-hand
out of date CPUs.


Agree with the point regarding Windows being locked to the Dell Bios....