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Thread: PC Makeover with WinXP Home

  1. #1
    Junior Member
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    Dec 2014
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    PC Makeover with WinXP Home

    Hi.
    I had a special PC made for me according to some ideas posted here and on other places about 10 years ago. The great setup is seemingly starting to fade away, as my clock keeps slowing down even when I replace batteries and my something-in-there reads that I have only 1.3 ghz processor when I KNOW I have an AMD Athlon running 2.2 ghz. I have seen online that this is happening because of my power supply dying and/ or my motherboard getting too much dust and dirt on it from time. Anyway, I know there must guys (or gals) out there who just looooooove to put together PCs for fun. I have decided to stay with XP because I cannot run all my graphics programs on anything else and cannot afford to upgrade all my apps that go with them. I have (an ancient) MSI board bus speed 333mhz with an AMD Athlon XP processor, an GeForce NVidia FX 5600 with 256MB AGP8X with Open GL and shaders.(I'd like one similar with 512MB if possible.) I have 2.2 GB of DIMM SDRAM 184-pin. I think it's all 400 whatever-that-is...it looks like 200/333/400 where I wrote it. (I have no idea what any of this means, mind you, I just wrote it all down.) Is there someone out there who might make me (post ideas, that is) another one similar to this only a little more power and space to it. I have 80GB Hard Drive to upgrade to maybe 120 or so for more graphics and many music CDs. I do art and listen to music on it mostly. Sometimes make Windows Movies too. Kind of a maxxed similar board, but not too maxxed so I don't burn it out. I'd like it to last another 10 years if at all possible. Oh, yes, and my power supply is 500. I need to be able to run CorelDraw8 which now runs on Win NT 4.0 which is included with my home XP version, as well as other programs which run on Win 98 which is also included. I need the great card for the graphics and for some few games I like to play. I have fans running on the power supply, the motherboard and the video card came with one on it. I have a Soundblaster Live! Video card that has worked fine, but I have also heard that there are much better ones available. This last board was put together for $500 all together, the items should be even cheaper by now. I used to go to pricewatch for the parts when I was shopping for cards and Hard Drives.Oh, and I am not online and am not planning to go on with this PC, it is only for my art and music and a few games as I said before. Everything probably needs to be replaced, even the DVD-CD ROM is getting very "sticky". Can anyone do this? Anybody want to take a try at it? Surely there is someone who still loves to compose these PCs? If so, please do respond. I have plenty of time, because I will have to save up money for whatever someone can come up with. hopefully that won't be too much. Thanks very much for reading this very long post! Have a great day! --VSmith

  2. #2
    Moderator
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    One suggestion:

    TSF Hardware Team's Recommended Builds - 2016 > $400 AMD Build
    Without the need of a dedicated graphics card, our 2016 entry level AMD build is well suited for those who browse the internet daily or edit everyday Microsoft Office documents. By utilizing AMD’s APU architecture, you receive a combo CPU/GPU with a reasonable cost attached.

    Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A88Z-UP4 FM2+ AMD A88X @ $94.99

    Processor: AMD A10-7850K Kaveri Quad-Core 3.7GHz FM2+ @ $129.99

    Video Card: Visual effects are produced by the integrated AMD Radeon R7.

    Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600MHz @ $26.99

    Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX case @ $59.99

    Power Supply: SeaSonic SSP-350SE 350W @ $34.99

    Hard Drive: WD Blue WD10EZEX 1TB 7200RPM @ $51.99

    Subtotal: $398.94

  3. #3
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
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    20
    That sounds very good! Someone said that Win XP has a problem with more than 3.5 GB, so I might just go that way and get only 3 just so I don't have a problem. I'm still open to other ideas, too. Thank you.

  4. #4
    Stark Raving MOD Midknyte's Avatar
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    Win XP has a problem with more than 3.5 GB
    It's 32-bit OSes, not just XP. You can install 4GB on the system, but the usable memory will only be around 3GB.

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