Deadfan
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2004
- Posts
- 37
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Hi, I've been enjoying and studying these Head-Fi boards for a while now. I have some real basic PC upgrade questions that I'm hoping some of you can help with.
I'm moving toward using my main home PC to store and manage my music and maybe to do some listening, but expect that most listening will be through my home system, car, portable player, etc.
The home PC is an older Dell 4100 with a Pentuim III running ME with 128 mb of RAM and a 40gig hard drive. We only use the home PC for basic stuff at this point. However, it's already out of memory because of the music and it barely runs anymore because of malware/spyware/bloat etc.
Since I take so darn long to research and make decisions, my wife finally convinced me to take our valuable data off the machine and start over by re-installing everything from scratch with some upgrades. After spending some time on the phone with Dell (they were very helpful), we decided to upgrade our ram to 512, buy a new bigger hard drive (we needed the space for music and there was damage on the drive) and to re-install ME.
Later, we can think about building/buying a new PC with XP or we might just get my wife a laptop with XP. I already use my work laptop with XP at home.
So that's where we are and where you guys hopefully can come in. Here are my questions:
1. If we go this route we'll need two 256 cards of RAM. I've learned that I'll need 133sd cards. Can someone advise me what brands/vendors are recommended?
2. We'll also need a new hard drive. What's a nice quiet brand and optimal size? In other words, should I just go real big or are there other attributes I should think about? I've read about Newegg ere and assume i can buy from there. Advice appreciated.
I hope that does it. It seems like it would be worth it to get this machine running again, even if it's just for storage or some other basic functions later.
Thanks in advance for your advice, Mike
I'm moving toward using my main home PC to store and manage my music and maybe to do some listening, but expect that most listening will be through my home system, car, portable player, etc.
The home PC is an older Dell 4100 with a Pentuim III running ME with 128 mb of RAM and a 40gig hard drive. We only use the home PC for basic stuff at this point. However, it's already out of memory because of the music and it barely runs anymore because of malware/spyware/bloat etc.
Since I take so darn long to research and make decisions, my wife finally convinced me to take our valuable data off the machine and start over by re-installing everything from scratch with some upgrades. After spending some time on the phone with Dell (they were very helpful), we decided to upgrade our ram to 512, buy a new bigger hard drive (we needed the space for music and there was damage on the drive) and to re-install ME.
Later, we can think about building/buying a new PC with XP or we might just get my wife a laptop with XP. I already use my work laptop with XP at home.
So that's where we are and where you guys hopefully can come in. Here are my questions:
1. If we go this route we'll need two 256 cards of RAM. I've learned that I'll need 133sd cards. Can someone advise me what brands/vendors are recommended?
2. We'll also need a new hard drive. What's a nice quiet brand and optimal size? In other words, should I just go real big or are there other attributes I should think about? I've read about Newegg ere and assume i can buy from there. Advice appreciated.
I hope that does it. It seems like it would be worth it to get this machine running again, even if it's just for storage or some other basic functions later.
Thanks in advance for your advice, Mike