Thinking of Upgrading PC

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You may want to take a look at this site: How to Put A Computer Together and watch the accompanying videos.

To upgrade your old computer to play modern games you'll probably need to change most of the innards; the motherboard(Which your PC will be built around, everything you buy/use has to be compatible with this including the case), CPU/processor, video card and sound card(If your motherboard comes integrated with them on it and you want to use those, you won't need 'em, but you may want a more powerful video card), and probably RAM. You can probably re-use your Hard Drive and you can possibly re-use the power supply, as long as it supplies the needed, or more than needed, power for the parts you select.

When the powers on the fans should operate continuously.

You can be a little less careful with the vacuum around the power supply. Its just that on the motherboard there are little pins that can come off in the suction. Stick the nozzle of the vac up against the various vents on the power supply and suck the hell out of them.

Personally I open my power supplies and clean them, but thats definitely an expert job. Very dangerous voltages.

Do you have two matching pins to plug a monitor into? If the old monitor is not working, the computer may be looking for it on the wrong pin. Try to swap that.

not sure what you mean by "pin" but my monitor works fine I'm using it right now to type this and it worked on Friday before I bought this new one and switched out the old PC that I'm trying to fix so I don't know what happened....

He said he wanted to use it for gaming, and XP is THE gaming OS. GNU/Linux is still very limited as a gaming platform.

Pardon the obscurity of my previous post.

It is not uncommon to have a plug for a monitor built in to the computer. As well, you would have at least one, and possibly two more on the graphics card(you have one since you are a gamer). Windows could be waiting for a signal on one, and ignoring the others. This would explain why a functional monitor wont work on your old machine(when it did before).

I hope I was a little more clear this time. Sorry.

Yeah it was but what can I do to fix it? I do intend to buy a new monitor (better one at that and do some tweaking if my old PC will work at basic abilities anyway) so that I can upgrade from this old one...

I meant more so just to get it up and running, but yea, linux gaming has a ways to go yet.

King, it's possible your video card died... those come out. If there's one video connector on the board, and another on the card lower down, then take out the card and plug it in to the one on the board. If it works, dead card.

Thank you. That was what I was trying to explain.

Well I was already thinking of replacing the video card and increasing RAM on it anyway is there anyway I can check to make sure the motherboard is ok myself w/o sending it off?

I'm not sure what you mean by video connector like the monitors connector inside the computer?

Yes, the connectors... usually blue for VGA, white for DVI. Your video card will be standing up on the motherboard, you can reach in and pull it out. It may have a plastic tab at the end, though I wouldn't think so, it'd be older if it did. Just take out the one screw holding the card in and pull gently straight up.

If you have a second blue or white connector on the main part of the board, by the USB ports, you can use that. Won't work well for gaming, but it will turn the computer on. Drop in video cars override the main one on the board, so it won't work unless you pull the card out.

EDIT: I take it back, that's a decent chipset. May not play all games full specs, but still, thats not bad.

This is a generic backplate, see the blue connector in the bottom centre? Thats the onboard video. If you're using anything but one in that silver back plate, you're using a card. If you don't have one there, then all you can use is a card, but your computers specs say you have that on board one.

Here's another good diagram:


Video card is what you're looking to remove.

Ok I have the blue one and I know I can remove it but I'm not sure how it's supposed to work if I do... Am I supposed to replace it or just remove it? I don't understand where the monitor will plug in w/o the vid card sry :/

Ok I got the monitor to work (it has two places I picked the wrong one that wasn't the removable care :/ ) anyway now I put in SpeedFan to check the temp and it says it keeps going up and up and up endlessly starting at 40 and now it's 61 degrees Celsius and I think that the fans on both the power distributer and the other fan (I think it's on the heatsink there's only two fans in the desktop...) too... I'm using a small dust remover and spraying it in there around the heat sink fan and the temp goes down dramatically (I just checked and it said 70 C now... ok I'll turn it off now...

There should be two blue ones on your computer... if for whatever reason there isn't, you'll need to replace the one you removed. Ask about a return policy though, because it may not be the video card, and if it isn't, then you don't want to be stuck with a shiny new part you caint use.

With the card out, look at the back of the computer. If there is another blue port, then you're good. If not, replace the card.

Looking at the above picture that means that the dust caked thing inside that I cleaned off was the motherboard? The fan wasn't in that position when I cleaned it I had to remove it from directly on top attached to it... Anyway can I check to make sure it's not busted like the old one and replace the fan?

The Vid Card works I put it in the wrong slot the dang thing just overheats so fast and the OS is crapped with problems...

You have learned a lot in the last few days. Well done. Keep it up.

The picture is a mislabeled in one way. the mother board is the whole of the green part inside(yours may be a different color). that grey thing labeled motherboard is the CPU block. An aluminum structure that removes heat from the CPU. As you know, a fan sits on top of that.

70 degrees is hot, but not dangerous. The computer should shut off automatically at 90-100 degrees.

So it may not be shutting down due to overheating. There is a fairly simple solution involving an operating system on a cd, but do I dare suggest a liveCD? When running that, if something is wrong in the hardware, the computer will still shut down, eliminating your regular OS as the problem.