upgrade a pc

[vinodvinu]

Hi,
my friend's pc stopped working. technician told that motherboard and smps is damaged. rest of the things in that pc is-p3 processor, 512MB sdram and 40GB ide hard disk. Now my friend is planning to buy a new SMPS.Motherboard, Ram and Processor. his doubt is, does the old hard disk with this new motherboard?.
vinodvinu.

[rubberman]

New motherboards generally support sata drives. Some also have ide ports, but it would not be recommended to use an old/slow ide drive with a new system, given a 2TB 7200 rpm drive is under $100 USD these days.

[flagstar]

If your friends would buy an old motherboard with IDE port, then just buy older one. Most new motherboard doesn't support IDE anymore which make your friends HDD need a new one too...

If still need to use some files on old HDD, just copy over to new one or clone it using Ghost program.

[jingda]

Is your friend PC is damn old, why not buy a new one? ( If he has the budget )

[vinodvinu]

thank you all for the reply. the pc is not very old. it's a 2006 model in his words.

[flagstar]

thank you all for the reply. the pc is not very old. it's a 2006 model in his words.

p3 processor
512 SDRAM
40GB IDE HDD

without a doubt this is an old pc.

P3 was way back before P4, Core series and i series was launch.
Most computer now use DDR RAM instead of SD RAM
And most computer now doesn't use IDE anymore (SATA)

Just like Jingda said, I recommend your friends to purchase a new computer. You can get around $300 for an average new computer instead of $50 for an old computer in an used computer store

[pphresh]

In my honest opinion that machine isn't worth salvaging. It's going to cost him ~$100 for a new motherboard and with those specs it's just not worth it. Better to put that $100 towards a new machine.