[ppalmer10]

I have a Dell Dimension 2350. I run an accounting/tax business and my two most resource hogging programs are ProSeries (Intel) and QuickBooks Pro. I can have both running and they behave just fine, but the load time is painful. I have used Win Patrol to disable all unnecessary startups. I have plenty of room on my hard drives (2). I have all the RAM that I believe it would do me any good to have (i.e. if I increase RAM i doubt there'd be much improvement). With tax season just around the corner (yes, for accountants it is ) I'm trying to see what I need to do to beef up. I'm very comfortable with computers, I've added cards, but I've never gotten into increasing the MOBO and/or the processor. I've been reading the postings here, but would like to ask a couple questions.

My main question is what do I need to know for compatability? What has to make friends with what?

From what I've read here it sounds like a Core 2 Duo would be good for adding speed (maybe strength is a better word for what I'm trying to achieve).

If someone will get me pointed in the right direction, I can ask more questions. I appreciate this forum, I've been lurking around for some time.

Thanks,
Pat

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I have a Dell Dimension 2350. I run an accounting/tax business and my two most resource hogging programs are ProSeries (Intel) and QuickBooks Pro. I can have both running and they behave just fine, but the load time is painful. I have used Win Patrol to disable all unnecessary startups. I have plenty of room on my hard drives (2). I have all the RAM that I believe it would do me any good to have (i.e. if I increase RAM i doubt there'd be much improvement). With tax season just around the corner (yes, for accountants it is ) I'm trying to see what I need to do to beef up. I'm very comfortable with computers, I've added cards, but I've never gotten into increasing the MOBO and/or the processor. I've been reading the postings here, but would like to ask a couple questions.

My main question is what do I need to know for compatability? What has to make friends with what?

From what I've read here it sounds like a Core 2 Duo would be good for adding speed (maybe strength is a better word for what I'm trying to achieve).

If someone will get me pointed in the right direction, I can ask more questions. I appreciate this forum, I've been lurking around for some time.

Thanks,
Pat

You need to tell us exactly what you want. Do you want a complete new system or what?? Yeah the Intel Conroe core 2 Duo would definately solve your problems all together in a new complete system with atleast 1gb of ram preferably 2gb. The new Conroe boards are all DDR2 which would also be another step above. The Conroe processors are extremely fast, the e6600 and the e6700 are the fast chips along with the xtreme conroe but the xtreme conroe is too much in price. If you get a serial ata 3gb/sec harddrive in your new system that is another step in the right direction.

If you want to put together a system yourself then goto http://www.newegg.com or if you want a company to put the system together for you and then you choose which parts on the site that are avalible then goto http://www.cyberpowerpc.com

Cyberpower has really great prices on custom build pc's and they dont overcharge like many others do.

[jrm20]

I have a Dell Dimension 2350. I run an accounting/tax business and my two most resource hogging programs are ProSeries (Intel) and QuickBooks Pro. I can have both running and they behave just fine, but the load time is painful. I have used Win Patrol to disable all unnecessary startups. I have plenty of room on my hard drives (2). I have all the RAM that I believe it would do me any good to have (i.e. if I increase RAM i doubt there'd be much improvement). With tax season just around the corner (yes, for accountants it is ) I'm trying to see what I need to do to beef up. I'm very comfortable with computers, I've added cards, but I've never gotten into increasing the MOBO and/or the processor. I've been reading the postings here, but would like to ask a couple questions.

My main question is what do I need to know for compatability? What has to make friends with what?

From what I've read here it sounds like a Core 2 Duo would be good for adding speed (maybe strength is a better word for what I'm trying to achieve).

If someone will get me pointed in the right direction, I can ask more questions. I appreciate this forum, I've been lurking around for some time.

Thanks,
Pat

You need to tell us exactly what you want. Do you want a complete new system or what?? Yeah the Intel Conroe core 2 Duo would definately solve your problems all together in a new complete system with atleast 1gb of ram preferably 2gb. The new Conroe boards are all DDR2 which would also be another step above. The Conroe processors are extremely fast, the e6600 and the e6700 are the fast chips along with the xtreme conroe but the xtreme conroe is too much in price. If you get a serial ata 3gb/sec harddrive in your new system that is another step in the right direction.

If you want to put together a system yourself then goto http://www.newegg.com or if you want a company to put the system together for you and then you choose which parts on the site that are avalible then goto http://www.cyberpowerpc.com

Cyberpower has really great prices on custom build pc's and they dont overcharge like many others do.

[kidnova]

It sounds like you are talking about upgrading your current system. You need to post your system specs, ie. your mobo, RAM, processor, etc. From there, we can look and see what your best options are. I can tell you right now that your motherboard is not compatible with the Core 2 Duo processors, so if that is what you are considering you would have to upgrade both. However, it will probably be possible to find a faster processor that is compatible with your current motherboard.

[jrm20]

There is no use upgrading his current system with a new mobo/cpu and ram, that system on google is currently $379.48 for a refurbished system. Now if you just wanted to upgrade the memory by itself it would be okay and would help out just a tad. Its not worth upgrading the Dell dimension 2350 with a new conroe cpu and conroe supported mobo and ddr2 memory because you would have to change everything internally in your machine so its best to go ahead and get a new case aswell. You could always reused your old cd rom drive and floppy and harddrive if you wanted.

You would have to change out everything in your dell if you wanted a conroe core 2 duo system.. You would have to get the cpu, DDR2 memory,New pci express video card if you want a pretty good card or you can get a mobo with integrated graphics if thats all you need, a new power supply, new motherboard, the old dell harddrive would be okay if its a 7200rpm ide but I suggest atleast a 7200rpm serial ata for your windows boot harddrive. You would probably have to get another case to fit all of your hardware and parts into the dell case just wont cut it.

