On Dec 19, 10:58*am, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
On 18/12/12 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.

Thanks for any help

Rob

The problem I have had in the past is that old cases don't fit new
motherboards, and cases are in any case cheap.

So I generally ask the question of my PC builder, and if the answer is
'it wont fit' get a new case.

The RAM doesn't fit either, and in fact usually the only components that
are reusable are the disk and CDROM drive, and if its that old,
generally I don't want the disk anyway.

So unless you can simply replace the CPU Id say replace the whole machine..

Its less expensive than you think. A CPU/board/RAM/Case/Disk/GPU setup
is generally sub £250 where I buy. I buy what's cheap and as fast as the
money will afford.

(http://www.woc.co.uk)

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

Many thanks guys - I think by the time Dell got to this design of
machine, they had moved away from their dedicated components
philosophy - it is a standard board for the period in this machine,
with standard RAM and PSU. And again there's no BIOS/OS interlink
here and the HD is SATA.

However the points that you are making are all very valid and I thank
you all for going through the 'Disadvantages'.

So
Advantages -
Low Cost
Possibly retain all applications
Retain XP (for the moment)

Disadvantages -
MB form factor
RAM incompatability
PSU ditto (chickened out of typing that twice!)
Hassle factor getting it all to work

and so on for the other ones I can't remember, but that's enough to
convince me, though I will lose the fun of doing an Ebay search, bid,
etc., and I'll need to set aside some more pennies.

Again many thanks

Rob