Is It Really Worth Upgrading This?

**HistoryGirl** · #1 26th Aug 2009, 13:18

Apologises if this is not the wrong forum but this seemed the most logical place.

I've got an old tower from a relative no power, monitor or anything else just the tower for my CompTIA+ so I can take it apart.

It's an old HP Pavilion 760.uk must be 5/6 years old I reckon anyway the specs are as follows (what it said on the front of the tower):

1900+ AMD Athlon XP 1.6GHz
256MB DDR-SDRAM
60GB Ultra DMA hard drive
CD-RW 16x8x40x
DVD-ROM 16x

I'm looking into building a new PC and I was just wondering if it was worth replacing these parts or just starting again from scratch?

One further quick question I've taken the side panels off and removed everything from inside with the exception of the CD and floppy drives. I need to take the front panel off to access the drives and i'm not sure how. This is the tower.

Many thanks

**Carbon** · #2 26th Aug 2009, 14:46

What do you want to use it for? I mean, if it's just sitting around to do Office stuff you could throw a gig of RAM into it but you can build a new dual-core Athlon machine for pretty cheap nowadays.

**HistoryGirl** · #3 26th Aug 2009, 14:56

Thanks for replying. I just wanted to take apart to have the experience of doing it. I guess I may as well start from scratch then.

Not sure if you saw my question at the end, I've managed to take at the hard drive and floppy drive, but the CD drives I haven't managed to take out yet. Not sure how to take the front cover.

**4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie** · #4 26th Aug 2009, 14:58

As carbon says, it depends what you're doing with it - but if you are building a more modern PC then you van still keep the ODD's unless you have a particular need for BD-ROM's or whatever. You could even keep the RAM and double it up with another 512 stick, and if you wanted a couple of gigs on the other channel.

If you're going for a fairly newish system, change the mobo; CPU; Gpu; psu, and case. HDD depends on how much space you need.

**Carbon** · #5 26th Aug 2009, 16:30

Usually those front panels just yank off, there may be some sort of indentation to pull them with but ones I've used have these huge circular knob things that keep them in and you just have to tug pretty hard on the outside for them to pop off. If it's too big of a hassle skip it, fast DVD drives are cheap.

**4D(Fordy(Ford) Ollie** · #6 27th Aug 2009, 07:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carbon

Usually those front panels just yank off, If it's too big of a hassle skip it

Or just break open the case with well, whatever, presuming that is that you don't want t keep the case? Even if you did you could just get another non-broken one for free off freecycle

**HistoryGirl** · #7 27th Aug 2009, 11:14

Yeah sof it I'll just break the case off I have great desire to keep any of it really. I'll start from scratch thanks for the replys much appreciated guys.

On a separate note, regarding disposal of old disk drives etc I doubt they are really worth selling so how do I find out about electrical recycling near me? probably a dumb question but on local council website maybe?