Your current 200watt power supply wont fit any newer conroe boards because its only a 20 pin and it does not have enough power to feed the conroe machine. You will need atleast a 450W on up truepower power supply for a conroe system. Your current memory is only pc2100 and is not DDR2 so it will not fit at all in a conroe motherboard. The case may or may not work but I suggest getting rid of it if you want a new machine because you can get new cases from really cheap to expensive.

Just upgrading the memory wont fix the crave of speed that you want. That system is an older celeron 1.8ghz with 128KB cache with no agp slots only regular pci. Pci express wasnt available when you bought that machine.



Here is a link to your pc's specs. http://www.techforle...1?mv_pc=froogle
You cannot upgrade your current dell to a NEW Intel Core 2 duo machine, it just wont work unless you change out pretty much everything as I stated above.

Edited by jrm20, 09 September 2006 - 05:43 PM.

[kidnova]

Actually, here is the link to your computer's specifications.
http://support.dell....ecs.htm#1101572

As you can see you could have one of various processors. It will probably be possible for you to upgrade to a more powerful P4 processor depending on what you already have. Your system maxes out at 1GB of RAM, so if you don't already have that much, you can increase your RAM. Other than that, you are very limited with what you can do as far as upgrading. Depending on your budget, you might be better off buying a new system.

Edited by kidnova, 09 September 2006 - 05:03 PM.

[jrm20]

Actually, here is the link to your computer's specifications.
http://support.dell....ecs.htm#1101572

As you can see you could have one of various processors. It will probably be possible for you to upgrade to a more powerful P4 processor depending on what you already have. Your system maxes out at 1GB of RAM, so if you don't already have that much, you can increase your RAM. Other than that, you are very limited with what you can do as far as upgrading. Depending on your budget, you might be better off buying a new system.

I fixed the link above, shop.com didnt work after I cleared my cache so It only worked on my pc only because of the cookies saved on my pc and the way I searched for it on google.

Actually the pc can come in either a celeron or a pentium 4 but it doesnt really matter as he cannot upgrade to a Intel Conroe core 2 duo anyways.. He could upgrade to a slightly higher pentium 4 like you said but it depends on what current cpu he has. He just needs to let us know.

[Bartender]

ppalmer -
It's hard to make recommendations in a case like this. If you like taking PC's apart, you could probly do some things with that Dell to make it go faster. If jrm is correct, and you have a 200W PSU, well, that's just not gonna cut it, so the shopping list would probably include, at the very least, a more robust PSU ($50 or more - don't buy crap) the most powerful CPU that the Dell motherboard supports ($120 to $200 maybe?), and possibly more RAM. You didn't say how much you've got. Those changes wouldn't require messy software projects like changing drivers and such. Unless of course the Dell motherboard would need a BIOS flash to support the faster CPU - not a project for the faint-hearted.

For your $200 to $400, you'd maybe gain 20% to 30% speed, depending on what CPU can be shoehorned in there. That would be money spent on a system that has no warranty, and could die in the near future from HDD failure or any number of other things.

That's if you LIKED working on PC's.

If you don't have the time or inclination to delve into weird little problems that crop up when working on PC's (they always do crop up) then you oughta just get a new Core 2 Duo PC, xfer your software, and be done with it. Turn the old PC into a Linux machine, or network the two together and make the old PC a server or data backup or whatever...

[jrm20]

ppalmer -
It's hard to make recommendations in a case like this. If you like taking PC's apart, you could probly do some things with that Dell to make it go faster. If jrm is correct, and you have a 200W PSU, well, that's just not gonna cut it, so the shopping list would probably include, at the very least, a more robust PSU ($50 or more - don't buy crap) the most powerful CPU that the Dell motherboard supports ($120 to $200 maybe?), and possibly more RAM. You didn't say how much you've got. Those changes wouldn't require messy software projects like changing drivers and such. Unless of course the Dell motherboard would need a BIOS flash to support the faster CPU - not a project for the faint-hearted.

For your $200 to $400, you'd maybe gain 20% to 30% speed, depending on what CPU can be shoehorned in there. That would be money spent on a system that has no warranty, and could die in the near future from HDD failure or any number of other things.

That's if you LIKED working on PC's.

If you don't have the time or inclination to delve into weird little problems that crop up when working on PC's (they always do crop up) then you oughta just get a new Core 2 Duo PC, xfer your software, and be done with it. Turn the old PC into a Linux machine, or network the two together and make the old PC a server or data backup or whatever...

He wouldnt necessarily need a better power supply if he kept all of his current hardware alone and just changed out to a faster socket 478 processor and thats it. HIs motherboard is a socket 478 by the way, they dont even list it on dell.com.

Above I was stating he would definately need a new powersupply if he wanted to get an Intel Conroe core 2 duo processor (Intels Latest processor). He would have to change out everything in his pc to get the new INTEL CONROE Core 2 Duo to work. Its on a totally different socket than his current, the powersupply he currently has wouldnt even fit because it has 20 pins and a conroe cpu needs a 24pin powersupply and the power supply doesnt have enough power for the Intel conroe anyways. The conroe is on the lga 775 or T socket.

[ppalmer10]

First, thanks everybody for your comments. I haven't had time to fully read all of them, but I'm sure its going to be helpful. The biggest question you seem to have is what my goal is. I don't want to buy a completly new system. I don't have the budget yet for the computer I would want. So, I was trying to find out if it would be worth my while (and my limited money at this time) to try upgrading anything. And I was trying to find out what I needed to know in order to shop for parts. I think you've given me enough info to do some more research on my own. I will look more closely at it tomorrow. Thank you SO much for all of your help...(BTW, I'm a she)
Thanks again,
Pat