How do I know if it's practical to just replace CPU and motherboard?Heres mine

[wolfman]

System has become slower and slower. Have scanned, cleaned and compressed to best of my abilities I believe. The computer has to be at least 6 or 7 years old, built it from scratch. It has an AMD Athlon 1800+ with ECS motherboard. 1 GB of DDR memory and 75 GB with 50 used. Is it practical for me to replace just the motherboard and CPU (is this possible)? Or am I better off buying a whole new tower? Running XP Home, a little nervous about transferring files/programs

[Allan]

Systems should not become "slower" just because they are old. Tell us the exact nature of your problem(s)

[Accessless]

For a rig that old you probably would want to just replace the lot. If you were to replace the motherboard and processor then the existing RAM would probably be incompatible, the power supply would probably be obsolete. If you have an independent graphics card (i.e. not on-board motherboard graphics), then it will be AGP and incompatible with PCI-E motherboards. By which point you would have nearly replaced everything except that aged HDD that you would then probably want to upgrade for a faster, higher capacity one.

Although if you just use the PC for web browsing and office applications then you may be able to pick up a faster processor for your current motherboard, albeit still an older processor. Do you know your motherboard model number?

Acknowledging Allan's comment; I'm assuming you are saying that the system just seems slow compared to faster modern systems. If there is something actually wrong with your system please say so.

[wolfman]

Once the password is entered, starting up is slower. Used to be able to watch videos through itunes, now videos freeze as song continues, sometimes itunes freezes up. Occasionally under Yahoo fantasy football, I click on a team or player, the CPU usage goes up to 100% and get a neverending mouse and have to Ctr-alt-del. Everything seems just slower in general. I've scanned using AVG, ad-aware, and use CC cleaner. I have defragged and compressed files. I  heard that CPU's used to last 5-6 years and now they are faster and built to last around 4 years. I am having a "professional" come clean my wifes 4 year old Dell (also bogged down) and was told rather than waste the money having mine done, break down and get something newer. What do you think?

[Allan]

Let's make sure malware isn't to blame. Please follow the instructions in the following link and post your logs in the thread you create (NOT in this thread):
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,46313.0.html

[wolfman]

I did the guidelines on each computer and posted under spyware removal.  I did delete Spybot off each, but not AVG like it reccommended. Let me know what you think or can tell from that. The motherboard on the older sysytem is a ECS (K7S5A)

[Accessless]

I did the guidelines on each computer and posted under spyware removal.  I did delete Spybot off each, but not AVG like it reccommended. Let me know what you think or can tell from that. The motherboard on the older sysytem is a ECS (K7S5A)

It is possible to get an extra 467-800MHz out of that motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (producing 1800Mhz), or if you have the version 3.1B motherboard an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (producing 2133Mhz) can be used. I found a few shops through eBay selling the 2600+ for ~$18 (USD). So if you think that the price, the risk and the gains are worth it then go for it (there are always risks in any PC upgrades).

On a side note question, have you ever reinstalled the operating system on that PC? It sounds cluttered.

[No-one]

Hi,

Sounds like you could probably do with a new system but before you do you mentioned you had used CCleaner. have you used teh startup (under tools )function in it.

Also having all that AV stuff does slow down a computer quite abit.


regards,