[Deadfan]

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

 

[Cyclone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadfan 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.

By 133sd i assume you mean PC133 184-pin DDR SDRAM. If that is the case then you are in a hunt for some fairly antique and hard to find RAM. I was in your situation a few years ago and i was looking to buy some of the same RAM, only to find out that it was just as expensive as PC2700 of the same MB size. I know you want to get this thing up and running now but just know that it will cost you more money to get this thing running and buy another computer down the road, than it will to buy a brand new computer and just forget this one. As for brands, if it's a fairly major company buy it. You wont notice much of a difference in CAS latency's with your current computer set up.

There was a thread about quiet hard drives a few weeks back. Check it out and just take note on the companies, anything other than a standard 7200rpm drive is just overkill for your computer.

 

[Helter Skelter]

If spyware has been an issue for you, you might want to think about getting a mac when you finally buy a new machine. The Mac Mini is a mere $499 for the basic model and should do everything you need, with the added bonus of being more or less immune to most of the malware out there.

In the mean time, Seagate is an excellent hard drive manufacturer with an outstanding warranty. You'll probably only want a 120GB drive as it's likely that your current machine won't be able to support anything more than that. This will do you just fine. As for memory, Kingston has been very inexpensive and reliable in my experience.

 

[GokieKS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyclone By 133sd i assume you mean PC133 184-pin DDR SDRAM.

PC133 is SDR. Intel never released a chipset for the PIII that supported DDR (only RDRAM or SDR SDRAM), and unless my memory is getting shot at a rate more rapid than I imagined, Dell only uses Intel chipset motherboards.

I do agree though, that it's really not very much worth it to upgrade the system. - not when you can get a new low-end system from Dell or whoever else for less than $500.

~KS

 

[Deadfan]

I ordered a second 128 mb of (Kingston) ram (it was SDR) and a 120gb seagate hard drive. It was just over $100 at Newegg and I am hopeful that it will have our old clunker humming (quietly) again on ME. My wife will be happy and I'll have bought some time to learn and build a better system.

Thanks a ton. Mike