Project: Rebuilding an old PC

I suddenly had an urge to see if Windows 10 would run with an old PC I assembled back in 2009. Amazingly, all of the parts were still intact, but I wondered if it were possible to upgrade it in the process.

When I originally built it, some of the better CPUs and graphics cars were too much dough, so I skimped quite a lot. It was a budget build even back then!

Current:

* Asus M4N68T-M board (very plain jane BUT it has one IDE port that I recall wanting for DVD roms and hard drives)
* Athlon II X2 255 cpu (2 core 2 thread)
* 2GB X 2 DDR3 1333
* Asus geforce gt 220
* An old (not as old as the rest of the build) laptop WD Blue 320GB 5400 HDD

I have successfully installed Windows 10, and it runs surprisingly well!

The first thing I wanted to do was swap the 2 GB dimms for 4 GB dimms and max out the board's 8 GB ram potential, but It wouldn't take them. That stinking reboot loop and no post. Arrrrgh. Ever been there? Anyway, I checked the bios version and found that the board was running the release bios. After finding the newest version on the interwebs, I flashed and BLAMMO it accepted the 4GB X 2 dimms.

Upgrade So Far:

* Board bios update DONE
* Athlon II X2 255 to Phenom II X4 965 PENDING
* 2GB X 2 to 4GB X 2 DDR3 1333 DONE
* Asus geforce gt 220 to Asus gtx 650 Ti DONE
* WD Blue 5400 HD to boot drive SSD (maybe a 7200 2 GB as well) PENDING

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The PSU is extremely old & sketchy, so I may buy a low grade new one to protect all of these sweet new parts lol

I donate my old PCs to the salvation army. So you might want to check there for an upgrade.

The last one the salvation army got was a rig with an I5 2500k CPU, 16GBs DDR3 1600mhz ram, R9 390 GPU, with a 1TB HDD and 480GB Sata III SSD. Motherboard was a Gigabyte Z68x UD4 B3, had an 850w PSU it it. Case was a Cooler Master mid tower (don't remember the model).

Why would you spend money on legacy hardware? I give my legacy hardware away for free. Now, it wasn't out of complete generosity, I wrote it off on my taxes. Between that, and some other write offs, it was quite a bit more than the earned income credit, enough to put me into a lower tax bracket.

I put an envelope taped to the inside of the case with my contact info in it, for whoever bought the PC. Someone did call me up a month later who needed help setting it up. Some poor people bought the PC for $100 for their kid's birthday. I actually drove down there with a Windows 10 ISO, and helped them set everything up, including a few games. They handed me a case of beer on my way out.

I would have done a Salvation Army giveaway on my current rig last year sometime, but I can't find parts anywhere, and probably won't be able to get what I want until 2022 or later.

I don't think it's a matter of buying legacy hw because he wants it, but because his mobo may or may not get along with it even with a BIOS update.

Also, it's cheap, and perhaps easier to find parts that are clearly obsolete

It may also be a matter of his case. I've been tinkering on my pc for a few years but there's some limitations due to case slots, cable pathing, fan location, etc. I mean, assuming you aren't one of those mangineers who mounts your mobo on a corkboard above your desk en plein air or leaves the case open on both sides so you can mount extra shit.

"

Also, it's cheap, and perhaps easier to find parts that are clearly obsolete

Clearly not.

Back in to my hometown HK, it may be easy to obtain DDR2, DDR3, Pentium 4, Core 2 Quad etc because there is a shopping centre in the urban slum area dedicated to this kind of second hand shop for poor SME and poor family


But i never saw such shop or even shopping centre size, cluster of second hand computer part shops in Australia

And at your own risk on bidding junk in ebay or taobao (BTW i bought like 3 phone screen part that entirely new and may be stolen from factory directly or leftover extra part for obsolete model)